Last year the old cheap Vogelzang pot bellied stove crapped out in mid-winter, and was unrepairable. You guys (and gals) know me, as cheap as I am when I say its unrepairable, there is no fixing it. So we scrounged through 3 feet of snow, found an old stove from my late-grandmothers house, and put that to work; unfortunately it was wood-only. Now that I can't live with, I like burning coal too, so when I found a pot bellied stove for sale online, we went and looked at it. It ended up being a 1893 Woods and Bishop Model 4 New Era pot bellied stove. A rather rare antique stove, and being so, we were prepared to pay the guy $100 for it. It had its problems, but generally is a nice stove, but anyway after talking to the guy awhile, realizing he knows a lot of the people we do, was a Christian too, he handed our money back. Then being a rigger insisted we "clean up his place" and gave us all kinds of scrap steel, rigging straps, and Katie an antique trunk. He was more than generous for sure, and we thanked him profusely! But one of the things it needed was its legs, two of the 4 had broken off. But I live near Bryant Stove Works which has 100 years of stove parts in their trailers and back shops, so we went to see them. My grandfather worked there for 30 years so I know the people well. The 87 year old proprietor looks at us and say, "oh that leg, that must be off a Woods and Bishop Pot Bellied stove, my son-in-law will help you see if we got it", and into this tractor trailer we go; the whole thing loaded with thousands of legs for stoves. Some were singles, some were twins, and some were all four. I am overwhelmed, but Katie finds (2) matching legs in about 3 minutes time. The guy is shocked saying it was the fastest he had ever seen anyone match legs. While we were there we ended up buying a really nice Crawford 1917 gas stove there for our 1930's style kitchen. Katie always wanted a wood/coal kitchen stove but there was no place to put it, and a kitchen stove in a livingroom would look rather silly. So we went with this really nice gas stove and slipped it in where her kitchen range used to be. We will not use the oven on it, but the 4 burner grill works awesome (and looks good too). I did some welding on the ole Number 4 Woods and Bishop Pot bellied stove, was able to line the fire box with firebrick as I dislike how coal will make the outside glow without them. A little cast iron welding on two brackets for the mitten rail made them like new again, and of course did some painting and added the two legs that we found and were broken off. But overall we are happy with how our day of stove hunting ended up. Katie donned some 1930's clothing she had kicking around and we took some photos. I think it lends an over all 1930's look to the home.
Both of those stoves are really cool! Nice find and I am glad that guy gave you such a good deal, those are the best.
Maybe, definitely gives a new (and better meaning I might quickly add) to the term HotWife! Interesting turn of events; today as we were walking through the parking lot of Walmart we hear someone say "hey", and look over and it was the people that gae us the stove. We were in a town 40 miles away from where they live, but had a great chat with them! That was quite the coincidence.
