Oven Interiors

[danemodsandy]

Speckled Interiors:

The light speckles were to let you know when the oven needed cleaning - just one of the many sensible ideas manufacturers have forgotten. Today's black and navy blue interiors usually don't have speckles, meaning you can let things build up a bit too long if you don't look at your oven with a critical eye from time to time.

BTW, the oven rack gadget is called a "rack jack." It's an excellent idea to have one. You pull the rack out by hooking the notch in the side over the front bar of the rack. Pushing the rack back in is done with the notch in the end:

 

[michaelman2]

I seem to remember that filling a bowl with ammonia and placing it in an oven overnight would help clean the oven? I am too lazy to Google and verify.

 

[danemodsandy]

That Works....

....On a very lightly soiled oven.

For anything normal, fuggedaboudit.

 

[retromania]

Sandy,

That's it. That's what she used.

 

[moparguy]

Brown Kenmore Interior

Hi Andy, I have only seen the brown ovens on Kenmores... I will take a couple of pics and post them for you (but a bit late for that tonight, lol)!

 

[retromania]

Dear Gussie!

To try and keep a white oven interior clean.  Must have driven some poor souls slap crazy!

 

[moparguy]

Kenmore brown oven interiors

Here's an electric Kenmore with the brown interior (pardon that it is not as clean as it should be...). Note this one has the cool 'full vu' glass interior door. Instead of a window in the oven door, it has a glass inner door; you can open the main door either with the inner door, to access the oven, or by pushing a button on the door when you open it, the inner glass door stays in place, allowing you to have a 'full vu' of your delicious meal in the oven!

 

[moparguy]

and the brown Kenmore oven in gas...

The gas Kenmore oven with the brown interior... this has a more traditional single door with the glass window...

 

[jamiel]

my grandmother had one of the Quick-Clean Hotpoint stoves from the mid 60s with the Teflon oven linings. It was a slightly shiny grey color and as promised was pretty easy to wipe out. It was a very rattly oven though with all the separate pieces (the linings were flat pieces of sheet steel which slid behind the rack guides which were chromed wire, and everything rattled when you walked past. It wasn't a "cheap--tinny" rattle, but it was noisy all the same. I remember repairing the oven element once...it blew and pitted the teflon coating.

 

[retromania]

Oh.  So that's Teflon?!  It is the color of some of the early Teflon.  Jeff, Love that Kenmore gas range!!!   Love all that chrome on the top.

 

[moparguy]

Linings...

Before self-cleaning was available, didn't several manufacturers have forms of removeable interior panels, that could either be cleaned or were disposable? I knew that Kelvinator had foil panels in the mid-to-late 50s.

 

[retromania]

Jeff,

Is the bottom portion of the oven broken or is it just not positioned in there properly?

 

[moparguy]

It is not positioned properly... I just brought this home a week or two ago and have not had time over the holidays to do anything but basic positioning...

And re. the oven liners... sometimes you stumble onto cool things... when I was looking at a 55-56 Kelvinator range, in the storage drawer below the oven was a full package of the foil-like oven original Kelvinator oven liners!

 

[mixfinder]

1957

The electric version appears to be a 57 model placing it well before Teflon. What a cool color and cool design. It would have a year before the famous melting controls and backsplash of the Kenmore and Whirlpool of the the next year.

 

[retromania]

OMG!

You mean some models came out in '58 where controls melted? Yuck. Very nice electric and gas ranges for Kenmore. Wonder who manufactured them for Sears.

 

[retromania]

Well thre's my answer right there.....

Melting controls on Kenmore and 'WHIRLPOOL' for the next year!

 

[moparguy]

The Kelvinator oven liners... the pre-self-cleaning way to make oven cleaning easier!

 

[retromania]

I'm surprised someone never came out with more than just a disposable drip pan like a disposable oven interior.  Too awkward and costly I guess.