It's hard to say because we can't see the inside. The firebox
should be lined with a kind of refractory brick. Often, these are specially formed and you need a kit that's made to fit the specific model of stove. It'd be good to know what condition that firebox liner is in.
The way these things work is that you start the fire with the combustion gasses going right up the chimney. That gives you hot fire on the burners right over the firebox. But to bake or get moderate heat over the burners to the right, you move a leaver that adjusts the exhaust to circulate over the top of the oven, down the right side, under the oven, and then to the smoke pipe to the chimney in back. Be sure that shutter and linkage mechanism is in good working order.
The right front burner appears to have a perforated pattern. This might be useful in some situations, but you'll want a solid burner cover for other times.
The turquoise is likely a baked enamel paint.
I have a 1970s wood range in my kitchen of a somewhat similar style to that one, in addition to the propane stove I actually cook on. I don't actually fire it that much. If I really intended to cook over wood fire all the time, I'd probably want some variation of a
rocket stove. It takes up a lot of room, and suffers slightly from horizontal surface disease, mostly in the form of mail and newspapers getting piled there.
In the book
Farmers of Forty Centuries the author relates that in 1906, some American missionaries in China got an American style wood fired kitchen range. The next day they found their Chinese cook with his little Chinese single burner stove cooking on top of the big range. He scoffed at the idea of cooking using the big range because of how much fuel it would consume.
Dan
