Henry Rifle Forums

Been burning wood in this old. Coalbrookdale Darby coal stove since 1985. Finally replaced shake bars with rebar and added ember retainer mesh on top of rebar. Difference is amazing. Increased cleanout to once every
24 hours and increased burn time and effective heat output to ten hours. As this stove is 550 lbs, I was not looking forward to replacing. I should have bought the wood burning grates years ago when they were available.

That stove looks serious for sure. Kind of a cool lookin old stove.

It is rated for 55000 btu's at full tilt. We don't run it that hot. We also do not run it if the outside temp is above 40 degrees. The company is no longer around. It was built in England in the oldest cast iron foundry in the world (circa 1560). You can still get selected parts for them.
Most of the parts come from England. I tried burning coal twice, years ago. Drafts are too critical, my 12x12 flue in old original house were too big, so we switched to wood.

for many years I ran a secondary chimney cleaning business .... over time, I've seen and serviced hundreds of wood stoves .... yours is a fine one .... one well worth maintaining

The original finish has not been touched. Need to redo. Do you have any recomendations? I was hoping for something that doesn't smell or smoke too bad. Probably wishful thinking on my part.

Cool stove or should I say hot!

PJM wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 12, 2020 11:20 am

The original finish has not been touched. Need to redo. Do you have any recomendations? I was hoping for something that doesn't smell or smoke too bad. Probably wishful thinking on my part.

I was told by one manufacture of wood stoves that their finishing process gets down into the pores of the metal .... don't know if that is true or not but have no reason to doubt it .... I never found an aftermarket product that would last under the intense heat that can be generated by a good wood stove .... with double wall stoves designed so that air from a fan would carry out some of that heat ... even with them, I didn't find a process I could apply with confidence .... sadly, the more efficient the stove the stronger the hard creosote buildup in the chimney and the more difficult it can be to remove

Thanks for info. You are correct. Crusty creosote is better than the sticky oily type. Chimney fires can be nasty and reach 2000 degrees. Enough to turn mortar to dust. Clean ours 2× a year at the beginning of burning and again midway about 3 months later.The Good news is we can do it from the cellar with rods and brushes. Still a pain but don't do ladders anymore.