5 Stoves in the past 12 months, WOW I am curios as to what do you do with them. Are they inside, are they for parts, do you refurbish them, resell them, maybe you just like them. Do you heat with all of them in a huge house , How about a few pictures . I respect people who stand by their convictions
I bought the Coal Bear first, to use in my garage. But after restoring it and realizing it was a little too small to heat a big uninsulated garage, I put it in my mudroom as a collector piece. Next I found the Grandma Bear, but I didn't get it restored before winter, so I applied a good coat of PB Blaster to the outside of the stove to keep it from rusting in my garage. Then I found a Grandpa Bear and brought it home to restore. These 3 stoves were bought between October and December of the same year. I restored the Coal Bear first, then winter set in and I had to wait for summer to restore the Grandma & Grandpa Bear. Then, by the time summer rolled around, I decided that I didn't want to heat my garage for a few hours, just to do a very random project. So, no need to install a wood stove in my garage.
My neighbor needed to replace his old and worn out cast iron wood stove and asked me if I had a Fisher stove that he could buy. He really like the Grandpa Bear. So I sold him my fully restored Grandpa Bear for what I had put into it ($650 for the stove, all new firebricks, 5 cans of paint, 5/16" baffle plate). I also installed it for him at no extra cost. His farm house is over 100 years old, bigger than my 1600 sq ft house, and more drafty than my house. The Grandpa Bear was a perfect fit for his house, and his house already had an 8" flue and Class A chimney.
The other two stoves that I bought were both Papa Bears. One was a very early stove with a plain cast iron door and a 3 piece piece top. The other was a very early NY built stove with one piece 3/8" top, trees on the door, and early pipe cap dampers.
I restored the early 3 pc top Papa and we have it in our living room as an end table. The other Papa is in my mudroom, still not restored, but it was never fired by the previous owner, so it's in good shape.
I have two neighbors that want wood stoves for their garages, so that's where the Grandma Bear and Coal Bear might end up.
I'm done adding stoves to my "collection". I heat my house with a Mama Bear that I bought and fully restored in 2012. It's my only heat source for my 2 story house. I also have the Baby Bear that was in my house when I bought the house, but it wasn't installed yet. So I restored it and put it in the mudroom.
Sorry for the long winded reply. It's more complex than it might seem. I never bought any stoves with the intent of selling them. But I soon realized that I don't have the room to store a bunch of stoves that I'll never use. If my neighbors have a need for a stove, then why not help them out? I'll keep the Baby Bear in case I ever need to heat a small cabin. I'll keep the unfired Papa Bear in case my son needs to use it to heat his house. I'll keep the Papa Bear end table because it's the earliest Fisher stove I've ever seen, and I bought it in Oregon and had it shipped to NY. The Mama Bear is my primary heat source, so that's not going anywhere.
