Does This Look Right?

Greetings to All,

My US Stove Model 1869 Caboose woodburning potbelly stove looks like this after one year. My father grew up with one and said his never turned white like this--at least not just the belly of the stove. So I called US Stove and they said I'm running her too hot but that it's normal for it to turn white. Thing is, I never really fill the fire box more than half way up and so it doesn't get real, real hot. Moreover, the white color stops at the seams of the stove. The top portion of the stove where the "lid" is didn't discolor and neither did the bottom part where the ash tray pullout is--both parts that remained black are separated by a slight seam from the fire box portion of the stove. And I have to imagine the entire stove gets roughly the same temperature so I don't know why a seam would prevent the top and bottom parts of the stove from turning white too. Perhaps this is a manufacturing default? Hard to believe since it's cast iron--not much to it, right? I broke the stove in correctly by starting out with small fires and gradually building bigger ones. Any ideas?

Franks said:

front door looks crooked, maybe an air leak? I gotta guess that thing would need a damper in the pipe. Do you have one installed? That thing looks terrible after one year. When you say one year, is that stove brandy new as in 1 year old total?

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Thanks for your replies Hurricane and Franks. The stove was brand new when I bought it in Nov of 2009.

Long story short on why it looks so bad. First, the door is brand new (I got a new one last week becaues I over-tighened the bolt that holds the door on, cracking the hinge. My bad. Secondly--and this is a REAL abbreviated version--my bonehead brother burned some garbage in the stove back in October of this year so that's why there's that discoloration above the fire door. The green flames licked up and left that color.Lastly--and this is incredible but true--the mason who worked on our house last year accidentially sealed up the flue for this stove (he didn't know it was operational). So when I went to light it this fall, I got all this smoke in the house and I doused it with a bucket of water. I got all these rust stains on the stove as a result and now it looks like....well, how it looks. Everything's fixed now and yes, there is an operational damper & throttle so I may just paint it up real nice in the Spring and pretend like it never looked like this ;-)

Dear All,

You saw what my stove looked like a few weeks ago. Now take another look at it.

I got myself a new (and better) damper. This one doesn't leave very much clearance between itself and the inner wall of the flue so I can really control the draft now. I think my problem before was that the old damper was letting too much air through; consequently, the belly of the stove was over heating. I figured that out after I called US Stove company a few times. By the way, are they a decent company? Do they make decent products? I am thinking about upgrading to a better stove but only if I could determine if the one I have is a bad quality stove....

I also bought some Rutland stove polish and shined up the old girl real nice--you can see how pretty she looks now. I was thinking about putting some red lipstick on her so I could say I had just put lipstick on a (pot belly) pig....

I'm hesitant to light her up she looks so good....oh well....Thanks again for your advice on this project!