Cracked Jotul 118

[JotulFan]

Hello,
My family has an original (early 70's) Jotul 118 which recently developed a fairly significant crack in one of the side panels (photo below). We would much prefer to keep this stove vs. replacing it (not only $$ but we are quite attached to the stove after 40+ years of faithful heat in our mountain cabin), so I'm wondering if there is any use in trying to repair the crack - either with furnace cement or by welding? At this point, I am nervous about using the stove at all and winter is coming! Thanks for any help.

 

[begreen]

Greetings. That crack's not good. Your concerns are warranted. It usually means the inside burn panels are shot and the stove has been run without their full protection. It's hard to repair a crack like that. The F118 is a good stove. You might want to find another is good condition and keep or sell this one for parts.

 

[JotulFan]

Thank you - I kinda figured as much. Yes, it's an awesome stove - I found 3 of them for sale on eBay - which is tempting even though hard to know for sure what you are getting, but they are far away from CA (Minnesota and east coast) and shipping (or pick-up) would be pretty hard/expensive. My parents originally paid $90 for the stove - including shipping from Norway to San Francisco (Jotul had no US factory or distributors in those days) - they picked it up on the ship dock and drove it to the mountains in the back of our station wagon! Thinking about replacing it makes me very sad - the newer version just isn't as nice.

 

[begreen]

That's some great history. You can drill a tiny hole at the end of the crack to try and stop its progress. A redneck repair by bolting a steel plate on the inside over the crack might stabilize it somewhat. But if the interior burn plates are shot or missing then the stove will just crack somewhere else. The sides need shielding.

 

[JotulFan]

The burn plates are there - and seem to look okay - although they do tend to easily fall off the "hooks" - but even then they still lean on the side panels giving some protection I would think? But it looks like there are places that sell replacement burn plates - so if they are questionable, that would be an option. Oh this whole situation is just so distressing... Another complication is that once we have more than 8" of snow on the ground, we don't have vehicle access to the cabin so our time to deal with this is limited (at least we hope that CA gets snow this year!). And the stove is our primary source of heat so if we want to use the cabin this winter, we have to do something soon!

 

[Mr4btTahoe]

Are the side panels removable? If so, you could drill the ends of the crack then have it brazed or welded on the inside as to not destroy the look of the panel. Cast can be welded but you need to know what you are doing. It takes a good bit of even preheating, a good hard filler (I typically use 308L stainless although it may not be right). Also, cooling is very important... the piece has to cool SLOWLY... this means keeping heat applied and gradually letting it cool.

The entire piece needs to be at temp and cool evenly or it will form stress cracks.

Its fixable... if you want to spend the time/money to do it.