Max Planck

Rory Brennan wrote:
-has at least 4 stove-top spots
-has a good amount of oven room
-will last a long time through heavy use
-also does a good job at heating a house

Unlike a gas or electric range, the cook-surface of a wood- (or coal-) fired cookstove has infinite "spots."  Just move your pots and kettles to the location providing the temperature you want.

It will be hard (I think impossible) to find a cookstove with an oven the size of a standard electric or gas range, but some are larger than others.

It seems most commercially-available cookstoves, today, have large fireboxes -- hence, relatively good for heating.  They compromise, though, on cooking.  It is not too hard to find videos of people cooking on/in one of these stoves while having all their windows and doors open to winter weather outside.  And the cooks still sweat.  Bringing these stoves up to adequate temperature to cook with makes them shed a lot of heat.  A smaller firebox works better for cooking, but will not provide the heating you require.

The Amish-built stoves (notably Kitchen Queen and Pioneer Stoves) are made of steel, as opposed to cast iron.  Steel is more prone to warping than cast iron (possibly suggesting something about your third requirement).  However, these stoves have large fireboxes and can heat good-sized spaces.

The Margin Gem has a more moderate firebox, though not small, either.

Homewood stoves are all cast iron.  They are manufactured in New Zealand, and are not cheap, but appear to be exceptional-quality stoves.  The Heritage model has a mid-sized firebox.  I have not explored the other models.

Jamie Chevalier wrote:A pure cookstove has a small firebox, so that the wood is very close to the stove top and a small fire will have a fast effect.

There seem to be a paucity of pure cookstoves these days.  Evidently, the demand is for heating stoves with ovens and glass in the firebox doors.  Anyway, that accounts for almost everything "cookstove" available, today.  Margin still makes no-nonsense cookstoves.  The upper-end Esse ranges are made for cooking and not heating.

I am not disparaging heating stoves with ovens.  We used a Kitchen Queen for years.  For those who want heat and the option to do some cooking, such stoves can be ideal.  Notwithstanding, some people have purchased that kind of stove and then found cooking with them resulted in an overheated living space.

Jamie Chevalier wrote:I rented a place with a Waterford cookstove and it was truly impressive how fast you could go from a cold stove to hot coffee in the morning. Conversely, if you weren't around to feed that tiny firebox all day, the house got cold.

We have a Waterford Stanley, now.  I concur completely with this statement.  It heats up -- even from stone cold -- very quickly.  But, yes, if we plan to be gone for an extended period, or even over night for that matter, a good sized chunk of hickory helps, but the house is almost surely cold after we get home or up.

Nancy Reading wrote:The hot side never gets rusty. ... The cold side or simmer side I use far less (I tend to slow cook in the oven instead) and that has become rougher and of less use as years have gone by.

The cooking surface on our Waterford is, mostly, porcelain coated.  The region over the firebox and a large lid in the center are bare cast iron.  I am not sure I ever appreciated why that was done, but perhaps Nancy's experience explains it.  It is certain the porcelain keeps the cast iron from rusting.

Saana Jalimauchi wrote:The oven we have, I'm supposed to light a fire in it to warm it up.

Is the oven connected to the flue?  In other words, if you light a fire in the oven, can the smoke escape?

Saana Jalimauchi wrote:One thing that bothers me is that I feel like the stove top is put down the wrong way around. If it was the other way the two smaller "hot plates" would be right on top of the fire.. I might be wrong though. Does anyone have any idea on that?

In a conventional wood-fired cookstove, the eyes on the right would be to access the side of the oven for cleaning.  It is not clear to me how your stove is configured, so I do not know if that could be a reason or not.