What size coal for a winkler stoker?

What type of coal is a winkler stoker designed for?

Could you post photos of the stoker mechanism?? I've never heard of or seen a Winkler stove.

Greg L.

.

Finally got some pictures.

Let me know what you think.

It was made in Indiana, are you sure it is not a bituminous coal stoker?

Hard to tell without something for perspective but it looks like the worm drive is slightly larger than the one we have. Ours uses buckwheat. Pea may be a little too large for it plus I'm not aware of any stokers with a auger like that for pea. The EFM's for example use rice which is even smaller than buckwheat. I'd suggest starting out with either rice or buckwheat. If you're buying in bulk get a few bags of each and try both first.

check out this link

http://stewartwarnercorp.com/about/history.htm

That looks like a Bituminous stoker, like my Iron Fireman. does the red cabinet hold a coal hopper, that has the feed auger at the bottom?? Does the exposed auger you show actually run inside the 'air box' that is to the right of it in the second photo?? Is the burn pot in the rounded end of the airbox??

If all or most of the above is correct, then this is a bituminous coal stoker, these were meant to be installed in old hand fired boilers and furnaces, to take the place of the hand-feed grates and relieve the homeowners of haveing to tend the fire every 8-12 hours.. The shaker grates were removed, the airbox/auger assembly was slid into the boiler through the ash pan door. The firepot ended up at about the same level as the original grates were.. Then usually a ceramic cement, sort of like concrete was poured around the firepot to make a flat surface for the bituminous-coal Clinkers to form on and be removed [by hand] from the firebox..

The homeowner had to use 'Clinker Tongs' to reach in through the previous coal loading door and remove the hard chunks of Clinker from around the fire,, this was the 'ash' from a properly setup bituminous underfeed stoker.. There was no ashpan.

Post a photo of the fire pot.. I'm currious if it looks like my Iron Fireman's.

The Size of Bituminous coal is called stoker coal. it is about like small [anthracite's sizes] nut, pea and down to buckwheat.. Good stoker coal is less than 25% fines.. Bituminous coal is soft, so the pieces grinding against each other when shoveled, or trucked, creates lots of fine, sand-like powdery coal.. the stokers don't like these fines,, they can clog up the air holes in the fire pot grates, and clog up the auger if the fines get wet,, they turn into black mud..

You may be able to use buckwheat or pea size anthracite in this stoker, but you need to have an ashpan under the end of the burnpot, otherwise you will have a mess cleaning out the ash.. anthracite doesn't clinker like Bitum coal does..
I Burned Pea, Buckwheat and rice in my modified Iron Fireman.. it did well on anthracite.

Greg L.

Hi Greg,

Yes, you just described a stoker about like Dad put into our house in Michigan back in about 1954 or so when I was about ten years old. I can still remember his lowering the VERY HEAVY drive box down the basement stairs one step at a time when it bounced the whole wooden stairway up and down each time he lowered it one step! And yes it was bituminous coal ( is there a bituminous coal forum? Am I out of line here? ). Only the back housing was more a quarter circle in shape. I remember climbing up on top of the stoker and sliding down the back that way. I also remember taking the back housing off, which exposed the drive system where there was a square or hex drive where you could put a lever on the auger to back it up if it got jammed. I would put the lever on the drive and stand on the lever arm and let it lift me up in the air as it cranked the auger around. I had to remove the lever before it went down on the other side or it probably would have lifted the whole stoker up and ruined it! Also, being a hydraulic drive that ratcheted if it jammed, it was said that you could stick a wood 2by4 in the auger and it would keep chewing on it until it sheared it off and sent it into the furnace, but I NEVER tried that!!

The neighbor lady used to come over to our house in the winter just to enjoy the nice even heat instead of the "on off" oil burner that they had! It was the most wonderful heat system we ever had, and I wish I could use it here in California - but it's a bit overkill for that!

I'd be interested in any more information anyone could come up with on the Winkler stokers just to refresh my memory of it. We left Michigan in 1957 when I was in the 9th grade. I heard that the first thing the stupid people who bought the house did was take that stoker out and put an oil burner in its place.

Kurt ( I'm a retired mechanical engineer - steam turbine power plant design using coal at 600 tons an hour. )

I just returned home with the winkler stoker that I posted pictures of. It is in remarkable condition. It looks like it is less than 10 years old not the 50 -60 that it is. I will post some pictues in the next week or so when I get a chance.

I am going to try and install this in a boiler in place of a corn burner. Any input is appreciated.

any size.....let em' burn

LsFarm wrote:Could you post photos of the stoker mechanism?? I've never heard of or seen a Winkler stove.

Greg L.

.

this was my grandfathers company in Lebanon, IN ...I have a working minature replica of the stoker

Kurt_Greske wrote:Hi Greg,

Yes, you just described a stoker about like Dad put into our house in Michigan back in about 1954 or so when I was about ten years old. I can still remember his lowering the VERY HEAVY drive box down the basement stairs one step at a time when it bounced the whole wooden stairway up and down each time he lowered it one step! And yes it was bituminous coal ( is there a bituminous coal forum? Am I out of line here? ). Only the back housing was more a quarter circle in shape. I remember climbing up on top of the stoker and sliding down the back that way. I also remember taking the back housing off, which exposed the drive system where there was a square or hex drive where you could put a lever on the auger to back it up if it got jammed. I would put the lever on the drive and stand on the lever arm and let it lift me up in the air as it cranked the auger around. I had to remove the lever before it went down on the other side or it probably would have lifted the whole stoker up and ruined it! Also, being a hydraulic drive that ratcheted if it jammed, it was said that you could stick a wood 2by4 in the auger and it would keep chewing on it until it sheared it off and sent it into the furnace, but I NEVER tried that!!

The neighbor lady used to come over to our house in the winter just to enjoy the nice even heat instead of the "on off" oil burner that they had! It was the most wonderful heat system we ever had, and I wish I could use it here in California - but it's a bit overkill for that!

I'd be interested in any more information anyone could come up with on the Winkler stokers just to refresh my memory of it. We left Michigan in 1957 when I was in the 9th grade. I heard that the first thing the stupid people who bought the house did was take that stoker out and put an oil burner in its place.

Kurt ( I'm a retired mechanical engineer - steam turbine power plant design using coal at 600 tons an hour. )

this was my grandfathers company in Lebanon, IN. I try to collect artifacts from its "hey day". I have pictures, working minature replica stoker models.

Moved to the Bituminous coal forum..

That's a new-condition stoker,, very nice !!

You said you are going to use it in place of a corn burner.. is this in an outdoor boiler ?? Any photos you can post?

Greg L

LsFarm wrote:The Size of Bituminous coal is called stoker coal. it is about like small [anthracite's sizes] nut, pea and down to buckwheat.. Good stoker coal is less than 25% fines.. Bituminous coal is soft, so the pieces grinding against each other when shoveled, or trucked, creates lots of fine, sand-like powdery coal.. the stokers don't like these fines,, they can clog up the air holes in the fire pot grates, and clog up the auger if the fines get wet,, they turn into black mud..

Greg is right on here and with the rest of his post that I didn't quote.

Stoker coal (some people call it "oiled slack") is usually oiled to suppress dust and to aid gravity flow and the fines tend to stick to the larger pieces and get stoked in without much trouble unless there is an excessive amount of fines.

Once you get this up an running you will be amazed at the heat it will put out.

this was my grandfathers company in Lebanon, IN. I try to collect artifacts from its "hey day". I have pictures, working minature replica stoker models.[/quote]

Hi Winklergrandson,

So how do we get to see the pictures? Especially of one like the one I described.

Kurt