Vigilant handle set screw

[peterbooth]

Greetings all. I'm new to the forum; I joined because I'm a little stuck. My wife and I *had* a Vigilant that we inherited when we bought our house in 1993. We've used it as our main heat source for 30 years. We *just* bought another Vigilant that had hardly been used at all. Almost looked brand new. It was manufactured in Sept, 1980.

The new (to us) stove has a two part handle where the part you grip "drops away" and you store it in a little hole on the side of the stove. Our old stove had a permanent handle that was attached to the latch with an allen set screw. Before we took our old stove to the metal recycling place, we removed our handle so that we could swap it into our new stove. Today I went to remove the newer two-part handle and the "set screw" isn't actually a screw at all. It's a very small rolled up piece of metal that I can't figure out how to remove.

I'm thinking that Vermont Castings decided that the original handle (that we had on our old stove) wasn't safe so that created this new two-part abomination and manufactured it so that you *can't* put the old (one piece) handle on it.

I'm hoping someone here (a) knows what I'm talking about and (b) has a method for swapping out the old handle for the new one.

Thanks for any ideas,
Peter Booth
Vermont (currently sitting by the stove as the wind blows at 20 degrees below zero)

 

[Eman85]

it's probably a roll pin or split pin that drives out. There was another recent post about removing the handle. If the hole goes straight through and you can see the roll pin on both ends just drive it out with a pin punch or a roll pin punch.

 

[peterbooth]

it's probably a roll pin or split pin that drives out. There was another recent post about removing the handle. If the hole goes straight through and you can see the roll pin on both ends just drive it out with a pin punch or a roll pin punch.

Thanks for the response. It can't be driven out. The hole does not go through. ☹️

 

[Fred B. NJ]

I like the removable handle. Once had a friend try to open the door by grabbing the hot metal piece. Got a nasty burn.

 

[Defiant 3]

If you simply unscrew the "stud" from the end of the fallsway handle then you could screw the porcelain handle to the front faucet stub.