“Charcoal is a desirable fuel because it produces a hot, long-lasting, virtually smokeless fire.
Basic charcoal is produced by burning a carbon-rich material such as wood in a low-oxygen atmosphere. This process drives off the moisture and volatile gases that were present in the original fuel. The resulting charred material not only burns longer and more steadily than whole wood, but it is much lighter (one-fifth to one-third of its original weight).”

Because charcoal has less moisture and other chemcials this will reduce the amount of creosote buildup in your chimney. Creosote forms from building smaller fires or burning moisture laden wood.
You’ll want to make sure that your stove is “air tight” so when you adjust the damper to control the amount of air coming into the stove it will slow down the rate of burn of the charcol.

You may contact me direct about Glascock Stoves or anyone can. The foundry shut down operation in the mid 1960s in Greensboro, NC. They contiuned to sale parts until the late 1970s. The last piece of property owned by the company was sold in 2004. As mentioned earlier on this site, this is part of my family and I’ve been collecting for years, plus have some parts for sale.

Nollie Neill, Jr.
Glascock Stove Historian / Collector
glascockstove@hotmail.com
http://www.glascockstove.com (still under construction)

Farmlady (Oct. 20, 07) stated above “My little “Victor Junior” wood cookstove was right there”

My Great, Great Grandfather founded Glascock foundries in 1873 in Greensboro NC, they would contiune to made wood & coal stoves, plus other cast iron items, until the mid 1960s. In the mid 1970s, J. M. Lancaster (Pomona Foundry) also of Greensboro NC, would lease the original patterns to the Victor Junior Range / Cook stove. During this period Lehman’s was a dealer for these Victor Junior Ranges / Cook stoves.

I love hearing from owners or previous owners of Glascock products. I’ve been collecting for over 25 years, but the best part of my history records is the old stores & memories. Would like to hear from “farmlady” or anyone else that has a Glascock stove.

Stay Warm and be safe with wood & coal heat.

Nollie Neill, Jr.
Glascock Stove Historian / Collector

the wikipedia has a good article on the types of coal.
I will bring the AGA stoves up to the stove experts here at Lehman’s.

Also, I just posted an article about my coal stove. It will be the first of several.

>wondering about the coal??? Is it Anthracite Coal (hard) or
>bituminous coal (soft) ? Does the dealer offer both? I used to burn
>coal in a fireplace when I was a kid in Ohio and went winter

As I understand it, there are basically three grades with bituminous being the softest, lignite, and finally anthracite.

The problem isn’t going to be which type of coal you’ll burn in the stove so much as where you’re going to purchase it. Coal is pretty inexpensive and I’ve come to believe that the BTU differences are negligible- on a small scale. What beats up the budget isn’t purchasing the coal. The damage is done with the shipping costs.

We live in the Northern end of the Red River Valley and the old-timers here are more than happy to share names and stories concerning coal suppliers. Unhappily, coal usage by the home market has long since dried up. I could undoubtedly purchase a rail car full with very little effort but finding a small quantity, something about like a pickup load, took some serious phone calling and answering machine tag. A man with less Scottish in his blood line might have thrown in the towel . . .

What I finally found was a supplier, within driving distance, who could sell me either “stoker” or “chunk” coal by the ton.

Chunk coal comes out of Central North Dakota and is less expensive than stoker coal. I’m pretty sure the chunk coal is a bituminous coal but I don’t believe it’s the softest form of coal as have I haven’t found it particularly messy to handle nor is it brownish in color. The chunks range in size from about baseball sized up to basketball sized. Apparently I can also get chunk coal in Volvo sized pieces but I’m not quite sure that would make hauling it home any easier. The coal has a grain and can be split into a manageable size by the average eleven year old boy with an old screw driver and a wooden mallet.

Important Note: Eleven year old boys are optimal for coal splitting. Coal won’t split well for thirteen year old girls and the child will become upset, complain loudly about the unfairness of it all, and spend the rest of the afternoon spoiling the horses. I never got into the upper level chemistry classes but I think it has something to do with gender and molecular bonds . . . or not.

The “stoker” coal is shipped into the dealer from Wyoming and is more expensive. It burns very nicely with a little bit less ash. The problem with stoker coal is that it is much smaller in size and a portion will drop through the grate. I brought home a five gallon bucket to try out and it took some experimenting before I was able to use it.

When I decided to make the “Pet” functionally decorative (it took a week to get all the latex paint off of it!), I fabricated a replacement shaker grate out of square half inch cold rolled. The bars have a half inch space between them. Stoker coal appears to range in size from pea sized up to about large marble sized (~1.5 inches). I suspect it’s used primarily with furnaces that have a feeder mechanism on them. Anyway, I was losing too much coal through the grate before it had a good chance to burn. With continued use, I found that I could create a bed of embers, using pine and chunk coal, and pour/place the stoker coal into a mound on top of the embers. The embers keep the small stuff from falling through and the mound of stoker coal would burn from the edges in and make good heat this way. There is a catch! Don’t pile the hotter burning coal up against the side of the bowl- it will create hot spots and it’s hard on the stove. It’s also a little hard on the digestion as that cheery red/orange color is nice when I’m forging or welding but I don’t want it in my living room!

>game on during the outage. I could hear the noise from the
>generator running, and, of course, it most likely is using >gasoline….at $3.15 a gallon here. We relied on the wood stove for
>cooking and heat that day and listened to the ball game on a

We’ve got about the same fuel prices out here as well. I believe we’re at $3.05 a gallon today.

My wife and I have spoken about starting a family tradition this year and I’m hoping I’ll have things in place to run with it. One weekend a month, I would like to take the house off utility power. We’ll play board games with the kids, cook on the wood stove, use the kerosene lamps (Aladdin! learn it, live it, love it!) and heaters, and just have a good time with it. Who knows, without the TV and/or PS2 running, we all might find one weekend a month where life is a little bit less noisy and we’re all good company. It’s tough to say with teenagers, but you don’t know until you try.

That might sound a little abusive to some folks but probably not this crowd. My wife and I will enjoy the “no utility weekend” because it’s a “choice” and it also will help make sure everything is in place when the power does go out- which it does. Minus thirty wind chills and no electricity is not the time to find out your eldest child shanghaied the box of candles back to college for an art project.