I've been finding time to look over some of the stoves I have never found time for until I restricted my outdoor movements, and found an intriguing puzzle over a 210. It has a code suggestive of 1957 on one of the legs, as you may well suspect, but in the centre underneath are the characters AU and a Z under those, this suggestive of 1955. Just wondered if there was an explanation for this as we seemingly take the dating chart as gospel !
Not really. I’ve encountered a variation of a couple of years between a date-stamped burner, and the date of the fuel tank. It’s to do with part bin turnover at the factory, with the assembly of stoves from stocks of pre-manufactured components.
There are much earlier examples where surplus, dated, components from one year were simply over-stamped with a different letter*. They haven't done that here but the leg date would seem to denote the date of final assembly, 1957, using a tank made in 1955! (*See, for example, the discussion here.)
I think the integrity of the dating chart is pretty clear: it shows when the tank was stamped, and that is used as the best guide we have at putting a date on manufacture. Just as Coleman date stamped their founts with months and years (though not always, and not always in a consistent pattern) we know that’s when the tank was stamped - not when the final product left the factory. I like your example as it tells us that the company wasn’t using a “just in time” manufacturing model. Cheers Tony
Thank you all, and I kind of suspected it to be as you have indicated. I like to have an occasional odd-ball on the cool wall.
