Restoration project

Chris, is that one a top loader too? The reason I ask is while overseas, my friends and I would visit a small seafood restaurant in a back alley. He had a small potbelly stove in the dining area. My friends and I would gather small handfuls of broomstick size branches and bring them with us. As we waited for our food he let us drop our wood in through the top door. It was like a 4" round door you could swing to the side to drop in the wood. His was far from ornate as that one. More utilitarian than anything.

BadDad thats just beautiful. I've seen a few of your restoration projects that you've posted here on DFS and I respect and admire the love, dedication and attention to detail that you bring to every one of these projects. You have rejuvenated a venerable old stove here that some (your boss) would have allowed to continue to deteriorate. We need more people like you that not only see the beauty in these old artifacts but are willing to put in the elbow grease to bring them back to their original (or better) beauty. Looking at that old stove its heartwarming to see the detail and the ornamentation that went into what was just a functional piece of hardware - a heater. Today's constant drive to profit and the related "globalization" of manufacturing has led at best to tools that "may be ugly but do the job" and at worst to "it may be ugly and not do the job but its cheap and the margins are great" situations so its really nice to see things like this to remind us of the way things were. Thank you.

I seriously doubt it. It was a "volunteer" job, meaning the boss was gonna display it all rusty and I basically had to beg to be allowed to spend that kind of time on it. He wasn't having it at first, despite being THRILLED with the results...

Probably the only real benefit is that the next time I say, "Can I please clean that up before we display it?" He will likely give the go ahead without hesitation...

That and I get to take credit every time someone asks about it...

Good luck with future projects, then.