It's a Grate Day !

After 9 years of looking for replacements, I finally have recast triangular coal grates for my 1903 Sunny Glenwood range.

I just unpacked my new grates, gears ,and firebrick retainers for my Glenwood range, that I had Tomahawk recast. I had one good grate left. luckily it was the longest one that the shaker handle attaches onto. That way the shaker handle stub end can be cut off to make it shorter to replace other grate in the pair.

As far as shrinkage is concerned, the original grate bar being 21 inches long and supported near it's ends, I was able to easily compensate by blasting the grate clean and then building up it's length with plastic filler (Bondo). I added 1/4 inch to the length by adding 3/16 inch at the rear end and 1/8 inch at the front. That also let me build the triangular shape of the handle stub back to size. With one badly warped grate the gears and the triangular stub have taken a beating. The end was beaten tapered and quite loose fitting.

Plus, at Wilson's suggestion, because the bars are located in the grate from only off their front bearing surface, I made the rear most tooth fatter by 3/16 inch to help prevent coal falling down between it and the firebricks.

As for the rest of the bar and it's teeth, the slight amount of shrinkage there will not be noticeable. But, just to "fatten" the teeth and the rest of the bar a bit anyway, I sprayed it overall with several coats of epoxy primer that I use on the cars (the greenish-gray parts at the top of the picture below). That not only added to the overall thickness, it gave the parts corrosion protection, plus I could write my name and phone number on the parts permanently.

I don't have to worry about the primer as that bar is now my grate pattern. That's something else that Wilson taught me. Whenever possible, never use the good original parts that wear. You save those good parts for patterns and only use the recast parts. Having spent nine years searching for replacement grates, including asking every stove shop and not finding any, I decided to turn that one good grate into a pattern.

A special thank you to Wilson for your help and advice.

So, while the finished bars are 1/4 inch shorter than the pattern bar, you could not tell in any shorter lengths that it matters. One exception being, the gears are a bit too tight to fit all the way onto their tapered seat from fattening the inside of them and their seat on the grate bar with those coats of epoxy primer. That's what I wanted because with a few licks with a mill file, they will have a perfectly snug fit.

The second picture is an original, unpainted gear that is held back-to-back against a recast gear. You can see that being 3 inch across, with a part that small, the shrinkage was completely compensated for by the coats of epoxy.

In the third picture you can see that the firebrick retainer in the top middle of the two firebricks, has the curled down inner end nearest the hot coals completely burned away. Worried that someday it may not be able to hold the ends of those two firebricks, I built it back out to shape also using plastic filler. And again, the epoxy compensated for shrinkage.

Now, I can rotate the triangular grates as they were meant to be done daily, to grind up any clinkers, and to turn the grates to even out any wear and warping, just as they were designed to do.

Paul

Paul , those grates look perfect. Those recast look like originals.
It would be nice to have good original grates for my stoves. I might have a good one for my number 6 but it has a slight warp. The guy at a local foundry in Taunton ma said depending on how much carbon is left in the grate, he might attempt straightening it. We ll have to wait and see. Grates can be very expensive especially if your grates go through two parties before you get it back.
Kevin

After cutting the triangular stub end off of one bar (not needed) and a trial to make sure the grate bars fit, I filed the sand cast texture of the bar's bearing areas smooth to reduce wear on the bar saddles.

Then shaped the purposely over-sized triangular end to fit the shaker handle snugly.

Then it was on to filing the gear seats and drilling the cotter pin holes in the grate bars to hold the gears in place. A bit of trial and error, file then test, to get the cotter pins to go in very tightly, so that the gears are a nice tight fit on the bars.

Once the bars were done and installed I could put the fire bricks back in place for a final test.

Smoooooth ! It's great to finally have coal grates that work as they should.

Now when the shaker handle is put on at the 12 o'clock position, then swung down to the 4 o'clock position, the hook on the handle hits the stop pin on the front of the range. That lets you know that both grates have rotated their top faces toward each other and the next set of grate teeth faces are now on top.

The reason for that direction of handle movement is so that, when the stove has run for many hours, such as at night, and there is a deeper bed of ash, the grate teeth move any clinkers toward each other and down into the ash pan, rather than outward toward the firebricks. That lets the tips of the grate teeth help grind up any clinkers. That only needs to be done once or twice a day. The rest of the time, the grates can just be shaken with quick, short back and forth movements of the shaker handle to loosen any ash.

Plus, doing that 1/3 rotation of the grate bars at least once a day also helps eliminate any chance of warping the grates by them always being hotter on the same side for long periods.

Paul

Merc300d wrote:Paul , those grates look perfect. Those recast look like originals.
It would be nice to have good original grates for my stoves. I might have a good one for my number 6 but it has a slight warp. The guy at a local foundry in Taunton ma said depending on how much carbon is left in the grate, he might attempt straightening it. We ll have to wait and see. Grates can be very expensive especially if your grates go through two parties before you get it back.
Kevin

Kevin

Yes, I'm very pleased with how well Tomahawk did on all the parts I sent patterns for. Their castings even have the Glenwood parts numbers raised like the pattern parts I sent them.

Wilson has a Glenwood #6 pattern grate - at least for the two long center grates. The two center ones he put in my #6 are recasts he had done and they fit very well.

He mentioned that with slight mods the #6 grates also fit a Wings Best.

Paul

With the grates in and working great ( ya know I had to say it. ) I could put the firebricks back in, check how close the "fattened" rear grate teeth come to the fire bricks, and then file and fit the front firebrick retainer.

You may wonder why the "front" retainer is on the left side of the firebox. Few coal range owners know that with ranges, the "front" of the range is what most of use would call the left end - where the ash drawer is. My guess is it's a hold-over from cook stoves where you cooked from the firebox end with oven doors on the sides of the stove ????

However when parts are ordered for a range such as firebricks (I know that at least with Glenwoods), they are labeled as to their position when viewed from standing at the ash drawer end of the stove. In that instance, the "front end" being the ash drawer end, and thus, what we would call the front of the stove - with the oven door and the wood loading door for the firebox - actually the "right end" of the firebox. Then that makes the "rear" of the firebox the part closest to the oven wall. And, what we would normally call the back of the range - with the mantel and shelves - is actually the "left end" of the firebox .

This moment in stove history was brought to you by, . . .

Now that I got that out of my system, back to the fire brick retainer.

Since the long sides of the firebox have two bricks there is a seam half way along each side. The corners interlock so they hold each other in place. Not so those midway seams. So cast iron retainers are used. The one on the front (yeah, left side ) of the firebox was badly eaten away by heat. Unable to grab the firebricks I was concerned it wouldn't hold then snug to the firebox casing and ash would build up behind them pushing them outward and cracking them more.

The fit is a bit tricky because the retainer has to pull back toward the firebox wall while having the correct angle down onto the bricks. That took more grinding, filing, then try the fit. Once it was holding the firebricks properly, then I could mark and drill the cotter pin hole.

One of the projects I'm working on with Wilson's help is making molds to cast new firebricks. I don't want to risk new bricks cracking without that retainer.

Not knowing how much was burned away from the original retainer, I had to guess at some of it's shape. The rest I was guided by the recess in the fire bricks that it is supposed to fit into. To get that I had to build up the original with more plastic filler material so that the castings could be ground down to fit. A few minutes with a file and a Dremel tool and it's fitting the bricks and stove perfectly.

Now, we're ready at this house for cold weather, so that we can get back to Cookin' With Coal.
Cookin' With Coal

You knew I was going to throw that plug for the "Cookin' With Coal" thread in somewhere, didn't ya ?

Paul

Got to try them out this morning. As Glenwood advertises, they work very well at clearing ash without the need for having to poke up through the grates to breakup and loosen any beginnings of clinker buildup.

They are sweet !

Reported on this page of the Cookin' with Coal thread.
Cookin' With Coal

Paul