Is it considered "Bad Form" to polish up old stoves thus losing the patina of many years of use or is it the shinier the better?
It is how ever you like it. Many love to return them to their original shine, others can't be bothered. I am somewhere in between myself. Some I shine others I leave as they are found. Over all the patina doesn't seem to enhance valve from what I have observed on Ebay, etc, maybe the other way around. Regards, Ed
I like mine polished so a fly couldn't land on 'em. Something about brass seems to trigger a genetic necessity to polish in homo sapiens. Alumin(i)um doesn't do it, steel doesn't do it, but brass................? The shinier the better. Gerry
I started buying and using camping stoves in 1972. Of course, they were the smaller brass ones made by Primus and Optimus. After every weekend's use, I used to strip the stove, clean it and then polish it so that it was as perfect as the day I bought it. When I started collecting stoves as a hobby, I automatically wanted to clean and polish because if I had owned any of my more recent acquisitions from new, they would never have developed an interesting (not) patina. It would be like never cleaning your home oven and hob - can you imagine how it would look after many years of use? Some of you will have seen my very first stove purchase before. To remind you, here is my Primus 96 on display at Newark looking as it always did when I was using it regularly. Of course, I now have many, many stoves not in cleaned condition because most of the stoves I acquire are in a poor condition and I just can't seem to find the time to fettle, clean and then polish them. But every now and again, I do a full restoration on a stove and it gets polished - and then stays that way. I know that many do not agree with my thoughts on polishing. I do not disagree with them, I simply have a different point of view. If you do not like a polished stove, then so be it.
Shag, i wonder what the difference is in the scantlings from when this stove was new and today after all those years of fettle and polish. It's as lovely a stove as i have ever seen and will now praise you to the "Gods" * for your hard work. lance * The Gods of stove and camping. That would be, Fire and Ice, i do believe. lp
My thoughts exactly. I tend to polish a stove up as well as possible and photograph it, then let it mellow over time. If you keep polishing them regularly you will remove some of the engraved detail on the tank.
I've put some polish on some of my stoves but I'm too busy to keep it up. One stove, my Primus 51 is rather battered and would look obscene if polished with all its dents. On the otherhand the highly polished ones look grand. =D> =D> Iain
