“I’m about to move house… Wanna come over and help knock my bed apart?”
6 Likes
1 Like
I used to live in a house equipped with one of these:
The only temperature settings on the oven were low/medium/high. IIRC, we mostly used it for melting plastic army men while we were tripping.
7 Likes
Huh. I guess I must have a fairly old stove, then, although I wouldn’t have thought it was more than 10 years old.
I have the same setup as @Donald_Petersen – push and move the dials for LITE, continue moving through HI and LO. But with mine, if I just move to the middle without it lighting, I can still hear and smell gas coming out.
Indeed, I just went and tested. I moved the dial to the middle without sparking, and then lit a match near it. The burner caught.
Am I due for a new stove?
Does this mean my stove may be over 200 years old? I didn’t even know Maytag existed back then…
Edit: I see you say “in under a minute.” Ok, I haven’t tested leaving the dial turned for over a minute to see if gas keeps spewing out. I have a baby in the room with me…
1 Like
On mine, you just have to push to get past OFF. Once you’re past it, you just twist, with no pressing to get it to LITE or anything.
1 Like
Wow, that’s a beauty. I’m amazed it doesn’t have a pilot light, though - I’d expect that black round thing in the front to be the pilot ignition hole.
Well, apparently my experiences have led me astray, given the number of folks here who have seen stoves that don’t have FSD/FFDs. @Donald_Petersen, I apologize for the misinformation - which I wish was not misinformation, since the system I described earlier is utterly reliable and has been commonplace for approximately a hundred years… I’ve fixed gas appliances of the same era as @jakeline’s stove that had them, and I’ve never seen a legal indoor gas stove that didn’t have one. The 1959 gas stove I just replaced for my mother had one.
3 Likes
It certainly makes sense for stove burners to have such things, especially since igniter-equipped stoves, unlike pilot-equipped ones, require electricity, and how hard could it be to include a normally-closed gas valve that only opens when the flame is lit or the igniter is firing?
As it is, it’s certainly possible for the stove knob to be accidentally turned on (or left on in the event of momentary service interruption), and then it’s just the gas smell to let you know what’s happening. Certainly an argument to always make sure the knobs are off, and to never leave the stove unattended when it’s on.
I wonder how often these things cause fires and/or explosions?
2 Likes
I know, right? All of the cook time/temp suggestions are pretty hilarious and a nice snapshot of what was fashionable to cook at the time, like merengue shells 7 different types of cookies.
1 Like
That’s a fingerhole for pulling up the top so you can access the burners directly. There is a pilot, but no matter what we do, it runs too high and makes a really hot spot on the stove. Plus, it doesn’t actually light the burners most of the time, so we just turned off the gas to it. The cooktop burners still work just fine.
On the other hand, the oven does NOT have a pilot and instead has a hole for you to insert a match. Funnily enough, I tried lighting it with a lighter, and it doesn’t work nearly as well as a match, for some odd reason. It took me a little bit to get used to, but besides being small, it’s a surprisingly good and accurate oven.
1 Like
Why do they suggest you cook drums?
Also, I can’t quite read the image. Does it really say “fish”, or does it say fish without the “grocer’s quotes”?
1 Like
Thinking on this, I wonder if the two symptoms are related. If there’s a thermocouple controlled pilot valve (FSD) and the valve pin is eroded, the pilot would be under lower pressure, and would not send the flame and heat to the exact places the designer intended - giving you a hot spot and burner ignition failures.
I’ll note in passing that some old stoves do have a normal “hot spot” above the pilot, though it’s not supposed to get hot enough to burn you. In Northern latitudes one puts a container of water on that to humidify the house ;).
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
