Cookin' With Coal

Do you need to remove 'rust glaze' ?

Only if the look of it bugs and you. It gets so tough and seals so well that it will only rust that far and it stops.

I have some old, warped T's and I's - that came with my range - sitting on a shelf in a damp, dirt-floored basement. They have not rusted any more then that hard rust glaze they had when I bought the stove over eight years ago.

Paul

Thanks Paul. I'm not looking for work and when the lids are on you can't see it, so I guess it's fine the way they are. I just didn't want to have to go looking for additional lids when these fell into the stove due to rusting into little bits!!

Yes most coal ranges will burn either hard or soft coal. With soft coal however ,you will have to rake out under the oven more frequently to insure a good draft around the oven. Regarding fire regulation and oven temperatures a lot is dependent on the draft situation with your chimney . ALL chimneys vary in the strength of draft. In my particular instance because of the draft in my chimney is quite strong, the oven temp is controlled buy the bottom draft in the ash pit and the check draft which on Glenwood stoves is located right under the smoke collar where the pipe joins the stove. When burning coal, I leave the stove pipe damper OPEN and depend on the check damper and and the damper down near the ash pit to regulate the oven temperature. The slide draft in the "broiler" door is sometime used to hold the temp. even in the oven and is used at night to help bank down the fire to hold it over night. How far you open it or close it again depends on the draft of the chimney. Sometimes on very windy nights in the winter, you might have to open the broiler door damper nearly all the way. By the way, for easy broiling over the coal ( which is far NICER THAN CHARCOAL) They made special grills, that after removing the two rimmers over the fire box, sit right down over the fire. they made different sizes to fit number 7,8,or 9 stoves. When using them you must prepare your fire in advance ...have it built up high in the firebox and burn off the coal gas. Put the broiler over the firebox and place your meat on the grill. For steak, have a very hot fire For pork and chicken have it cool ...for lamb cool to medium. Again, depending on your draft, you may have to open the oven damper on the top of the stove so the smoke from broiling can go directly up the chimney. You will find meats broil faster using a good grade anthracite so have ALL the rest of your meal cooked and sitting in the warming oven or over the far right hand of the cook top Poke around at antique shops, you'll find these broilers. Most antique dealers don't even know what they are. many have a handle on them just like a frying pan. I find them easier to use than the grills which can be put into the side of the broiler door. AND when you are out at the "antique" shops ,look for an ash sifter. They look some what like a rural mailbox with a crank . They fit directly over the ash barrel. Pour the cold burned ashes from the ash pan into the top, close down the cover and turn the crank. The clinkers and unburned bits of coal will be separated from the ash powder itself and these sifted ashes will bank your fire down for the night. It will also save on your coal bill. Ads from the turn of the century referred to them as being guardians of the coal pile. Also when burning coal always remember to take out the ashes in a timely manner. YOu don't want excess heat building up in the ash pit. THis could ,in time , cause the grates to warp.

Sunny Boy wrote:Here's a meal I forgot to post pix of, . . and it's one of my favorites.

Like my girl friend does, Carole makes mac & cheese from scratch. Since I know they have a milk cow I assume the milk is home-grown ? And I know they make cheese, so that might be what was used in this too ?

As I told Carole she and my Melissa are sisters from different mothers. They both like cooking either over an open wood fire, or antique stoves, and making meals from scratch. Their passion for it comes through with great meals.

The last picture is the indoor swing Carole mentioned. A nice modern version of the old high-backed bench for sitting in front of a kitchen cooking fireplace.

And that tea kettle looks very familiar. . . .

Thank you to Carole and family for letting us see these pictures of more cooking being done on an antique wood/coal range.

Paul

Carol, your stove looks AWESOME in your home and the food incredible! Keep up the photos, it makes this thread stay alive!
Randy

Sunny Boy wrote:Yes, indeed - heaven !

My stove covers over the firebox stay off-white on the undersides from the very slight coal ash that coats them.

What you may be seeing is "rust glaze" forming. It's a kind of rust that is very hard and smooth - unlike the lighter, coarser orangey-red rust seen caused by being left out in the weather. It forms on cast iron that is exposed to high heat for a long time. The longer the exposer, the tougher it gets.

The color of that rust glaze can be affected by the alloy mix in the cast iron and where the cast iron came from and how it was processed. Most people think that all cast iron is the same, but it varies alot. The covers on the Rathbone and Sard Acorn range that the girl friend grew up with were orange - top and bottoms. For a long time, I thought that odd color was done intentionally, but after talking with her father about it, it was just the type of cast iron used by R&S.

Rust on cast iron that's left outdoors comes off easily with sandblasting, wire brushes sanding, etc.. However, the rust glaze formed by heat is VERY tough to blast through. And forget about getting it off with a wire brush. Your hand will fall off first !

Yeah, these coal ranges are nice for keeping warm, but bad for the waist line !

Paul

man alive, i'll say. there ain't no way I could have one of those stoves in my house if there's going to be all THAT food.............

my butt would be as wide as the stove

Sunny Boy wrote:Thanks Wilson.

Small club is right ! I should have been hit with one. It took me almost eight years to figure out why those holes are in the back of the oven.

Paul

Paul , short story . One summer I put a half loaf of bread in the oven(cold stove) just to get it out of my way .Forgot about It,some time later after using the stove for heat I opened the oven door to a black blob,plastic burnt away and I never could smell a thing. That was with a Glenwood home Grand #8.I just swept it out.

Yeah, that's the bad and the good part about of those oven vents.

The bad news is, they work so well you'd never know food is burning in the oven.
The good news is, they work so well, you don't have to smell food burning in the oven.

The last one is especially good when I'm doing the cooking.

Paul

Thanks KingCoal and Randy! Yes, we make frequent drop offs at all the neighbors, but it's funny ... it seems like more and more the shades are drawn and no one is home when we make our neighborhood runs, even with their cars in the driveways!!!
(Just kidding!! )
Having this much fun cooking must be against the law someplace! ...Or ..just give it time, it will be!!
Our range will burn either wood or coal, or wood and coal! And lucky us, we live in Amish country, so bagged anthracite coal is close by when we need it. We just bought a skid of nut size coal, 1 ton plus 400 lbs. With having this much fun cooking, it MIGHT keep us going until spring .... whenever that is! 5 - 7 inches of snow is suppose to hit us tonight here in upper, northern, PA.
Carole

I told Melissa that having the coal range has become the only part of winter I look forward to.

Come the warm weather, and the range is not in use, when I come down in the morning, it takes a few mornings of looking half awake at the tea kettle on the gas stove and wondering why the coffee water isn't already hot.

After a few seconds of that, it slowly sinks in that I have to turn the gas on and WAIT FOR THE WATER TO GET HOT!

The coal range really has me spoiled !

Paul

I can invision it all now .... disapointment looms in my future
I guess I know why our Amish friends have said that they will have to build us a 'summer kitchen'
No fire to cook on .... How Sad

Carole

Yup. A lot of the old places had a summer kitchen. Imagine what it would be like if your running that stove all day to cook and boil gallons of water, indoors in the kitchen. It'd get brutal in July and August .

Usually the range got moved out to a porch, or open shed off the back of the house. It's just the earlier version of a BBQ grill out on the deck.

But, they progressed beyond that to the duplex, or utility stoves. Melissa lite up when I explained to her why her brother's stove had the left half of the cook top and the lower oven coal/wood fired, and the right half of the cook top has four gas burners and a gas oven and grill up above. Now, she'd love to have a Glenwood Gold Medal stove.

Paul

I own my grandparents house and when my dad was a kid the house had 2 kitchens. One in the walkout basement and the other on the first floor that is an addition put on in 1902 or around there. There is the remnants of the chimney for the old fist floor kitchen and now used as a sun room and where my woodstove soon to be coal stove is. I bought and remodeled the whole floor plan in the 70's.

That would be about the right time for a kitchen to be moved upstairs.

Many Victorian era homes had kitchens in the basement, that were later moved to the first floor. It was a hold over from the days when kitchen work was much more messy and there was little, or no indoor plumbing.

My place has a shed off the back, next to the back door. Going by remnants of an old roof-line, it's not the original shed there, which I suspect had originally been the summer kitchen. But this shed still has the outhouse in one corner that is just a small room. It was an improvement by only having to go out to the back porch to get into the shed and not having to walk out to a privy in rain, mud, or snow. The walls of that outhouse are still all wallpapered with pages out of old Harpers Bazzar magazines from the late 1800's. They did that not just to fancy it up, or for reading material, but to help keep the drafts to a minimum.

Life sure was very different back when these old coal stoves were new.

Paul

I sure wish I knew what I do now back when I started working on the house in the 70's. Got rid or original sconces, grates for Holland coal fired gravity warm air furnace eventually switched to oil fired hot water and saved a ton of money though. It is pretty stupid to try to run a coal fired furnace on fuel oil and we did have a coal comp[any 3 blocks away, go figure. The biggest bo bo was to get rid of a 4 ft long and 2 ft. deep 2 compartment quartz laundry sink. There were other bone head moves but these the biggest. sigh...