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kevin313

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So someone at work tells me about a friend of theirs who needs to get rid of an old stove, and since I'm "out" at work about my vintage appliance interest, he asked if I would like to have it.

I need a stove like a whole in the head, but I'm a sucker for a displaced stove that could very well be facing the junk pile. So, I went to take a look.

When I arrived, there she was. Sitting under an old blanket in a cold garage, I could see the outline of a fine old stove. Big, a 40 inch hulk of gleaming white enamel and chrome, I was introduced to the 1954 Frigidaire Imperial 70 double-oven range.

I fall in love too easily...

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The double ovens.

It came with the original owner's manual and Frigidaire griddle that has a metal stud in the center and fits on top of the larger burner without sliding.

Interesting oven elements - they are tubular and placed on the sides of the oven, an covered with a triangular piece of metal.

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Intersting about the oven elements.  Still had the original owners manual.  Obviously someone's pride & joy all their life of using it. 

 

I may have to invite myself for a weekend of cooking and over-indulging of food!!!
 
Hon, you are gonna love that 1954 range!

I've had that same stove except without the oven window since the early 80s. Those oven heaters were Frigidaire's first sealed rod bake elements. Mine had been used a lot and the heat radiating against the removable bottom trays really did a number on the porcelain so I covered them with foil to reflect the heat away from the dark porcelain. The Wilcolator oven thermostat for the large oven has an interesting automatic preheat feature. If you turn the thermostat all the way to BROIL and then back to the temperature you want, both the broiler and the bake elements come on to do a fast preheat then the broiler element cycles off and only the perimeter coil of the broil element cycles with the bake element to provide top heat during baking to assure perfect browning. You are probably gonna lose it when you turn on the full width fluorescent light and it reflects in that honeycomb mirror. The square trough in the aluminum light cover was meant to hold a square black salt and pepper shaker set.

That little metal circle with the lens in it above the deep well has two c-7 bulbs behind it. There is a thermostat in the liner of the deep well Thermizer unit that presses against the pan. You heat fat for deep frying on HIGH and both lights come on. When the fat has reached the proper frying temperature, one light goes out. That is the signal to switch the heat to MEDIUM HIGH. At that setting, the thermostat cycles the element to keep the fat at the proper temperature. The minute timer chimes when the time is up and the delightful chiming continues until you turn it off.

This is a wonderful range, heavily built like GM used to build cars. I replaced the two front units with 208 volt elements from an apartment range John hauled in. Now I have real power with close to 1600 watts in the 6 inch and around 2500 watts in the 8 inch. Mirro made a deep well pressure cooker for Frigidaire. I looked long and hard for one for my stove and found it. It's sort of a stupid idea if you think about it very long, but when pressure cooking was at its peak, three range manufacturers and three pressure cooker manufacturers got together to offer this feature for the deep well.
 
Tom, thanks much for all the great info on this stove. I've been looking through the owner's manual, and I read about how the big oven will cycle the broiler and the bottom elements at the same time for quick heat up. Would you recommend that I put foil over the removable bottom pans?

Do you use the Thermizer much? I can wait to fry up some chicken croquettes in that baby!

Thanks again, Hon! I have some dear friends who live in Baltimore and I remember driving there for a visit for the first time and as I got into the city I stopped at a gas station to get a little snack. I experienced two things I've come to love about Maryland: The kid behind the counter said to me after I paid, "Thanks, Hon." And then I enjoyed my first taste of Utz Crab Chips!
 
Wow, nice save!  I never knew there was a pressure cooker insert for the deep well unit, I'd love to find one.  I guess they dropped the thermostat indicator on the later models, my '59 CI does not have that option.

 

Hey, Kevin, maybe you can deep fry some Pączki...
 
Kevin, that is very nice. Certainly looks to have been well cared for in its 56+ years.

I don't believe I've seen one of this style with an oven window before. Geneva - a lady I knew - had one nearly like this with plain doors. It was her most prized posession, and looked new when it was over 20 years old. One night there was a fire in her building; after she could get back in her apartment she spent the rest of the night thoroughly cleaning her Frigidaire range.
 
As beautiful and feature packed as this beautiful Frigidaire Range is, I have been spoiled after having the ceramic top ranges and will never go back to the coils.I would absolutely love having this one though.Long ago, I had a Compact 30 that I found at a dump and it had never been used. It still had the shipping bolts on it.I installed it and used it for about three years.It was brushed chrome.I would clean it up every now and again after the elements would get a bit narley and I used steel wool to brush off the residue and rust on the Radiantube units.
 
<span style="font-size: x-large;">NICE</span>! I love th<span style="font-size: 10.8333px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12.5px;">e double ovens.  I've only had electric stoves twice, but I could fall in love with that one! <span style="font-size: x-large;">
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