Restoring My New to Me 404

ddahlgren wrote:I played with drilling the tabs to remove the broken door ins and it seems impossible to get a straight shot at them with a pretty normal 3/8 hand drill. The body hits the stove side and does not allow a straight shot at it. I am up for ideas short of welding that will be costly no matter how it is done. At the end of the day I am running out of money so need a creative solution.

we used a small pneumatic drill, but as I explained in previous posts if you have a welding machine simply grind of the whole shootin' match, make a new tab (with pins installed or hole drilled in it first), lay the stove on its back, place the doors as you want them (no gasket installed), 1/16 spacer on hinge side and weld em' on in place and with the doors on it. (i told you it was gonna be your biggest hurdle... but you can do this)!

Ok the majority of heating season over and can pull out the evil wood stove so I can switch to coal. For the 404 here is the current game plan and let me know if headed in the wrong direction. Going to send grates doors and small loose parts to a local shop to be sand blasted then will buff the pivot points on the grates. I don't see any sense to have the firepot sand blasted but advise if I am wrong. It is red tan from heat so do not see what I need to take off other than what dcrane mentioned about grinding off the offending little nubs so it slides in and out easy.

Here is the plan for hinge pin repair. I am going to drill a hole in the stove top after measuring the location of an existing pin in the ash door relative to the stove side and door sealing surface. From there put the top door on and jigged up as dcrane suggested and use an extra long airframe drill to spot the hole location by piloting through the hinge pin bore in the door then remove door and drill through the tab. Repeat for the lower hinge. This will allow me to drop a brass rod through all 4 hinge pin bores and secure to stove with a shaft collar to prevent rotation. Now I have a hinge pin that is naturally slippery and will not seize to the door even with no lubrication. Should it wear out 3 bucks and 5 minutes will replace all 4 pins.

Ok what is the consensus on this plan?

ddahlgren wrote:Ok the majority of heating season over and can pull out the evil wood stove so I can switch to coal. For the 404 here is the current game plan and let me know if headed in the wrong direction. Going to send grates doors and small loose parts to a local shop to be sand blasted then will buff the pivot points on the grates. I don't see any sense to have the firepot sand blasted but advise if I am wrong. It is red tan from heat so do not see what I need to take off other than what dcrane mentioned about grinding off the offending little nubs so it slides in and out easy.

Here is the plan for hinge pin repair. I am going to drill a hole in the stove top after measuring the location of an existing pin in the ash door relative to the stove side and door sealing surface. From there put the top door on and jigged up as dcrane suggested and use an extra long airframe drill to spot the hole location by piloting through the hinge pin bore in the door then remove door and drill through the tab. Repeat for the lower hinge. This will allow me to drop a brass rod through all 4 hinge pin bores and secure to stove with a shaft collar to prevent rotation. Now I have a hinge pin that is naturally slippery and will not seize to the door even with no lubrication. Should it wear out 3 bucks and 5 minutes will replace all 4 pins.

Ok what is the consensus on this plan?

good plan.... I get it. install the firepot with the former rear side now being the front side (most the red will be towards the rear side, now that wall will be towards the front), try to have some metal filler plate block the lower sides of that top baffle (approx 1"x2"x1/4" thick plate welded into the lower portion sides of that baffle) so you can "bank" coal better without concern of coal getting in behind that baffle plate and it will also help to slow draft toward rear of stove , something dad should have done because clearly it overfires toward the rear (flu wall) a lot easier than the front wall (we want EVENNESS across the entire bed!)

You may wish to have the firepot recast (its the only part you may need to deal with at some point over the next 10 years depending on how hard you need to run her).

hinge pin replacement for us was easier to just grind off all 4 hinge pins (including the tab), set stove laying down on its back, take the 2 doors and line them up with no gasket on the stove, place a 1/8th inch plate under the hinge side of the doors, weld new tabs to stove... DONE! (this is how the stove was built as well)

If we did use a drill to replace a pin, we used a small right angle air drill to achieve what your trying to do (but I see no reason your idea wont work... its just frustrating when you brake a bit ... slow, steady and patience wins this game!

great idea on smoothing up the shaker system contact points!

dcrane if you bless this repair it is all good! Being a machinist I don't break bits as most are nitride and very tough. Most people break them by letting it scuff and making a lot of heat. If has lube and reasonable size chip they cut rather than make heat. Feeding too slow is the fastest way to heat them and fatigue them with heat. It is a coolant and chip load issue at the end of the day. You have mentioned 1/16 and 1/8 as a shim. Is anywhere between those numbers ok so as to match the ash door so all inline with 1 rod?

I measured .530 at the small end of the hex for the grate shaker and .625 at the large end so assuming 1/16 wall .750 square tubing. Am I close?

ddahlgren wrote:dcrane if you bless this repair it is all good! Being a machinist I don't break bits as most are nitride and very tough. Most people break them by letting it scuff and making a lot of heat. If has lube and reasonable size chip they cut rather than make heat. Feeding too slow is the fastest way to heat them and fatigue them with heat. It is a coolant and chip load issue at the end of the day. You have mentioned 1/16 and 1/8 as a shim. Is anywhere between those numbers ok so as to match the ash door so all inline with 1 rod?

I measured .530 at the small end of the hex for the grate shaker and .625 at the large end so assuming 1/16 wall .750 square tubing. Am I close?

the shim at hinge end of doors was to make up for gasket material when installed (1/8" worked good but anywhere in that range will work, if doors are super tight after gasket you can take that shim and stuff it under hinge side of door and close/slam gently the door and it helps make it "not as tight")

you lost me on the last sentence (what are we talking about " hex for the grate shaker" ????

hex, meant square tapered end sticking out of stove for shaker handle. It tapers from about .530 to .625 at the base. .I am assuming the square tubingin mind for the handle is 3/4 .625 wall or possibly .090 wall.

ddahlgren wrote:hex, meant square tapered end sticking out of stove for shaker handle. It tapers from about .530 to .625 at the base. .I am assuming the square tubingin mind for the handle is 3/4 .625 wall or possibly .090 wall.

sounds right, I did post someplace the exact specs on a 404 shaker handle in one of the Crane posts. The handle simply wants to fit nice and snug on that stop shaft, you can make it out of heavy material (but be aware... you need to shake mindfully so as not to snap that stop shaft... the shaker handle was designed to brake before the stop shaft ever would... but as long as your aware not to strong arm it at each end of the "shake" you can use whatever you like)

I was going to build the one like the pic of the original with a rod going to a piece of square tubing so the rod bends first.

ddahlgren wrote:dcrane if you bless this repair it is all good! Being a machinist I don't break bits as most are nitride and very tough. Most people break them by letting it scuff and making a lot of heat. If has lube and reasonable size chip they cut rather than make heat. Feeding too slow is the fastest way to heat them and fatigue them with heat. It is a coolant and chip load issue at the end of the day. You have mentioned 1/16 and 1/8 as a shim. Is anywhere between those numbers ok so as to match the ash door so all inline with 1 rod?

I measured .530 at the small end of the hex for the grate shaker and .625 at the large end so assuming 1/16 wall .750 square tubing. Am I close?

Why would you not shim both ends of the door, both latch and hinge end?

ddahlgren wrote:

ddahlgren wrote:dcrane if you bless this repair it is all good! Being a machinist I don't break bits as most are nitride and very tough. Most people break them by letting it scuff and making a lot of heat. If has lube and reasonable size chip they cut rather than make heat. Feeding too slow is the fastest way to heat them and fatigue them with heat. It is a coolant and chip load issue at the end of the day. You have mentioned 1/16 and 1/8 as a shim. Is anywhere between those numbers ok so as to match the ash door so all inline with 1 rod?

I measured .530 at the small end of the hex for the grate shaker and .625 at the large end so assuming 1/16 wall .750 square tubing. Am I close?

Why would you not shim both ends of the door, both latch and hinge end?

IDK... I can only tell you how it was done, never really tried it however in the thousands of stoves I built (i would assume the latch side may be loose done that way).

Working on stove today and the thought occurred to me time to start finding some coal for it. I am trying to figure out how much I might need to be warm next winter. Without trying to hard to compare wood to coal I would say that the average stove temp for the wood stove on a 10 degree night is 400-450. It runs at 550-600 after a half hour warm up for a couple of hours and when I get up in the morning around 300 with coals and add wood for a couple of hours coasts down etc. I am thinking a constant 400-450 is what I need when very cold and about 300 on warmer days in fall and spring. I am thinking that going by last year I need 100 days of cold and 100 days of shoulder type heat. How does that get converted into tons of coal. How much coal a day to have 450 stove top and how much for 250-300 with a Crane 404

At those stove temps I average between 20 and 25lbs per day!

coalvet wrote:At those stove temps I average between 20 and 25lbs per day!

I think I need 400-450 on cold days maybe up to 550 on a really cold night 100 days
250-300 on warmer ends of winter for probably another 100 days

is the 20-25 lbs on the warmer days or colder ones?

20 lbs. on the warmer days and 25 or more on the colder days.

coalvet wrote:20 lbs. on the warmer days and 25 or more on the colder days.

So 1 or less ton shoulder and maybe 1.5 colder weather about what I had in mind and budget as well. Looking around here coal is getting pretty pricey but getting too old for wood to be honest. Best I can find is 312 a ton and 75 to deliver either 1 or 2 pallets that are long tons actually and a total of 375 X 2 +75 delivery for a total of 825 for 4800 lbs. in my garage. Just shy of 7 bucks for a 40 lb. bag. I still have a bunch of wood here so that might be an option for the nights to just get the chill off for a couple hours like I have been doing off and on this month but done with that now. Last winter burned 2.5 cords of wood along with maybe 1000 lbs. bio bricks for shoulders to take the chill off though if you load a bunch in you can get to 650 stove top in a 1/2 hour.