Thursday, March 15, 2018

Latest Cookstove Acquisition: A Hayes-Custer


Okay.  I spend WAY too much time trolling about eBay and Craigslist looking at the wood/coal cookstoves that are for sale on those sites.  But I learn a lot, and sometimes I run across some real finds.

The woodburning range you see in the pictures below was advertised on Craigslist.  Very little was said in the description except that it needed to be moved ASAP as the owners were remodeling their basement, and the contact telephone number shared our area code, so I thought there was a chance that it was fairly near us.

I contacted the person who placed the ad.  The stove was fairly near, so I scheduled a time to go and investigate.




The house was built in the 1950s, and the stove has probably been in the basement from the beginning.  Kevin, the owner, lived in the house during part of his youth, and he remembered a particularly bad winter storm that put their electricity out for a period of about a week.  During that time, the stove was put back into service, but even though it was connected to a chimney until just before the basement remodel began, it had not been used since then.  

Since the stove had spent all of this time in a dry basement, it was in remarkable shape.  After a thorough examination, the most major problem I could find was that the lid-lifter notch in the "T" over the firebox had rusted, burned, or worn through; and one of the cast iron tabs which cover the holes where water pipes would pass through the wall of the firebox was broken, but everything else was in great shape.

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The other picture of the Hayes-Custer cookstove  from the Craigslist ad.


You can see from the picture above, that there is no brand identification on the front of the stove, and even the oven thermometer merely indicated that the stove was American.  Furthermore, the design of the stove didn't immediately give away its brand either.  Kalamazoo ranges, for example, never had a brand insignia visible on the front of the stove either, but their familiar appearance gave away their identity at first glance.  It wasn't until I opened the left door that I saw on the interior cast iron firebox door the words "Hayes-Custer, Bloomington."  I'd never heard of the Hayes-Custer Stove Company, and it is rare that I run across a brand of stove that I'm unfamiliar with!  More on the Hayes-Custer Company will be coming in a later post.

Kevin said that he'd had other people who were interested in the stove, but no one wanted to tackle the project of getting the stove up out of the basement.

"That's why I'm giving it away," he added.

Wow!  The price was right!

I wasn't too excited about getting it removed from the basement either, but my dad and I had hauled a Kenmore cookstove out of a neighbor's basement when I was in high school, so I had an idea about how it could be done.  The price tag caused me to be suddenly motivated, too!

I knew that my family members wouldn't be too excited about helping to haul a stove out of a basement, but my advantage is that I know some really strong high school boys, and the stove was located much closer to them than my relatives.  I told Kevin that I would see what I could do about lining up a removal crew and get back to him.

Well, Kevin was anxious to get the stove out of his basement.  He made sure that the other most interested party was not coming for the stove, and then he called me back on the same day that I had convinced a junior boy to round up some of his friends to help me out.

On Monday of this week, I returned to Kevin's and disassembled the stove.  Everything came apart easily except the bolts that held the two shelf brackets to the stovetop.  In my experience, these bolts are often problematic for three reasons: a) access to them is often difficult because you can't get a straight shot at them from the top, b) food splatters have often landed on them, making them sticky, and c) they have been exposed to a lot of expansion and contraction due to temperature fluctuation.  We ended up having to sacrifice those two bolts, which had to be done quite carefully so as not to damage anything else.

Then, Tuesday evening the high school boys came, and we carried the stove up the stairs, out of the house, and into the pickup.  The main body of the stove was heavy, but not too bad really, and everything traveled very easily.


The disassembled stove in the back of the pickup in our driveway.

So now the question Nancy asks is what I will do with this stove.  It's a good question, too.

This stove is in better condition than the green and cream Riverside Bakewell out in our summer kitchen, especially since its oven door hinge broke.

The broken oven hinge on the Riverside Bakewell.


Thus, at this moment, I'm considering selling the Riverside Bakewell and using this stove in its place.  The only hang-up is that the Riverside has a warming oven, and the Hayes-Custer only has a high shelf.  Other than that, the two stoves are very similar.  Oven size, firebox size, and reservoir capacity are nearly identical.  Both stovetops have just two eyes over the firebox, but one thing that I consider an advantage about the Hayes-Custer is that the rest of the stovetop consists of just one French plate to the right of the firebox rather than two like the Riverside has.  This is an advantage because the joint between the two plates on the Riverside is not perfectly even, causing larger kettles to not heat as evenly as they might.

Even so, the warming oven is a big plus.

What do any of you readers think you'd do?  Anyone interested in purchasing a green and cream Riverside Bakewell?

4 comments:

  1. Let's pray that the electricity in Kevin's house doesn't go out for a week now that the backup heat and cooking implement has been removed. Kudos to you for the hard work in getting that thing moved. You could be like sewing machine collectors I've read about, me included, who keep items just for the sake of having them rather than having to get rid of them.

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    1. I said that very same thing to Kevin! Of course, he's not a bit worried, but I felt like I was taking away his life insurance policy.

      I'd love to have a cookstove collection, but I love my wife more than the stoves, and I'm afraid that too many more stoves and I may not get to have her around anymore. . .

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  2. Jim,

    I have an old warming oven that might work for you. It's 36" wide. The color COULD be close, but photos and my ability to discern colors may be fooling me.

    If that sounds interesting, let me know in a comment how to contact you more directly.

    All that notwithstanding, congratulations on your find! Great price!

    Brett

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    1. Brett,

      Feel free to e-mail me at rossnj8@msn.com

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