Does your door handle tighten up the hotter your stove gets?

[PA. Woodsman]

I have a 1993 Dovre Aurora stove, great stove all these years, the only thing with it is the door handle tightens up as the stove gets real hot which I'm sure is normal with stoves. The way this one is set up is the handle closes (glides closed) on a bushing that is supposed to spin on a bolt, and I always give the bushing a little spin every time I open it so that it wears more evenly and at times take the bolt off and flip the bushing around, almost like rotating a tire so it wears more evenly. The handle part that closes on the bushing looks like if you stuck your index finger in the air and then curled it back so you are pointing at yourself, and I had spent many hours adjusting it so it was not too tight and not too loose but you know how hard it is to make adjustments on doors, you adjust it one way and that changes another way etc. I took a look at it and it seems to be wearing evenly but there looks like a line is being etched into the bushing, doesn't look like a groove just a line, but as we all know as things get hotter they expand so the handle seems to slide a bit more over the bushing rather than spin it closed, but I am NOT going to start making adjustments, I'll just take it off, put some graphite inside the bushing and "rotate" it and we should be fine. I also bought about 6 spare bushings years ago when Dovre was bought out just in case.

Does your stove handle also tighten up when the stove is really chugging at higher temps?

 

[Rickb]

Mine is loser as the stove gets warmer.

 

[Rangerbait]

Mine is loser as the stove gets warmer.

Mine’s looser when burning hot as well.

 

[Highbeam]

My nc30 gets looser as it gets hotter. The bk doesn’t have a tapered latch so it is just fully latched.

 

[weatherguy]

Mine gets real tight when the stove gets hot, I figured it was expanding due to heat and made everyhing harder to move.

 

[PA. Woodsman]

Well I put my mind to it and I believe that I figured out WHY the latch was getting tighter and making an awful metal sound when opening and closing it when it was hot! I thought maybe I needed to put some graphite on the bolt that holds the inner sleeve and bushing, I have done that before and it helps, but tonight it got worse after that, the handle kept wanting to pop open a bit! This is the setup, the round bushing looks like a tire, the inner sleeve is like the wheel that goes on the bolt which is like the axle, the bushing with the inner sleeve in it is supposed to spin and the handle closes down on it, but it wasn't spinning, when I closed down it just rubbed until it closed. I put graphite on the axle and wheel, the tire spun great but the handle kept wanting to open so I took it apart, got a damp paper towel and wiped everything down, dried it and put it back on, and for some reason it seemed fine again, don't know exactly why, maybe just cleaning that off helped, but it closed just fine. I had become in the habit of spinning the bushing everytime before I closed the door so it would wear more evenly, and after I started a fire tonight I thought "what should I spin it with?" as I was using a paper towel as I still had some graphite on my fingers, then I thought "I'll use the index finger on the stove glove" and that's when it hit me, the glove which is years old got so slick and black from years of handling wood and at times moving pieces of wood on the ashes when hot it must have been rubbing that slick shiny residue on the bushing which also got on the latch handle, built up over time so the handle just glided on the bushing without letting it spin, it just rubbed it closed I did also wet clean the handle and noticed black residue but didn't put two and two together until then, and to make a long story even more unbearable it closes GREAT now, real smooth again; I only had a short fire in it since it was getting late but it worked fine, tomorrow night I'll crank it up and see how it responds but I'm sure we are in business now! I guess cleaning those parts will have to be part of the yearly things I do before I fire the old guy up!