While in the Toowoomba area we took the opportunity to drive out to the Jondaryan Woolshed for a stickybeak. It  is a very interesting place with a heap of history. One of the many things I saw there was this beautiful old 18 inch Albion oven. I’ve never seen the lids marked this way before……only with the oval shaped logo. Thought Id post the photos for others who haven’t seen one
I asked the bloke who was cooking dampers at the time if he knew much about it …..His answer….” That old thing??…Buggered if I know where it came from……...we use it for a stew pot on busy days…leans up against the wall there mostly.”
He was using the roughest looking home made camp oven Ive seen to cook dampers in at the time. Sort of left me scratching my head…….I know which Id rather use….lol….any way his choice…..he’s cooking.

SBB
Hansen & Walton were the original owners of Albion Stove Works in Maryborough before John Walton moved to Brisbane to start UMI.
LogFire

That's fantastic.  Have moved it to the "History" section as we need to keep that.

Stumpy the oven in question can be seen in the left bottom corner of the photo titled cook house 2 . Sorry havnt got a better photo. It was basicly a 7 - 8 inch wide strip of steel plate rolled into a circle and welded. The bottom was a round piece of the same gauge plate welded in. the top was made pretty much the same way.....had short legs made from one inch pipe from memory. The whole show would have been about equal to a 20 inch oven.
SBB

Thanks SBB

Homemade cookware really is a genre in it's own right. It never ceases to amaze me the serviceable cookware which old coots out in the back blocks have knocked up out of a bit of old scrap.

Many years ago, I attended a clearing sale near Broken Hill and during the sale I happened to stumble across what appeared to be a camp oven made out of a couple of old truck brake drums. It had 3" long legs welded to the bottom drum and the holes in middle of the drums which would normally take the wheel hub housing were nicely filled and welded with thick metal plate. The drum which formed the lid also had locating pins, so as to engage with the bottom drum or pot.
It looked a little rough but I'm sure it would have been a treat to cook with.

Brake drums are steel, and if cleaned thouroughly, there should be no residue....  If not, I am stuffed!!!!!

I used to.. We had our equivalent to a Pot Belly stove made of two brake drums..  It was complete with a door cut in the side and chimney flue spigot in the top.  (It was the first thing I ever cut with a plasma cutter and the first serious bit of MIG welding I ever did....)

We made a deep bowl out of a medium sized brake drum for cooking stew...

I left it all at the house we built it for coz it was too dang heavy to move...  (Wish I hadn't now, as it would have been ideal in the back yard instead of a brazier.)

If I was to build another one, I prolly would build one out of an old beer Gas cylinder (100kg one)

BillyBushCook wrote on Feb 21^st, 2009 at 2:35pm:


Absolutely....  Steel, cast iron.. Significant differences... but spoken as the same...  Bad me..

Yup the thing looks the sameish...

I made the frame it sat on the supports for the heat shield at the rear..    As I said, the most significant MIG welding I had done to date..

Geez I hate it when a pedant out pedants me...   

I don't know the down side of cooking in bronze but when I visited Billmans foundry last year to pick up some COs Max the owner gave Sundryed and meself a tour around the joint and a lot of the casting they were doing was in bronze.
They had a Holden there, in pieces, which they had used to cast a full size bronze replica of with Peter Brock standing on the roof. It was destined to end up at Bathurst, has anyone seen it ?

pd

poddy dodger wrote on Feb 25^th, 2009 at 12:22pm:


Thanks for the tip PD, I will give Billmans a hoy to see if they would be interested in knocking me up a 15" in bronze.

I was at an Elmore Field Day about five or six year ago and there was a bloke there selling solid cast iron Chimnea made from 120 year old cast iron water pipe which was apparently excavated from Bendigo’s water supply system during a refurbishment; anyway he also had one made of old bronze water pipe. It weighed a bloody ton but by jingos it was bloody impressive chimnea, with solid bronze walls over one inch thick and a beautiful coppery patina.

My vibes are that after having gone through countless eras of technical development, including the bronze age, if cooking in bronze made good food, we'd know about it.  

After all they spent ages eating with pewter only there's something in it like lead.  I know you can't combine tomatoes and pewter and folks thought the lovely, yummy, can't-live-without tomato was poison for the longest time because of that.

Start with google and something like 'cook with bronze' or bronze cookery.  & report back please,   You've got us curious.

Saw a 12" custom made stainless steel camp oven at the CO comp at Casino a couple of years ago. It was a thing of beauty (as I also suffer from "Chrome Disease" I'm attracted to anything shiny) but the owner said it took a bit of skill to control the heat over a fire and he only used it for display.
I was so impressed with it when I got home I tried to make one using a s/s bowl, welding legs and ears on it and fabricating a lid........ ahhh well, another unfinished dream lol.
Like you SJ, I'll stick to good old CI

pd

OK, just went out to get another beer & had another look,
The chemical components in all three Bronzes contain these elements in varying quantities,

Cu   Sn   Zn   Pb   Si   Al   Fe   Ni   Mn

Now going just from memory (yes I'm showing off now ) they are, in order:-

Copper,  Sn ?,  Zinc, Lead, Silicon, alluminium(pure), iron, Nickel & Magnesium.


Mick.

I'm only guessing now but I think Max at Billmans said he buys the bronze ingots in at $1800 per tonne, the cast iron comes in from scrap metal merchants, CI baths, manifolds, old pot belly stoves etc and gets recycled, you just never know what your oven was in a previous life.


pd

Hmmmmmm interesting PD.......does that mean I could deliver my own cast iron....an arm load of old broken FJ holden manifolds or the family bathtub and have it come back as a camp oven......be a real novelty oven...and a one off.....especially if you had the (before photo)

So there may be a chance however slight that I may in times past had a bath in what is now Jonno's 18 incher.
I'll be Buggered         

It would appear that many of todays commonly used cookware metals and coatings are not all that healthy either


STAINLESS STEEL

“The kind of steel used in most stainless steel cookware is not the best metal in which to prepare foods. Most stainless steel cookware sold in stores is of such a nature as to allow chrome and nickel to bleed out into foods as water and food chemicals react with the walls of the vessels as they are heated. The chrome and nickel salts are retained when ingested. They cannot be eliminated. They build up and in time can create troublesome conditions”. 

– Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review
Division of Science, Engineering and Technology, The Pennsylvania State University at Erie, The Behrend College, 16563 Erie, Pennsylvania, USA



NON-STICK COATED / TEFLON

Can scratch, chip and flake. "Exposure to Teflon resins at temperatures above 393ºF may produce a condition termed polymer fume fever characterized by flu-like symptoms such as chills, fever, body aches, nausea and occasional vomiting.

" Federal Aviation Agency Occupational Health & Safety Bulletin.
.


ALUMINUM

Very soft metal. Extreme chemical reaction between food and pan. "All Vegetables cooked in Aluminum produce hydroxide poison which neutralizes digestive juices, producing stomach and gastrointestinal trouble, such as stomach ulcers and colitis."

Dr. A. McGuigan's Report on Findings for the Federal Trade Comm. In Docet Case No. 540 Washington, D.C.

BillyBushCook wrote on Feb 26^th, 2009 at 7:29am:


Blood oath Mick, cast iron cookware does seem to have the least health risk.. Us cast iron freaks are not only the healthiest eaters, fitter than Mallee bulls (especially what with lugging those whopping great ovens around) and we eat the best tucker 

Speakin of health risks. My wife and I listened to this news report on the radio this mornin, which claimed that one glass of red wine a day for women was no longer considered therapeutic and actually increased their risk of cancer.
I then burst into laughter because the missus had this terrible, shocked, horror, ‘how much can a Koala bear’ look on her face, because 'her indoors' is quite fond of a glass in the evening. 

Naturally as a gentleman and a caring husband, I insisted on saving her from the evils of cancer by offering to consume her nightly quota of red … ; .............The offer went down like a lead balloon...... I just can't understand it .....

Saltbush Bill wrote on Feb 10^th, 2009 at 6:18pm:

Well it is not on site there anymore, after a recent vist.

KD

Kingsthorpe David wrote on Dec 11^th, 2009 at 5:51pm:

I hope I can stumble upon this locally one day.

KD

So does anybody know where the "Albion Maryborough"  Foundry site was in Maryborough?

KD

Heap blessings on Google Maps, KD.

1st I put in Maryborough.

Then for 2nd pic I put in Albion Street and it pointed to Albion Road.

But I did the screen captures after I had done step 2, so the arrow points to Albion Road in both pics.

     

Kingsthorpe David wrote on Dec 30^th, 2009 at 6:26pm:


David, it was definitely in Maryborough, Queensland.  The exact site I am not sure of.

PD has some information and may be able to shed more light on the old address.

Logfire did some research on Albion/UMI ovens and put it on this forum, possibly 18 months ago.

Derek - hows your serach engine.

H

Its in here somewhere,I remember it.
cheers George

Well, I would have thought the foundry might have been on Albion Street, as I showed above.

Are you all thinking that there is an Albion street only because people of that name ran a business in that town and the location of the street doesn't mean anything?

Kingsthorpe David wrote on Dec 4^th, 2013 at 6:03am:


Judging by the current frenetic activity for Aussie hardware on Ebay. I would estimate $700 plus, providing the vendor was prepared to freight, however if it was 'pick up only', then $450 to $500

Chally here are some photos I took of that 18 incher some years back. Its a very nice oven indeed.

SSB, It's still lookin' great mate!!!  I sure would have liked to have brought it home with me.

Jeff

Top job sticking that in the old post Derek, some entertaining reading Id forgotten about further back in the post.