Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Fire Brick in the Bottom of the Oven

For the most recent Readers' Cookstoves post about Jessie's stove in Northern New England, she sent a picture of the oven of her Oval with fire brick lying on the floor.  She said that the stove's previous owner had put the fire brick there to help with heat distribution.

Reader Jessie's oven with fire brick in the bottom.
Longtime blog reader and cookstove friend Gary from Pennsylvania read the post.  He and I have corresponded via e-mail the past three years, and one of the things we have talked about was his difficulty in getting his antique Ideal Sunshine's oven up to good baking temperatures.


Gary's Ideal Sunshine cookstove.
 
 Well, Gary e-mailed me yesterday with this to say:

"I saw your post about Jessie’s firebrick oven tip and bought 8 firebricks for $16.   Wow, what a difference that made.  My oven shot up to 400 degrees even without getting the fire real hot.  Thanks to you and Jesse for posting the article and the tip."

Gary's new fire brick on the bottom of his Ideal Sunshine's oven.

I'm very happy for Gary because now he'll be able to bake much more easily in his cookstove, and I have always felt that baking in a wood cookstove is the most rewarding experience.  I don't know why the fire brick helped his oven reach baking temperature more easily, but I'm glad it works.

I feel very honored to have played a small part in helping a reader get the most out of his woodburning cookstove.  It's why I operate this blog. 

5 comments:

  1. We have fire bricks in our oven, too - we heat with a 1924 Charter Oak cook stove that belonged to my husband's grandparents. The bricks help it hold heat longer for sure.

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  2. I might have to experiment with that. Thanks for the tip!

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  3. We just got a brand new wood cooker given to us, it is a "amiga". It is from chile, i had a client that bought it and was scared to put it in her house as a friend told her it was unsafe. We have been trying to figure it out and for some reason never even thought of fire bricks. We have a large chunk of marble on tom as a heat sink as the fire box is pretty small and we use it to heat our cabin. I am off to the hardware store in the morning to buy some bricks. Thanks for the tip and glad i found this blog.

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  4. Great idea! I am going to try this!

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  5. Jim, would you be interested in someone sponsoring this blog? We sell cook stoves and could use advertising.

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