Post 1980 Grandma draft cap bolts

[Kingfish]

I'm new to forums, so bear (pardon the pun) with me. As the title indicates, I recently bought a post-1980 Grandma that I cleaned up an painted. I read Coaly's recommendation in one of the threads that the bolts in the draft caps should be flush with the outside edge of the caps when they are closed. Mine are much more recessed (screwed in further), when the caps are open as far as I can get them there is only a 1/4" gap, and the bolts (and nuts) are welded to the inside of the door so they can't be adjusted differently.

My question, is that 1/4" gap going to be sufficient draft, particularly when lighting the stove cold, or do I need to break the welds and try to clean up or replace the bolts.

Thanks for any help, and thanks for the informative forum.

 

[CamFan]

the question of will it work depends on how good of draw you chimney has, and how much air is leaking around the door. It should be adequate. If you try it you should put a stove top thermometer to monitor the temps to be sure it is burning clean. This is my opinion. The only way you will know is to try it. Before you cut the bolts you should find new ones to replace them with. They were imported and ours came from Poland. You could use 1/2" all thread and weld a nut on the end so you have full threads for the cap to travel on. You should be able to find something locally, FastenAll if you have one of these stores may have them. I have barrells of them and I use them for shear bolts on my bush hog. the way we installed the bolt in the cap is like this; 1. screw the cap on the bolt until the head was flush. 2. put the first nut on until approx 3/4 of the nut was past the bottom of the cap if it was installed. 3. open the cap on the bolt and install it on the door. you will have enough room to use an open end wrench, 3/4" on both nuts. Tighten the nut on the inside of the door. When the draft cap is closed it have some head of the bolt exposed. If you want it flush in step one screw the cap on the bolt further. there was a time when we put a decortive cap covering the bolt head. I can not remember what models or when this was done. I know I put many boxes of these in the scrap bin when we closed up.
The reason someone may have welded it so it could not be opened further could be one of two reasons that I can think of. 1. There were cases were some stoves after use the draft cap nuts would work loose mainly if the door was not perfectly flat on the inside of the door where the nut contacted it. 2. We used to get complaints from young adults that were providing wood for MoM and Dad and they would run the stoves wide open all the time. They over heated the stoves doing this and burned wood twice as fast as they would have if they used the caps to adjust the air flow. But the older folks were cold and they loved the heat.

Good luck!

 

[Kingfish]

Thanks for the advice CamFan