Vogelzang Potbelly Door Latch

Hi guys,

I've been thinking a long time about the best way to secure the feed door on my Vogelzang Potbelly Stove. On occasion, after loading this potbelly stove up with long pieces of wood through the 8" lift out lid, the logs would burn down and fall against the feed door, pushing the door open. So, I thought about this for a few years now and finally selected an inexpensive solution to this problem. This bolt latch appears to have solved this problem and I feel much better now. Check it out and tell me what you think?

Nice idea! Inexpensive and easy... I wonder how long the zinc will stay on that bolt.. Very inventive solution!

dj

Nice. Looks like something I would do. Now you should tap out the little knob and put a hardwood or bakelite extension on it to keep the heat off your fingers

That's a pretty smart idea there. Now all you need to do is hit the stove with a little stove polish.

Dann757 wrote:Nice. Looks like something I would do. Now you should tap out the little knob and put a hardwood or bakelite extension on it to keep the heat off your fingers

I was gonna say, "it looks like its kind of hot to touch."

But, that does appear to be an ingenious solution. Great job!!

Good solution. I would weld a little extension on the knob so I could grab it with gloves on. Looks like a wooden handle might get a bit hot.

Excellent! although its way too simple and effective ;=)

Im gonna try that on mine

BTW have you modified your shaker mechanism yet? Its really the only thing that keeps me from burning coal any more in mine. I now only burn wood in it because the ashes fall right thru, however the shaker is too hard to get enough motion to really shake down coal.
If you have found a fix for that too -Im interested.

Thanks for the compliments guys. I just can't believe that it took me this long to figure it out and it is so simple an inexpensive, plus it works great. The latch secures the door pretty tight but is still very easy to release with a pair of gloves or a poker. I like the idea of a welding extension to the bolt, but for now I think I'll leave it be.

As for the grate issue, I've been still thinking on that. What I did find out when I cleaned the stove out and was that one of the biggest problems that I had with the grate system, was the fact that I had not installed the shaker dump section grate the correct way. After a closer look, I noticed that the round grate has a lip molded under the round grate section for the slider dump grate to travel in and out. This molded lip secures the two grate sections together for a solid back and forth rotation. Since I did not have mine originally assembled correctly, only the center dump grate section was the part that I was actually shaking. That is the main reason that I found my grate system sucked.

I got a chance to look at an Alaska Kodiak Stove and it has a very similar grate system. With closer inspection, I realized I had to investigate my Vogelzang Potbelly stove to see if it was made the same. Surprise, it was. So, I thought that if this style of grate system was good enough for the Alaska Kodiak, maybe I can finally get my Vogelzang Potbelly stove to finally function.

I currently have the Vogelzang Potbelly Stove loaded full of anthracite coal and I'm going to put it though the paces, now that I have corrected an error in my assembly of the grate sections, to see if I can get this stove to perform any better with continuous burning of anthracite coal. I'll post my findings of my firing method, with burn times, stove temperatures and stovepipe temperatures after I run my test burn for a few days.

Thanks again for all of your responses. DOUG