More Extreme Kit Bashing & The Dilemma

Over the years I have cast more of these Chrysnbon cook stoves than I care to remember. There is one in the Miniature Museum Of Kansas City I cast.

When I first became involved in miniatures there weren't any good stoves at all. The only one that was remotely in scale and acceptable was the Chrysnbon cook stoves in plastic. The first time I saw one I bought a dozen kits with the intention of casting them all. It may sound like it is fast and easy, but I assure you it isn't. I won't bore you with all the details of why and how so many things can go wrong when you cast one. Then there is all the clean up after the pieces are cast and they all have to be silver soldered together (with a torch). It takes several days just to get all the pieces sprued up to be cast. It also takes good size flasks to hold all the pieces to be invested for casting. Five flasks usually. I have always cast them in bronze.

For some reason today I am getting awful photos so you probably cant see that the parts I chose to polish are bronze in color. They look like nickel here. I could still plate them to look like nickel, I will have to see. The stove has been oxidized and waxed. It isn't painted.

My dilemma is what sort of stove do I want to use in my house. I would hate to pack this away never to be used because it is not an English stove. Maybe the answer is to create a space where I can have either interchangeably?

My grandparents had a cottage in Wisconsin when I was growing up. They bought it in 1917. I loved going there because we had 30 acres on a big lake. To this day we still have a wood burning cook stove we use that is almost like the Chrysnbon one here in this photo.