OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Collectors Corner Collectables AGA Cooker: Has anyone had experience in these?

I'm now well into the easy part of restoration on this old timer(the pulling apart).

Information on AGA cookers is very difficult to come by. Some conspiracy theories include limited information from the company in order to keep prices high and second hand units out of the market. Certainly I got a very negative reply from the company when I asked for assistance.

No longer a pommie company, AGA has been bought by the Americans apparently, but information was never prozletised by the company anyway. Detailed information on Youtube for example, is soon taken down (for various reasons).

A new 4 oven cooker will set you back $39K or better in toady's money.

I've been able to approximate the date of this particular piece to between 1941 and 1945 and she probably came to Australia around 1950 and settled on a station in NSW. I was able to obtain ownership when foreign interests purchased the land and were not interested in what was, in effect, our history.

If anyone is interested, I now have a # of photos that give some detail in how these things work. I hope to have this going again for 2017 Christmas dinner.

John A

Hello John

A beautiful stove - indeed!

http://archival-classic.sl.nsw.gov.au/item/itemLarge.aspx?itemID=71950

Here's a quick Trove search list I prepared earlier:
http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/result?q=aga+stoves&l-category=Advertising



Hope this helps.
----------------------
Jack

G'day John A,

Interesting project there! Still very much the Rolls-Royce of combustion stoves, the AGA's. At least these days with the interwebs, it's not hard to find some good info on DIY restorations.

The first bit of info you come across on these, is that they were always supplied 'CKD', and 'erected' on site in the customer's kitchen. And it's not really recommended to transport them assembled, as it's all too easy to do serious damage.

This UK mob have some really detailed rundowns, starting with determining what model you have; https://www.blakeandbull.co.uk/pages/aga-basics-the-blake-bull-guide

And this bloke has blogged his resto; https://damnthematrix.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/the-aga-saga/

On something like this, even more than on old OPE machines, getting the fasteners out is usually the most difficult part of dismantling. Helps a lot to have really good penetrating lubricant on hand, and lots of patience.

As they use things like very large slotted head screws, it's very helpful if you can fabricate your own tools for these jobs.

A four oven model like that one, would have been the size for a big station or hotel kitchen. One of these came out of the hotel at Woods Point, Vic ~10 years ago now, when the kitchen had its first major upgrade since the 1940's! It's now a display item in the restored former bakery across the road from the pub.

What fuel is yours set up for? A lot of these that were built for coke firing got converted to heating oil in the 1970's, when 'gas coke' became unavailable due to the old gasworks plants closing, as Natural Gas came in.

There was a 2-oven AGA with this setup in an old homestead share house I lived in out of Benambra, Vic in the early 1990's, but it had fallen into disuse. We managed OK with a Vulcan plug-in 'stovette', electric frying pans, and after I moved in, a microwave.

Probably a good idea to beware of items like old 'rope style' heatproof seals on it too [particularly on the lids/doors], as there is definite potential for these to contain chrysotile [White] asbestos.

And for CyberJack,

The inventor of these stoves, Gustav Dalen, also invented several important items for lighthouse main lanterns, which made unmanned navigation lights and lighthouses possible!

He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1912 for one of them, the Sun Valve.

An article: http://www.lighthouses.org.au/lights/Bulletin/0612/restoring_artefacts.htm

He was also the inventor of the process still used today, which made it possible to store acetylene in cylinders under elevated pressure. This basically consists of dissolving the gas in liquid acetone held in a porous solid matrix. So a very big influence on the development of oxy-acetylene welding, and even more importantly, flame cutting.

As an example, prior to flame cutting, the portholes in thick armour plate for warships had to be chipped out by hand with cold chisels, with only a slight preheat from blowtorches to aid the process.
Edit: To illustrate how big an improvement this was, when the US Navy's Brooklyn yard changed to flame cutting around 1907, a single 14" porthole in 3" armour plate could be cut in under 30 minutes. This was a job that had taken a seven-man team [5 chippers, 2 kero blowtorch operators] 10 days or more!

Hullo Gadge & Jack,

The story of Gustav D is more than interesting. He must have been one of the world's true geniuses. Thanks for the links, Mathew Blake has been most helpful over the period of my ownership and is in almost constant contact.

The reason for the advice on care in moving these things, particularly the 4 oven cookers is that the RH ovens and the furnace are joined, with the furnace sitting on a couple of leveling "feet" which are easily dislodged, causing the furnace and ovens to separate and the cast to crack & break off. I can see that this sort of thing could be construed as major, but in reality its simply a bit more work to remove and weld. We're lucky these days with the technology that is at hand.

The 4 oven models can easily have their "back broken" when the LH side becomes detached from the right while moving. You can see the join down the side of the left ovens. The chassis is also in 2 pieces and this is the weak point. Gadge the 2 oven that you had is all but the same except for this LH addition.

My cooker is a model E standard and is a solid fuel type ie. coke or coal or hard wood. The problem I discovered is that ( I think) she had burned soft woods and the air breather was chocked & completely blocked, however I have been able to manufacture a new exhaust pipe so that problem has been overcome (I hope). She must have been a bu##@r to light and keep going because she wouldn't have been able to breathe.

Anyway, thanks for your interest and the helpful comments. While in the midst of restorations, times can be frustrating and lonely & its good to share.

The photos below show the blocked & broken exhaust breather pipe, & you can see where the bolts or leveling legs should be at the side of the furnace & this has caused a separation of furnace & ovens. Thankfully no big deal, but it does require some additional welding, which is the current stage of proceedings.

John A

It'll be an easy job to replace that insulation with vermiculite, compared to digging the old Kieselguhr [aka diatomaceous earth] stuff out!

Some of the old solid fuel AGA's weren't suitable for use with wood, as the coke/anthracite furnaces were smaller than the wood-fired ones. The Brits may not be aware of that. Hence the oil conversions here.

The AGA in the Benambra homestead didn't have a wetback, so it didn't need to be run for hot water.

That was heated by the old wood-fired cast iron 'donkey boiler', which used very little wood.
One of these:




A half hour burn would have the water in the main tank boiling. It was a gravity feed system, with thermosyphon circulation through the boiler.

There's a build manual for the pre-1972 models on the Oz AGA distributor's site here, http://agaaustralia.com.au/aga-manuals/
Very useful, especially as it documents the exact locations where asbestos was used in these stoves.

Hello John & GM Gadge

This has been a fascinating read.
Many thanks for the great images - they help explain how these beasts
worked.

I have written about how the lawnmower contributed to the great outdoors -
by making many sports possible and popular ... and the recreation through
public spaces and parklands. The great outdoors.

But food and fire bring aesthetics to the great indoors.
I have fond memories of my grandparents' wood stove, and my uncle's
coke(?) powered job. The food always tasted ... 'different'... better.
I guess things do go better with coke ...

Many thanks to you both for your vast knowledge and links.
I'm sure members will benefit.

---------------
Jack

How I remember the old chip heater. The mornings were always freezing of course and the wait for the hot water to arrive was made worse by the chill. I always felt sorry for the cows during those winter months as our hands must have felt like ice blocks on their nether regions. The chip heater was supposed to be lit prior to milking, but Murphy's law often prevailed. Thanks god the stove was always simmering away. I can still taste the burnt toast that hung off the long wire fork over the fire.

Gadge, I have had some in depth discussions with a friend who is a retired master plumber, about how to rig up hot water to this AGA, but I think the trouble to do so would outweigh any benefits - & you are completely correct, vermiculite is to be the insulating material with a ceramic blanket over the top and the sides that will be exposed in the rebuild. The diatomaceous earth has been added to the various gardens and back lawn (which has suffered somewhat in our summer heat) as it has been removed from the cooker. It's amazing how much moisture that stuff holds onto

John A

Well, that one I've pictured was most correctly termed a 'donkey boiler' or 'hot water donkey', back in its day. It is a 'recirculating water heater', driven by the 'thermosyphon principle', and operates at 'gravity feed' [i.e. around 3 metres water gauge] water pressure. A lot of people confuse the terminology, these days. See below for what a true 'chip heater' was.

That donkey at the Benambra homestead would take reasonable sized pieces of firewood, but was still very efficient in its wood consumption per volume of water heated. It was hooked up to a 40 gallon [~180L] hot water tank, which would easily stay hot overnight, after the donkey had been fired up the previous evening, even when the outside air temp got well below zero, by Oz standards [i.e. double figures below zero, Celsius].

The donkey and main tank were located in an enclosed rear veranda, so weren't fully exposed. This was intentional design - so that the water in the pipes wouldn't freeze, despite lagging.

I've also encountered a true chip heater when I was a kid, in a 19th Century miner's cottage in Wandiligong, Vic., where we used to stay with friends occasionally. The original owner must have been pretty successful in his gold mining, because the cottage was solid brick. We also visited the mine he operated, about a mile walk up the hill behind the house - but that's another story; it was very intact in the 1970's, almost as if he'd only knocked off a short time ago...

This is an actual 'chip heater', used to heat bath water;

Pic credit: Newcastle City Council's Collections, http://collections.ncc.nsw.gov.au/keemu/pages/nrm/Query.php

'Chip heater' because it needed to be run on small, fast-burning pieces of fuel. Chips, twigs, pine cones...
It was run by filling it up with water via the funnel visible in the pic [in the Wandiligong cottage, there was a tap connected to the house rainwater tanks positioned over the funnel], then lighting the fire. The heater is not pressurised at all.

When the water started to boil, it would spew out of the outlet spout a bit. Then you would run cold water into the funnel [which had a dip tube on it, that ran to the bottom of the heater tank] to displace the hot water out, via the outlet spout.
I used to love the 'choofing' sound that thing made; very like a steam locomotive!

Ah yes, the old open fire toast... Fond memories here, too. I grew up with a wood combustion stove in the kitchen, and an open fire in the lounge.
Yes; Kieselguhr is known for its absorbent properties. Alfred Nobel [another inventive Swede] used it to absorb nitroglycerine [NG] to create 'dynamite', patented 1867, the first safe-to-use NG-based explosive. It also sees a lot of use as a 'filter aid', to create a permeable filter cake, for materials that would normally block up filters for process liquids.

Vermiculite is way superior as an insulating material, and certainly a lot easier to handle.

Pity you aren't a bit closer; I have a couple of 25mmTx610mmW rolls of high-temp Fiberfrax ceramic fibre blanket here, that I won't need anywhere near all of...

The tyranny of distance.. however, we're always looking for an excuse to travel to Victoria.

I do appreciate the offer and would be more than happy to purchase your unwanted ceramic blanket as I shall need to lay that over the top of the AGA when it is finished, so if you're serious about passing them on, I am certainly interested.

John A

Gadge,

I meant to add to my last post that your mention of Benambra homestead brought memories of traveling to Omeo as a youngster, with my uncle who drove trucks for the Cudgewa Butter Co, near Walwa, which is where the family farm was located. I assume you were talking of that same Benambera, of the town near Omeo? It can certainly get cold in those mountains.

Now if I could just get my hands on one of those trucks...

John A

Yup, that's the one.

Benambra was the locality; the homestead property name was actually 'Mount Pleasant', after the biggest hill on it. Owned for several generations at that time, by the only Prendergast family in the district. It's about 6k out of the township, along the Limestone Road.

That area was pioneered by the Pendergasts, and there were still so many around, that they were often listed in the 'local phone number list' put out by the local community association, by nickname as well as real name!

I was working at the 'Benambra Mine JV' [Copper and later Zinc as well] as the Mine Chemist/Labrat, ~20k from the township, from 1992-1995. The processing plant site altitude was ~1100m [much higher than the township], so I learnt a lot about working in Alpine conditions there. At first, before ore production started, I was driving my own vehicle daily from Omeo to a relocatable temporary office in Benambra township. Got used to having to scrape hard frost off the windscreen in the mornings, even in August... Edit: once I moved out to the homestead, in winter we'd check the outside thermometer, as we headed off to the mine in the mornings. -10 wasn't at all uncommon, and it got lower than that on quite a few occasions.

One night in August/September, there was a dump of snow that even covered the ground in Omeo. So it was a foot or so deep over McMillan's Gap, the high point on the Omeo-Benambra road. Luckily for me, my then vehicle was an FJ45 Landcruiser 4X4 trayback, and I had snow driving experience, so I locked the front hubs in, engaged H4, and soldiered on.

Met some Benambra locals in a normal car, who weren't carrying tyre chains, just on the other side and had to tell them that they'd have to return home, until the snow melted...

Well, I'm about 160k east of Melbourne...

And this stuff, while it was worth scrounging at the time [intended for use in an LPG-fired blacksmith forge, when I get a 'round tuit', and maybe a crucible capable 'metal melting furnace' too], isn't all that exy. List price ex GST for one of these 7.6m rolls is only around $85.

Still and all, if you should find your way across here at any time, I can spare a full roll, if you'd like it.