How to Clean and Restore an Old Iron Stove

Whether they be pot-bellied or the box-like range stove, wood-burning cast iron stoves are a great way to add a touch of antique luster to a room while providing a heat source at the same time. They can easily become the centerpiece of a rustic cabin or a living room decorated with old fashioned furniture. The problem with these stoves is that they are often recovered from architectural junk yards and come in less than ideal condition. Their sturdy cast iron construction guarantees that they are in solid, working condition, but a recovered stove will tend to be filthy with grime, dirt, cobwebs and rust.

Bringing your cast iron stove back to working condition is an easy, but time-consuming project for a do-it-yourselfer. It is ideal to do over a weekend, since a lot of drying time is involved. Tackle it side-by-side with other projects or a new book.

Cleaning
The first step is to take a good look at your stove and determine if it has seams. Most of the box-like ranges have spaces between their vertical iron plating, which allows the iron to expand when heated. Round, pot-bellied stoves usually do not have these seams. These seams. pose a fire hazard if left open, so they must be sealed with fireplace and stove cement. If you have are cleaning and recovering this kind of stove, most likely the original cement has long since eroded away. The first step in restoring the stove is to clean off the remnants of the old cement. Take a hammer and chisel and chip the cement chunks off, and then scrub away the stubborn bits with a wire brush. Be very careful with your chisel, since the steel chisel is harder than the soft cast iron, and if you simply whack away at the cement debris you are liable to cut the iron by mistake.

After removing the old cement. use damp rags and a soft brush to remove all dirt, cobwebs and other filth. Do this inside and out.

The final cleaning step for the stove is to look for and remove bad spots of rust. You can ignore little surface rust, even if it covers a large area. The polishing job you will do later will eliminate that. However, if the rust is peeling or flaking and damaging the surface of the iron, that will require sanding prior to polishing. Take a wire brush and remove the worst of the rust, and then use a power hand sander with rough-grit sandpaper to remove the rest of the rust. Finish the rust cleaning by smoothing out the iron surface of the with medium-grit sandpaper.

Sealing
If you have those open seams in your stove, the next stage is to seal them. Mix up a batch of fireproof cement of the kind used in fireplaces, and apply it to the seams with a small masonry trowel or putty knife. All this to set overnight before proceeding to polishing. Do not use regular cement for this task, since the intense heat of the stove's wood fire and hot iron plates will quickly cause the cement to crack and crumble.

Polishing
With the worst of the rust dealt with, the iron surface clean and the seams closed with fresh cement, you can now move on to giving your cast iron stove a fine black finish. Put a hefty dab of black stove polish on a damp rag and rub it into the iron in circular motions. The polish will go a long way, but be generous with it. The idea is to let the iron drink up the polish, and if you are stingy you might need to apply a second layer to the stove. Allow that to dry for 3 to 5 hours. Then buff it with a fresh rag. The result will be a cast iron stove that has the classic, attractive dull shine. It will be sealed-up, free of rust, and ready for installation.

Sources: erummage.info/woodstove/index.htm: motherearthnews.com/Modern-Homesteading/1979-09-01/Wood-Burner-Restoration.aspx