It's a vintage Tappan oven that used to belong to my Grandmother. It's hard to get any specific information on it, but I do know that these things have some value among collectors. There's a great blog about called Tappan Talk. As best as I can tell the oven I have would be a model from the mid 1940's.
It was made by the Tappan Stove Company based in Mansfield Ohio. We're not exactly sure how it got here but it was most likely imported by my Grandmother or her sister sometime in the late 40's early 50's. Many delicious American Style Apple Pies and Fruit Cakes would have been baked in this over the years. The Tappan was used up until the 80's to even the early 90's before being replaced with a modern oven, eventually it was stored away in the back of our house and has been in a state of disrepair for quite some time.
Just this week we moved the Tappan to the factory where we could safely store it in the warehouse. Coming from our car restoration and modification background I could not help but see the potential it has. The oven body is not unlike a car body. Sheet metal over a metal frame. I decided it would be pretty cool to restore the vintage oven body. The original burners are still there although they look too far gone to salvage. I figured it would be pretty neat to retrofit it with modern oven internal bits, burners gas control and the like (I don't really know the exact terms yet, this is something I will have to learn). In short it's something that would end up not unlike my '79 Lancer. Vintage looks on the outside, but updated a bit with some modern technology. A Resto-Mod.
The rust has gone through quite a bit of the structure. The hinges that hold the doors will all have to be repaired or replaced with custom fabricated hinges.
The original stove top burners. The valves and related parts must be all dead. The plan would be to replace all the internals with modern stove parts and have the fire come out of the vintage grill.
This is the baking portion of the oven. I have no idea if it's missing anything or not. But this will also be suitably modified with modern internals to work.
Rust! I see this kind of rust damage on old cars all the time. I will likely have to call in our tinsmith to give this some new steel.
It's all dirty in places that you don't normally see. Just like in an unrestored car. These are all going to have to be made nice and clean.
I've wrapped up the Tappan in plastic and stored it nicely first while I do some research into what exactly needs to be done to get this project rolling. I'll update this as we go along.
If you're curious about the monster behind it in the pics...
That is a vintage pneumatic boring machine. Maybe a project or story for another day.
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