Repairing old wood burners

Hi,
I've read through the posts for information on using wood stoves with a crack, but I'm getting conflicting info. We purchased a home recently that has an older wood burning stove. We have literature that identifies this unit as a Franklin Stove supplied by Wards (probably in the late 70's), manufactured by Dee Dai Company of Taiwan. We had a fire going, and heard a loudish crack, and found a hairline crack in one of the side units about 4" long. Record #514 says not to weld a crack, but use black furnace cement to patch it. Record 1559 says don't use it, replace the part. Can a crack in this kind of a stove be patched with this furnace cement if we can't find a replacement part? And should we not use it at all until we can get it fixed/replaced? It didn't seem to be leaking smoke or anything. Thanks, Pam D.