Frgidaire 1940 Electric Range line-up

[steved]

picking up coal from the street

I remember my dad telling the story of how, during the depression, they threw rocks at the locomotives that passed their house in hopes that the engineer would retaliate and throw coal back at them. Then they gathered it to bring home for the stove.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Some things I remember reading about coal

The price quoted per ton and per bag reminds me of the great inequality in coal pricing which meant that poor people paid far more for a ton of coal than the rich people because the poor had no place to put a ton of coal, nor did they have enough money up front to pay for a ton.

Before the stock market crash in '29, some fabulous homes built on Long Island had coal delivered to the homes by barge and at least ones of the estates had a small train that took the coal from the barge into the house. Probably some rail magnate.

 

[norgeway]

Regulating a solid fuel range!

I dont know about coal, but my Grandmother could hold her Majestic's oven at 350 all day, how I will never understand! My Grand dads cousin had a Home Comfort, and even though she did have a Kenmore electric, she never baked a cake in it, she too could make that oven gauge stay just where she wanted it, and her pound cakes had a crust that can not be duplicated !, She would bake huge fruit cakes in an aluminum dish pan, WONDERFUL!

 

[swestoyz]

While not a pre-war range in terms of when it was produced, I did run across a 1946/1947 GM range years ago - based on the 1940/1941 range. This is the only time I recall seeing the early style GM burners. Unfortunately this range (and the rest of the appliances in the thread) was crushed back before the flood of '08.

Ben

http://www.automaticwasher.org/cgi-bin/TD/TD-VIEWTHREAD.cgi?7636

 

[kenmore71]

Ben, that is what I expected in terms of surface unit design. Most auto and appliance manufacturers resumed domestic production in late 1945 with basically the 1942 models. In my observations it wasn't until about the 1947-48 design year that radically "new" things were being produced. There simply wasn't the man-power or the capital to re-design and re-tool production immediately after the war. I'm guessing that the 3-wire wide/flat topped Radiantube made its debut in either 1949 or 1950.

 

[gotanoldstove]

Thank you for posting the frigidaire stove pics

I am currently using an old Frigidaire stove with the deep well pot and radiantubes. Everything works great on the stove except I seriously need the pans that go under the burners and can't find them anywhere. Hubby modified some new drip pans to work but the base under that really needs replaced. I love this old stove and have refused to give it up despite continual pressure from friends and family who seem to think that I need a newer type stove. I totally disagree! Any ideas on where to find some parts???

 

[kenmore71]

Posting here is a very good first step.
Anyone out there who might have one of these ranges or some parts lying around might well be interested in helping out out.

That is definitely a 1940s model. I'm not at home right now so I can't look up the actual model number and year. That original style "radiantube" surface element was introduced in 1941 and phased out for the wide, flat 3-wire radiantube in 1949.

Hopefully I'll remember to look it up later this weekend.

Does the "well" (known as the "Thermizer") have the "Thrifto-matic" switch where the "High" heat setting is available only on a spring-wound timer portion of the control dial? I think this feature is so cool.

For those of you out there who want to know what this did:
The Deep-well cooker was in some ways the precurser of the "Crock pot" and allowed you to cook partial or whole meals at low temperatures in a semi-insulated aluminum pot.

The heat control had 4 (the early had only 3) heat settings and they were arranged in this order on the dial: OFF, MED HIGH, MED LOW, SIMMER, & HIGH.
HIGH, however, was not a notched stop but instead a 30-minute spring-wound timer. You would set the timer for how long you wanted the "Thermizer" to heat on HIGH and then it would automatically go to SIMMER.

Considering that these were low wattage elements to begin with (600 watts originaly, later increased to 635, and still later to around 1000 watts in the 50s) the SIMMER setting was around 125-150 watts which is about the same as LOW on a crock pot!

 

[kenmore71]

Do you by any chance happen to have the exact model number of that range?
The last 2 numbers of the model would indicate the year of production.
I don't have specific info on the 1946-1950 ranges in my possession, but if I had to guess, I would say that your is a 1947 or 1948 model. I have detailed information on the 1942 models and when production resumed in late 1945, they basically produced one (or maybe two) of the 1942 models until they came out with the whole new line of "1947" models.