2022 fall foliage

some local fall foliage

HOME ON THE RANGE

The New

possibly will be doing some blogging about this range soon.

The Old reblogged

You take it for granted, A twist of the knob and the flame or heat appears. You can do a lot of cooking outdoors on a grill during good weather, but when it comes to baking, unless you have a fully equipped out door kitchen, and agreeable weather, your kitchen range is indispensable. “They don’t build ’em like they used to” is what I would say about our stove.

The Ol’ Magee Range, you may have seen pictures of this range in The Metro Blog in a little less than clean condition, but it’s an actual working appliance used on a daily basis.

Many years ago I happened to work at a location where a part of my employ was to service appliances. Over the years the decision was to eliminate the gas ranges and I was in a position to purchase one of the ranges for a real good price. Of course I look back and wish I would have bought more but didn’t have the storage space for them. So I have been cooking on the range for over 30 years. It gets moderate to heavy use and from time to time I pull it part to clean it. Not the sharpest looking appliance but none the less functional. You won’t find too much if any plastic on this piece of equipment. Very reliable and well built, the only real maintenance required is that the oven door hinges have to be cleaned and lubricated more or less annually. Also the burner valves can be disassembled and greased every few years. Original harvest gold enamel paint which gets a over coat of silver paint from time to time on the door and lower panel.
An old time feature is the use of standing pilots, today considered and energy waster, but provides a slight heat to the oven good for drying and proofing of dough if necessary. One of the best features is a separate broiler burner in the oven. No bother to switch from the oven to a lower broiler like old school ranges. One of the other options that was offered on this model was the “Burner with a Brain” a thermostatically controlled burner, now that would be real handy for mashing grains for beer! Another feature offered was a rotisserie motor mounted in the rear wall of the oven and with a special rack and spit with the use with the broiler burner allowed spit rotisserie use. Unfortunately mine has neither option. The clock module in the console has been upgraded from the original triple analog as pictured on the installation guide.

all cleaned up, the burners have “simmer centers”. FYI burners are rated at 12000 BTUs for you techie foodies.

under the hood, looking into the belly of the beast.

2015 Update:

A PID  controller  was added to control the oven temp. The original thermostat’s thermocouple broke off. A PID controller wired to a Red Hat valve was installed the the gas line (  3/8″ size) from the thermostat output to the oven valve. A bit of fine tuning and finish work is needed. The controller will be mounted in a enclosure.

PID wiring

valve install , needs sound/ heat shielding insulation, thermocouple wires will be routed.

documents etc.

so far so good …..