Tuesday, April 29, 2014

RETHINKING PROPANE: Dismantling the Hillerange Seaward Stove Part Three

I was away from the boat for two weeks as work got in the way once again. But, then it will allow me to pay the boatyard for dropping the morning back in the water. So it is a trade off. When I got back on board I continued on the propane project which entails partially dismantling the Hillerange Seward Stove that has been on board since 1986. Due to corrosion in the burner area and the expense of rebuilding it I decided to abandon it's use as a stove and oven and use alternative cooking plans. I was able to remove most of the burner, controls and manifold on my last visit to the boat. On this visit I planned to take a look at the oven and see what I could remove there. Since I've owned BIANKA since 1995 I think I've used the oven twice. Frankly, trying to start it was always difficult and somewhat scary. Which is why I won't miss it much. But, I did store some cooking items inside of it as shown below:
   
Though they were just covers and bowls and oven pans in the limited space available. So since I no longer  plan on using the oven I thought it would be good to remove the burner and whatever else I could take off the boat. First I removed all the "stuff" that was stored in the oven:

The area needs a good cleaning and there is some rust that needs to taken care of. First thing was remove the oven tray. I found this was just held in place by two screws located in the back of the oven:

Once the tray is removed I had easy access to oven burner:

A screw on the left side holds it in place:

Over on the right side is a nut that connects the pilot light to it's stainless steel feed pipe securing the right side:


Once the screw on the left side and the pilot feed nut are removed the whole burner assembly is easily removed:


Removing the oven tray and oven burner created a much bigger storage area in the now unused oven space:


It needs a good cleanup  and some rust removal and I think I'll do some re painting in the future. But, I am happy with that the space that opened up by removing the burner:


I was now able to store all of the pots and pans I use on board in the oven area. Including my cast iron frying pan and four quart pressure cooker.  I still need to remove some of the oven pans which I will no longer use too. With the unused oven burner parts removed and the additional storage space created, I'll turn my attention to cleaning up the top burner area.

4 comments:

bill said...

Mike:

I'm more ruthless than you. I completely threw out the stainless gimbaled alcohol range and oven on my boat. That sucker was heavy.

I just use a two burner stove somewhat like your set-up.

I just like to get as much weight out as possible. Don't need the gimbaling anyway.

Capt. Mike said...

Bill:
I too have nor used the gimbaling aspect of the stove too much. But, I wanted to keep the ability to do so for some up coming future cruising. Removing the entire stove was more of a project than I wanted to do at this time too. Though I may do that in the future. I might also take a cut off saw and cut away the insulated sides of the oven and get a touch more room inside the oven box.

Unknown said...

Mike, What oven did you replace it with? I have what appears to be the same oven in a 2001 PDQ Catamaran. I need to replace the oven. -mike T

Capt. Mike said...

Mike T
I did not replace the oven. I only used it two or three times in fifteen years and found it sucked up a lot of propane. I did think about buying and using an small electric toaster oven as a replacement. Since I have a Honda 2000 generator on board for charging my electric propulsion batteries it would work quite nicely. But, I can pretty much do all my cooking with three pots and the single burner. It is not a priority for me.