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A Little Wearily:

Here are photos for the Archives, and a bit of a whine:

When you post a link to an ad, and don't post a photo for the Archives, you are leaving a hole in the Archives for the future. Someone else, later on, may be in desperate need of the info a photo can give them.

Please consider taking the moment to post a pic when you post a link. If you've ever used Super Searchalator to run down information on something rare, only to find that the post Super Searchalator brings up has only a dead, three-year-old CL link, you're familiar with the frustration I'm talking about.

These Frigidaire drop-down units are pretty scarce; seems to me we should have some photos.

Now for the pics:

danemodsandy++9-10-2013-19-46-16.jpg
 
Heat Selection Menu

All Frigidaire stoves were in this order until early 1960's - It would be interesting to know if there was a certain reasoning behind it being in this sequence.
I have a 1956 "Imperial" stove and the burner sequence is like this but on my 1962 Flair they had switched to Lowest (Simmer) to Highest (High).
Bob
 
According to Frigidaire literature of the day, this placement was VERY intentional.  The 3-wire monotube RadianTube elements (used from 1949-1959) were notoriously slow to heat up, especially on the lower temperatures where they did not receive full voltage.  Part of learning the "knack" of cooking effectively on these (which my grandmother and mother did until the early 1980s) was that ALL cooking operations begin on HIGH and then move to a lower temperature once the desired temperature was achieved.  

 

I remember that it took my mother a while back in the early 80s to adjust to her new Roper-built Kenmore range with its full-240 volt Calrod-style elements on infinite heat switches.  

 

Here is a statement to that effect from a 1955 range owner's manual:

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We had a similar wall oven in my parents' first purchased (vs. rented) house, built in 1958. There were no pull down stove burners. There was a traditional built in cook top. We moved away when I was five, so I don't remember whether we had gas vs electric, but I seem to remember heating coils at the oven bottom so I think oven was electric. Don't remember re: the cooktop. I know the house was piped for gas, because heating was via a wall mounted, hallway wall heater using gas (welcome to Southern California mid-century living). I just don't remember if the cooktop was gas or electric. I have seen other mid-century homes with electric barn door ovens and gas cooktops.
 
Barn vs Double vs French

Just to clarify so individuals can stop using the wrong terminology and correcting me.

Barn Door - A door, usually single but occasionally in opposite with a center draw directional path, mounted on the surface and slides in PARALLEL PLANE to the surface on which it is mounted. (Think about it - when have you ever seen a huge 14' tall door for a tractor to pass through mounted on a swinging hinge? They don't exist) Also called a hangar door.

Double Door - Two doors mounted in tandem, with either opossing, tandem or parrallel swing(can be mounted in opposite hand direction as well - i.e. coming and going) to each other, always with a center post.

French Door - They are called french doors when two doors are mounted with opposite swing(not opposite direction)- AND NO CENTER POST. The French pioneered the surface mounted locking mechanism that allowed a person to use one of two small doors within a large opening, but still have a large opening available by simply opening the other.
 
'Barn doors on oven. No chance this is a "club membe

...is a reference the CL ad language.

"The set consists of 2 sets of burners that fold up and are hidden when not in use and mount against the wall on top of the counters and also an oven with barn doors which is set into its own metal cabinet."
 
Well regardless of french or barn door..

This set looks amazingly clean...why is it that all of current production crapp ceran and other "easy clean" cooktops are neither easy clean or last a long time. Tenants turn them into black tops realy soon and even when the best of us trys to cook on them they scratch and what not. More new technology that is not worth the litho ink used to print the owners manuals. Likely no new production washer range cooktop or oven would survive looking as good as these did from 1958! Highly amazing and very interesting about the placement of simmer next to HIGH i was wondering about that myself. SO do I understand that the burners were 120v on this model vs 220 today hence the need to start all cooking on HIGH! Did he selected heat level light up on the vertical control panel also probably really cool....hope somebody cool gets them be nice to see them installed into a new home.
 
These wide RadianTube burner elements had 2 separate elements in them that ran parallel to each other with a third return wire.  Through the 5 position heat switch 240 OR 120 volts were introduced across various combinations of the elements.  On this particular set, the 8" unit would consume 2050 watts when both elements were connected to 240 volts in parallel and the 6" element would consume 1450 watts.  Here is the detail:

kenmore71++9-11-2013-14-34-35.jpg
 
Ceran:

As someone with a lot of experience with Ceran cooktops, I feel that these tops are easy to clean.

The catch is that one must actually clean them, and most people nowadays don't do that. The burned-on black circles at each burner position that David (capecodlaundry) alludes to are a common sight on these tops, but in my opinion, it's laziness, not a fault of the technology. Scratching can be minimized through the exercise of reasonable care, plus using the cleaner (which has silicones) daily; the silcones protect the surface to an extent.

If you get one of these ranges, you have to get the cleaner, and you have to use it. Any renter who doesn't should end up paying for the range, in my view.
 
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