Crown No7

The wood stove restoration bug is back under my skin. This time it is a Crown No7. The stove is mostly cast iron so ordinarily it would be easy to restore. This one has a couple of big cracks through the cast iron though. The previous, or previous, previous owner has tried to weld it, obviously with ordinary welding gear.

I use cast iron welding rods which are very expensive when compared to ordinary welding rods, but when used in conjunction with a fire they produce a very good join. Cast iron usually cracks as it cools so keeping it hot during and after welding is important. I lit a fire in one of my other stoves and used the fire to heat up the panel.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to recover the old welds so I cut them out and over the next day or two I will re-weld in patches from old bits of cast iron I have lying around.

It makes an easy project a little bit harder.