Thank you - Refurbished a camp oven - Premium Holloware

Hello all.

I wanted to thank you all for the information on your webpage. I had an old family dutch/camp oven I thought would be good to refurbish to perhaps take camping.

It had some surface rust so I tried the electrolysis method to remove the rust. Seemed to work fine and didn't take overly long. I also followed the seasoning methods present. Now I think I have something to use.

Here are some photos of my project:

http://www.mindspring.com/~bjsigmon/pot/pot2.jpg
http://www.mindspring.com/~bjsigmon/pot/pot3.jpg
http://www.mindspring.com/~bjsigmon/pot/pot4.jpg
http://www.mindspring.com/~bjsigmon/pot/pot5.jpg
http://www.mindspring.com/~bjsigmon/pot/pot6.jpg

Lettering on the top of the lid is a bit hard to read the raised letters. I think there is a No 12 under the handle on the lid. I think the maker name is Premium Hollow Ware. I could read Hollow Ware - I used your database to figure out the first name. So it was made in Richmond Virgina.

Searching in the ad section of your website I found a catalog page:
http://www.castironcollector.com/gallery/ads/richmond_stove_1897_pg100.jpg

The Bake Oven does look like this pot. And I have an approximate date of manufacture 1897.

The lid doesn't fit very well. It's flat enough but a bit oversized - the flange inside has too large of a diameter to fit down into the pot. I also noticed this pot has a lot more pitting than other makers - comparing photos of other pots. I'm thinking the quality is not as good as the larger makers perhaps.

Just curious if the lid should fit better or is this just poor quality? I suppose the lid could have came from something else but it does appear to match that catalog page.

I wanted to share my project - information on your webpage was helpful. Maybe my photos of a random camp oven is of some interest. let me know if there is anything else of interest for a pot like this or if I found wrong information.

I need to go try it out now.

Brian

I think that thing may have seen some use over the years. :-D

The lid doesn't fit very well. It's flat enough but a bit oversized - the flange inside has too large of a diameter to fit down into the pot.

Click to expand...

Sometimes you find pieces that are mis-matched. Lid might not belong to the pot, but if it works well enough you're good to go.

Nice work cleaning it up, enjoy.

I suspect you have a spider skillet lid that almost matched a pig ear pot. If the lid was a mate to the pot, some movement would be present due to the pitting. I started buying all examples of spider skillets, legged pig ear pots, and lids I could find in the early 1990's. The amazing thing about these old, rusted pitted examples of near impossible to trace a maker to pots, is they were made out of the highest quality iron. My holy grail would be a clean, marked, Blacklock # 14 spider.