First I want to thank those of you who took a look at the earlier photos, and perhaps scratched their heads. This particular stove does seem to be a bit of an oddball.
Anyway, want to let you know we're making some progress. When my son and I went to look at the stove last night, it turned out there was a tag, but it didn't point to the manufacturer of the finished stove, but rather to the company responsible for just the outer castings.
That didn't immediately lead to an identification. But we liked the looks of the stove and decided to take a chance on it for 50 bucks. (Remains to be seen if that was money well spent!)
After we got home, I searched a few old threads in hearth.com and stumbled upon an aol.com address of the former owner of Nu-Tec, Peter Albertsen. With no realistic expectation of ever hearing back, I went ahead and sent a quick email asking if he could help us figure out the brand and model of the stove. Are you ready for this? Within an hour he had written back saying (in part) - "I think you have the original version of this HNG stove". He attached a PDF of a Heat N Glow "Vienna" stove manual.
So the adventure continues. The castings on our stove don't exactly match those shown in the manual, but given Mr. Albertsen's email, I suspect that HNG made essentially the same stove over a period of years, with the castings evolving over time. Does that sound likely to any of you out there?
We have some work to do now just to get a gas line out to the garage where we hope to test the unit. The seller said he tried to get it started but wasn't able to - not sure how much effort he put into it. (Hmm - or what our chances of success are). I've been burning an Avalon Olympic wood stove for 20 years, but honestly know nothing about gas stoves. If anyone out there has advice or experience on this front, or can point to an existing hearth.com thread where the details of troubleshooting a similar stove are hashed out, I'm all ears!
Finally, I want to publicly thank Mr. Peter Albertsen. His company was only involved in the production of the castings, and not the construction of the finished stove. Yet he took the time to write back and try to help. We really appreciate that!
