This is a "Daisy" coal stove, around the 1920s. It's what must have been a very inexpensive stove; the main body of the stove is sheet metal (a 10" stovepipe, essentially) lined with firebrick. It was made in Peekskill, NY, about 15 miles from my cabin where I found it stored under the front porch when I first moved in, rusting away... the previous owner had removed it because her kids weren't cleaning up when they used it in the winter. I took it apart, cleaned it up, repainted it, and used it for the next 12 years, first in that cabin, then I took it along to my new cabin when we moved after 5 years.
It did a decent job heating the uninsulated 430 ft² cabin, and a great job heating just the bedroom in the new cabin (the wood stove in the living room takes care of the rest).
For the past year or so I've been thinking it's time to replace the body tube as it was getting thin, but I kept putting it off... until yesterday morning when I lit a quick wood fire to take the chill off. I was treated to a light show seeing the flames flickering thorough all the pinholes. Guess I can't put it off any longer, so I pulled it outside and started taking it apart. Worse than I thought, the metal around the stovepipe attachment was pretty rotten, too... fortunately all the cast iron parts are solid.
The plan is to make a new body tube out of 24 gauge stainless steel, clean and repaint all the parts, and hopefully have it back in the cabin in a couple of weeks. I'm sure it was originally black (though I used some green when I last painted it), but some parts, the finial on top at least, were originally nickel plated. The plating was in bad enough shape that I just painted everything. This time, I'm going to keep to the green and black, if I can find green stove paint again, but I'm going to try to figure out which parts were nickel, and paint those bright silver. I'm not looking to do a perfect original restoration; I want it to look nice but it's a working stove. From pictures I've seen of similar stoves, the finial was plated, the cast piece immediately below it should be black, then the next casting (the top of the body) would be plated, the tube painted, and I'm not sure about the base or the door.
Getting all the rusty bolts out was a pain, had to grind most of them out. Not that many parts.
Some 22 gauge stainless sheet, rolled and held together with Clecos, which a friend TIG welded for me, now I can cut the holes for the door and the stovepipe. I won't be able to duplicate the rolled beads in the original tube.
Tonight I sandblasted all the cast parts. This weekend I'll cut the holes in the tube and get everything repainted.
