Polished steel wood stove and sauna stove

Hi everyone.

I'm currently de-rusting a wood stove using a mix of vinegar and water, scouring brushes etc. It's gradually coming along nicely and great to see this metal underneath. Our original plan was to paint it with black stove paint, but now after seeing the light begin to reflect off the stove it is adding an ambience to the kitchen that didn't exist before. Since black steals light, while surfaces that reflect light could do the opposite, it means our little lights goes further and the room looks nicer if we left it unpainted.

I would imagine as well, painted is harder to clean hard caked on stuff that might bubble out of a pot after prolonged cooking sessions. Meanwhile a bare metal surface you can just go to with a rough pad fairly easily. At least that's been my experience with stainless steal, which this clearly isn't.. but can something close to stainless steel be achieved with enough grinding and polishing?

I have an angle grinder. No polishing things though.

What I am wanting to learn is how can I, once I have the surface fully de-rusted, get a nice blurry polished steel look?

Is it possible when the plates will be heating up to high temperatures? OR will it just go black and weird purply colours from the heat?

Would you finish it with an oil like linseed, treating it like a cast iron pan?

Attached is this unloved area getting a renovation. Also going are those paint layers on the bricks, and I'm thinking to just linseed oil them like cob unless anybody could suggest something better.

Many thanks!
Rob

p.s. don't mind the pitchfork it's getting some de-rusting love at the same time.

I guess this guy has done the same thing only with a cast iron skillet:



He just sands and polishes it. Love how those eggs just slide around and it does look beautiful. What I'm curious about though is how to maintain it once it is at that level.

Hi Rob. Short answer, you cannot keep a bright steel finish on mild steel other than by frequent polishing.
Although there are some options for steel items that are not going to be heated - waxes, clear varnishes - they just will not work on a stove.
Oiling the metal involves a fire hazard, as the oil may ignite outright if heated enough. If it does not burn off, the oil will still oxidize, producing a dark finish, even black.

Unless you keep polishing the surface, which means wearing it away bit by bit, it will discolor and darken from an oil finish, or just plain rust if unfinished.

Wish I had better news.

Thanks for that Peter. It's good to know so I can stop pursuing it.

Hi Rob, citric acid is a cleaner that can be purchased from home brew stores or coffee shops. Mix the powder thickly and leave on the steel for a few hours, remove with water and steel wool. Then I would oil the surface like a cast iron pan. This will discolor, but not completely and you can cook right on the stove top.

Hi Bill, thanks a lot for this.

I did end up cleaning the surface of rust and oiled it like a pan but a few issues arised. Mainly smoke as the oil got too hot and burnt. The house got filled with the stuff. The kitchen gets filled with smoke when dealing with just a pan, but this stove surface is about 15 pan sizes! In addition to that, since the stove runs when doing a slow roast for 3+ hours all the oil is cooked away and gone, meaning reapplication every time and a lot of smoke each time. But maybe that is just the oil I'm using?

Back when I was a kid I worked at McDonalds and we had these big grills for cooking meat. I guess they were made of a different kind of metal. Anyways the metal never turned black, and I don't recall there ever being smoke like this. I don't think they ever applied any vegetable / seed fats to the surface - I think it was all just fats from the meat.

Sorry Rob,
I should have mentioned what type of oil to use. Flax oil aka BLO boiled linseed oil is the only edible drying oil that I know of. This is what you want to use on all cooking CI. It sounds like you are using something with a low smokepoint, causing all that smoke.

Make sure to buy the good BLO and not the stuff with chemical drying agents.

The key here is thin layers of oil are polymerized by heating past the smoke point and cooling. Apply the oil to the stove warm and wipe it off, then heat up the stove the rest of the way. Do this several times and each time there will be less smoke.

When you have a good coating, you're done!

I'll have to try it with the boiled linseed oil.

I don't know what I was thinking Bill! Thanks for that.

Is that a french stove?

David

I think so David. It has an oven in it underneath, and down the end on the far side of the fire some sort of hatch that a big metal tub sits in.

I thought I recognised the style I have looking to .....er .... obtain one here in France .
Sounds like it has a tank for hot water attached beware these often leak . Does it still have a tap ?
I wonder how one got as far as you ?

David

Obtain?

It looks like they just built it here custom. The brickwork attaches straight into the chimney.

There's no tap but it would be cool if it produced hot water. I could imagine filling it with water and scooping it out with something.

It reminded me of this one http://www.leboncoin.fr/ameublement/769493140.htm?ca=18_s

David

We're going to restore this one soon. It is original to the 1927 home restoration that we have underway; there is a hot water jacket still intact and a 40 gal tank stood next to it that was heated by natural convection