Cooking on a Wood Stove

[LynnK]

I bought a 1908 Monarch Malleable Cookstove. Its awesome. The firebox is made for coal/wood. Could anyone tell me how to start this stove ; does the small hot fire in the morning and small hot fire at night also pertain to this kind of woodstove? Its totally iron with a layer of asbestos sandwiched in between iron. There is an adjustable vent on the pipe connected to the stove. Should I also have a damper in the stove pipe above the stove? This stove has no electrical parts, no converters or blowers! Thanks, Lynn

 

[warm in VT]

We have a stove similar to that at our hunting camp. It is our only source of heat and for cooking. It does a great job. Assuming your firebox is the same, you will only get those small hot fires. the firebox is so small it requires constant feeding to keep it going. Also, where it is designed for wood and coal you may need to put something over the grates to keep some of the ashes from falling through. We use an old license plate from a car and punch some holes through it. Without somethig all the ashes fall through the grates and you cant keep much heat going. There should be a damper on the stove that opens a door allowing heat to go straight out the chimney or to divert it through the oven. To start the stove you will want that damper open straight through the pipe and there should be a damper or slides to allow air through the side of the firebox to allow a draft. Once the fire is going good you can shut the draft to where you want it realizing the faster you have it burning the quicker you will be refilling it. at that point you can close the damper to circulate the heat throughout the stove. That is where we usually run ours unless cooking on the stovetop and wanting more heat there but once you get that amount of cast iron heated it radiates warmth for a long time.
Good luck and have fun with it.

 

[Jeff S]

My Aunt had one of these on here farm in upstate NY,was more of a novelty to us all though she was known to cook a turkey in the oven and I would often fry any small game I shot that day.

 

[jdemaris]

I guess I'm not sure exactly what you are asking. But, any stove ought to have a pipe damper for safety reasons. With any chimney, you need a damper to cut off air to it in case of a chimney fire.

We have three wood cook stoves in our house kitchen, along with a Rumsford wood-cooking fireplace and wood fired bake oven. All our wood cookstoves have a switch-over lever to use the oven. You start the fire with the oven turned off, and then, once the fire is hot, you switch over and the heat is diverted to the oven. Two of our stoves are cast-iron, and one is wrought-iron - and all three function the same.