Vintage stove rebuild

[bertvorgon]

Some of you might find this interesting...

I have a few old camp stoves and back packers stoves in my collection, which I use to this day. A few months ago a friend gave me this vintage OPTIMUS #45 stove, which needed some TLC and some fixing. This is the same model of stove that Hillary took to Everest and Nansen took to the North Pole, on their expeditions. It runs on kerosene and is started by some alcohol in the "spirit cup", the small dished ring at the base of the burner. The alcohol creates enough heat to start the kerosene to vaporize, and you then light the kerosene in the burner, just as the alcohol burns out.

I had to order a gasket set from England, as there is a fellow there who caters to the world of stove collectors. A whole set of gaskets and a new pump leather cost me 23.00 CDN to my door. I also had bent up some new legs out of stainless, then ground them to fit for the pot holder.

The gaskets arrived today and I just finished firing the stove up, where it ran perfectly the first go round. The burner burns nice an blue, always a good sign with old stoves. Amazing thing is that is virtually odorless, so I see why they went world wide on expeditions, trekking and used in household cooking. I'm going to take it camping this summer and use it with my old Coleman 3 burner stove from the 60's.

[bertvorgon]

And the final test in darkness, to check the flame.

[gooned]

Neat stove Keith, old world craftsmanship.
Mike has been busy with a similar endeavor this year - Coleman Lanterns...about 20 of them

[bertvorgon]

This past weekend I was camping up in Manning park again and my mission was to use all three of my vintage stoves in real world use.
The old Coleman 3 burner was a true classic from the late 60's, being a real camp stove for cooking for a group of people.. It was in good shape when I got it, so it needed very little TLC. Main issues can be the Non-return valve in the pump, but this one was ok.
It fired right up to boil my first pot of coffee, it's main burner throws out some serious BTU's.

The Optimus stove from the 30's take a bit of a procedure to get going, requiring the "spirit cup" to be filled with alcohol, letting the burn almost out, to pre-heat the vaporization tubes, then closing off the pressure bleed screw, then lighting the main burner. First try away it went, the new gaskets doing their job with no leaks. It boiled a kettle of water in 15 minutes.

My old classic 2 burner, which I bought new in 1972 just keeps on trucking, being my workhorse for 43 years now. It had a major fire one year, due to inattention on my part ( kid distraction ). I took it all apart and had it powder coated in almost the same Coleman green. I have only changed out one generator tube in all these years at had to use some muffler cement on the mixing tube, to fix a small hole.

In the back ground is my vintage 1971 Boler Fiberglass trailer.

[510Freak]

Very cool Keith.
I have a few older Colemans myself(about 6 of them actually)

[bertvorgon]

http://www.colemancollectorsforum.com/

Have you ever checked out this site? I found it interesting that there was a Canadian Coleman Company and the American one. American collectors love our stoves and vice versa, as they tended to not really cross the border. MY stoves are CDN made.

[510Freak]

Have too Keith,Very informative on stuff there