Hobo Night

Alasgun

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Back at Y2-k i built this wood stove, as a backup heat source. Well’ it’s been fired less than a dozen times since then but Hobo Night was momentous and worth re-telling.

Case makes a Hobo folding knife which breaks down into a knife, fork and a spoon! Cool, now all i gotta do is figure out how to “sell the idea” of providing each of my grandkids ages (at the time) of 4,6,9 &11 with they’re very own implement of distruction!

the youngest g.daughter was into American girl dolls and when she showed me her Kit Kittridge doll complete with the story about how Kit was the champion of the Hobo’s, standing up for them in the community etc, i knew i had a good angle! That’s left brain man thinking for, “i cant possible get in trouble for this”.

Now that stove is built to cook right on the top surface, perfectly smooth and polished to a pancake fryer’s delight! So we invited them all over to spend the night and spent the evening (without t.v or devices) cooking cakes etc. i purposely left silverware off the table and once we sat down one of them pointed this out to me. That was my Q to pass out the Case Hobos, one to each of them and knowing how kids can squabble about stuff, i had they’re names etched on each piece so they got they’re parts back after washing.

they were a huge hit as was pancakes on the wood stove! We settled into the evening with stories of our own poorer times and they got all wide eyed when i told them we use to cut the toe’s out of your Daddy’s shoes so his feet had room to grow.

pretty soon i gave one a violin one a tambourine one a guitar and one a harmonica then put on some Roger Miller and we all sang “King of the Road”!
 

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Alasgun

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Thanks,
The stove body is 3/8 boiler plate, the top 1/2 in. All the shiny stuff is Stainless re-machined from various pump parts, slope size pumps.
With a fully machined door and frame i can close the damper and put the fire out, i guess that means its “air tight”😳

Inside it’s brick lined and there’s a 14 gallon water heating tank on the back side.
will be a super stove for the Daughters cabin at some point.
 

Mini Horses

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What a beauty that stove is!!

I love the grands getting stories of "what was"...my only one is a spoiled 18 yr old and leaves the room with a "not me!" With such remembrances. All I can say is she better hope I'm around to show her how to make do and exist, should the need ever arise. :old 😁
 

thistlebloom

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That's a beautiful stove. You do good work! We had a stove in our old house that my brother made. I don't remember dimensions, but it was thick steel, he bent the top so it was "stepped". We could cook and boil water on the top. We had to leave it when we moved as it was the primary heat source for the house. I wish we had just replaced it with a store bought version, but we had a lot on our plates then, so it wasn't a priority.
I really like your Hobo night story. It's good for kids to hear about their grandparents lives previous to their own existence.
 
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