Osborne Restoration

Author: OliverOsborne

  • Belle Portable flue boxes

    I’ve got four Belle Portable ranges on the bench at the moment, here’s their flue boxes in various conditions.

  • A quick Coalbrookdale resto

    I was up in the Evesham area recently to tidy up a Coalbrookdale range installed in a 17th century cottage. The owner could remember her mum cooking on it up until the 1970’s. With the planned work to the chimney it will be ready to work again.
    The firebox cheeks were replaced with firestone to protect the existing iron work. The oven will not practically be used so we decided it better to preserve the range in this way rather than exposed the already damaged oven to more abuse. The brick flue was renewed and the hood was removed. After several hours of cleaning it was polished and came up a treat.

  • Pattern complete for fiddle rail standards

    I managed to find the time to finish off the patterns for the fiddle rail standards yesterday. Next job is to get them up the foundry for the first few batches to be cast!

  • Patterns for replica fiddle rail standards

    On the left here you can see an original fiddle rail standard from the back cabin stove of the working narrowboat ‘Dane’ dating from 1909. These rail standards were used on a huge number of working boats throughout the 19th and 20th century. On the right is the first split pattern turned from beech by Charlie Watts, a very talented Somerset based wood turner. These more to come and then we’ll be into casting the first batches of these standards for our replica Guidwife and Larbert back cabin stoves.

    If you’d like to get in touch with Charlie please visit his website here; http://www.wattsturning.co.uk/

  • Restored range installed at Gressenhall farm and workhouse museum

    I was really pleased to received this photo recently. It shows the 1885 Utilis range that I restored for Gressenhall farm and workhouse museum in Norfolk.
    It was a very involved project as someone had previously ‘restored’ the range and made a terrible job of it, damaging many of the parts in the process. I had to make several patterns so new parts could be cast in iron to replace parts that had been damaged or worn out.
    This range has been installed so it can be used properly with the internal masonry flues reinstated. It will be used to show visitors how people cooked in the 19th century.
    I hope I have a chance to get up to Norfolk soon to see how they’re getting on with it!

  • All stoves this week!

    It’s been all stoves this week with four fantastic examples being restored and ready for their new homes. The first is a ‘Caledonian Queen’ which is a great example of Art Deco designs in a stoves whilst the one next to it, a ‘Queenie’ is very much of the previous century. There is also a Tortoise No1 and Dumpy No2, both were used extensivley in Shepherds huts and Living vans.

  • New workshop

    Well we have finally begun the move to the new (much larger) workshop so thank you to all those who have been patient during this time. You can expect big changes to the website, services and products over the coming months with some exciting new developments like the manufacture of very high quality replica ‘Nipper’ stoves, ‘Hostess’ ranges and authentic Larbert and Guidwife ‘Back cabin stoves’!

    I will post with more details on this as time goes on.

    All the best.

    Olly

  • Belle Portable Range for sale

    …and here’s another one for sale. This time its a Belle Portable range fully restored and ready for service. Click on the ‘Shop’ tab above for more details.

  • ‘Torwood Dover’ for sale

  • Belle Portable nearing completion

    I’ve nearly finished this nice little Belle Portable. There’s still a few small jobs to do but its quite a different story to how it looked just last week! (photo 2)