Meet our new stove!

The old stove was kerosene, and probably built around the same time that man first ventured out in canoes from the shorelines of some primitive tribal land. Only two burners of the three worked, and then only one of the remaining two worked, and it was only a matter of time until the last one went away as well.

True, I could have hunted high and low looking for replacement parts, calling people in Akron, Ohio (or wherever), trying to find the one guy who has the one part I need. But it sucked as a stove, Charlotte and I both hated it, and we wanted to get rid of it. The details on why kerosene is so bad is probably understood to every reader of this blog, but essentially it stinks, cooks slow, smokes (generates soot in the cabin), and takes a trained professional to prime and use.

The stove I went with was the Seaward Princess 2 burner gimballed. The measurements looked close to my existing, and I've heard nothing but great reviews of this stove. Here's a link, although I got the 2 burner instead of the three.

So first I had to remove the old stove, which I did by myself, and I don't recommend you try that. It's heavy, sharp, and will trash your bright work on the way out. It's also filthy, which is a reason that after I removed the old stove, I scrubbed the crap out of the stainless firewall that it sits in. It took about an hour just to clean it out, and it was pretty gross. One nice thing about switching out the stove was that the previous owner had a fire onboard it seems. Nothing huge, but they used a dry chemical extinguisher (the correct thing to use), and it caused a really crazy amount of residue that was still falling out even when I threw the thing into the dumpster.

The new stove showed up via UPS, and the driver was nice enough to use his dolly to take the stove all the way down to my boat, where's it's pictured. I ripped the packing material away, and then took the old stove completely out.

Getting the new stove in was a challenge. I lucked out a bit on the gimball blocks, and the width was pretty much right on the money. But the height was off; the new stove was much taller than the old one, and the gimball mounts are higher on the body, so although it fit, it slammed into the firewall and couldn't swing free at all.

I had to call in some backup on this one, and Ryan showed up with his arsenal of wood working tools to help. We figured out that we needed to take the old blocks and carve a groove in them, so they'd fit over the moulding.

After we got the blocks grooved out properly, we dropped the stove in, and it didn't fit so well. So we took the mounts off, and re did it again. If you're planning on replacing a stove, understand right now that you'll probably be getting very comfortable with your gimball mounting blocks. However wide the stove is, there will be gimball posts that stick out a little wider, and your job will be to position some blocks with the exact height and width you need, in the exact position you need them. It's really not that complicated, but it's difficult conditions to work in, and the stove is heavy.

I ran the propane line as well, but I'll make another thread about that, since it's not entirely done yet, and I don't have a lot of good pictures yet.

I haven't filled up the fuel tank, but by all accounts, it should be working like a champ now. One of the nice things with propane is that there are only two ends to the hose run: one at the stove, and one at the tank. Barring those two being screwed up, everything else should be fine.

Comments

[Mark]

The new one is a bit lickety-split! :)

Well done! :)

Does this sound like I'm hunting for a dinner invitation? Well, ya gotta test it out! ;)

Mark

[Charlotte]

Well now Mark, are we neighbors? I'd invite you over if so!