Tool for a coal stove

[slanwar]

You guys have any idea what they used to mess around with this stove? Like moving the coal, open the door without getting burn, etc.

 

 

[Kozzy]

Maybe I'm missing your point but typically you'd have a coal shovel...that is a small shovel which is quite narrow;  A coal bucket which could be any bucket but usually had a bit of a specific shape;  Clinker tongs which come in a variety of shapes; possibly a fire rake.  Those all come up if you do an image search on the items..especially adding :antique" or vintage" to see the older versions.

For the most part, people had either leather gloves handy when monkeying with their coal heater (because it was so dirty a job anyway) or at least the old asbestos-core hot pad nearby to open and adjust things.

One story that I've heard confirmed independently from several old timers was regarding tending the larger basement coal furnaces as a kid:  They all said that after pulling the hot clinkers, that bucket was just too tempting to pass on so they tried taking a leak on the clinker to cool it off...always only once  because the smell of it flashing off basically told everyone in the house what you tried.

I've been too cheap to get the chimney kit yet but I was given a large coal stove in great condition which came out of a local grange hall.  Probably 19-teens vintage.  It's going in my shop when I decide to plonk the cash down on the extras...that stuff adds up fast.

[slanwar]

I have the bucket and the shovel but I thought maybe they had anything else that would help moving the coals and open the door, I don’t think they used leather gloves 100 years ago to open the door , anyway this was the best thing I bought years ago, I use wood to start then 1 bucket of coal and lasts the entire day with my shop getting 70’s F.

Actually I was trying to get an excuse to forge something.

[Kozzy]

Well, forge yourself some clinker tongs.  If you do a search, there are some really weird and possibly challenging variations that might be fun to make.

[ThomasPowers]

Some coal stoves/furnaces used shaker grates and there was a handle to "shake out the fire" before adding fresh fuel.  And of course the old large coal fed boilers always seemed to have a long rod with a ring on one end and a spike at 90 deg at the other end for picking clinker off the grates a long way back.  I have a couple in my scrap pile.

I'll try to check my Sears Roebuck catalogs from 100+ years ago to see if they list gloves to go with their coal stoves.

[slanwar]

2 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

Some coal stoves/furnaces used shaker grates and there was a handle to "shake out the fire" before adding fresh fuel.  And of course the old large coal fed boilers always seemed to have a long rod with a ring on one end and a spike at 90 deg at the other end for picking clinker off the grates a long way back.  I have a couple in my scrap pile.

I'll try to check my Sears Roebuck catalogs from 100+ years ago to see if they list gloves to go with their coal stoves. 

This stove has the shaker with the handle and I use only when I have the tube inside (left on the picture), I would fill the tube with coal and use the handle to turn the shaker around, that's an overkill for my shop and I used only a few times when the temperatures were really low. I though they may had some special tool for that kind of stove because the top can be used as a stove and we need to remove the top which is hot and then is a plate where I would think they would put the pots on top.

[ThomasPowers]

I did a quick glance through the 1897, 1905 and 1908 Sears Roebuck catalogs last night and didn't find any special gloves or tools associated with their cooking and heating wood and coal stoves. I also checked the index under "gloves".

My wife does use leather gloves when working with our woodstove that is our backup heat source when the main Thermonuclear heater goes past the horizon.

[Bud in PA]

I heat my house with a coal furnace, I b bought it new . It  has 2 blowers and 2 holes in the top sheet metal so you can hook up your hot air system. Both doors have handles attached, and it came with a handle for the shaker grate. I have a 4 ft. 5/16 dia. rod with a piece of flat 1/4 steel welded on the end . This rod looks like a T ,I also keep a pair of welding gloves to handle it.  

[Frosty]

Slanwar: You give the shaker grate a couple turns before opening the door to stoke it. This shakes the ash and clinker down so it's not stacked against the door. 

I REALLY wish our Jotul wood stove had a shaker grate, it'd make prepping the fire for more wood sooooo  much easier and the process less smoky.  I love our wood stove, saves on fuel oil AND is that oh so nice IR radiator. Nothing warms like radiant heat, direct to the bone warm. It's 5F. outside right now but the stove is rolling nicely.

Modern wood burners are darned high tech. This one is a 3 burn zone smokeless parlor stove. The only time any smoke leaves the stack is when you first light it, once it's warm the only thing you can see leaving the stack is by the way the heat diffracts light through it. It's fun to watch the different levels of burn going on through the window too. 

Frosty The Lucky.