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Can anyone help me determine the age of my Beast? When we took her apart last night, I was all excited about looking at the plate under the right front drip pan and seeing if I could figure out the old girls age. So, I cleaned off what seemed like a 1/4 inch of gunk... and what do I see? NOTHING!!! GRRRRRRRRR! All the writing on the plate has been completely obliterated!
Any ideas? The Beast is a 41C.
I have the metal logo, no color. Todd, do you know if they produced the 41C for that entire '49 thru '60 time-frame?
Here she is:
http://static.flickr.com/48/10871888...2048fe.jpg?v=0
OK, with a LOT of cleaning and a jewlers loupe, I've made out four consecutive numbers on my name plate.
159(I'm pretty sure)6.
In looking at previous posts I'm led to believe that the Beast was made in '51?
Maybe?
The C-series was produced between 1949 and around 1960 or so.
Does your Chambers logo on the backsplash have any color to it, or is it metal?
Well, I was thinking my two stoves were both 51's, too, but they have the solid name plates, not the script style, so that seems a little odd. Hmmm...
Here are my serial numbers. Maybe the format and someone's interpretation of them could be of some help to us both.
green 90C, green solid nameplate: 1-15568
yellow 61C, red solid nameplate: 1-23190
In both cases, the first digit (1) before the hyphen is preprinted on the aluminum model tag, and the following 5 digits are stamped. I had been thinking that the number before the hyphen referred to the year, but I may be quite entirely wrong.
Can one of our esteemed stove gurus help us with serial number interpretation? Thanks.
-Jenn
In looking at previous posts pertaining to logos, I think that my stove is most likely a 61? Jenn, I think that based on your serial numbers you have a 51 and a 52, respectively. I beleive that the red logos were used through the early 50's.
I'm still hoping to have a "guru" confirm my hostboard educated guess.
Well, no gurus have piped in, so I guess I'll add a bit of input.
I think it's unlikely that your stove was built in the early 60s. I'm pretty sure that Sammy D. mentioned that the 41C was made sometime in the mid 50s. Maybe he will comment on our aging questions if I can get hos attention to this thread.
-Jenn
I really don't have any solid info on the age of Chambers. All I know is what I have heard from other stove folks. "They" said. Who is this "They" anyway? "They" seem to be an expert in a lot of fields.
I don't think our ranges can be dated by the color of knobs or the type of Chambers nameplate. Chambers used their stove parts until they were used up, then made some more. I heard from a guy in Chicago about the Serial # indicating the date. It seemed to fit. This guy bought a house that had a bunch of Chambers literature and stoves and parts in the basement. He used to sell Chambers stuff on ebay, but I haven't heard from him in a while. He told me that The first number of the Serial# indicated the year. It seems to fit, but no real solid info to back it up. I have real Chambers Company info that does document the models and dates built (no serial #) from the early '30's to the beginning of the C model year. Can't document the last year of the Model C. If I really gave a durn, I would look for magazine advertisements to see what models were advertised and what year the magazine was printed. But those people on Ebay charge too much for their Chambers literature, Especially that Aggie / Tea sip in Texas......
Ok, this just gets weirder and weirder!
I'm in the process of cleaning the inner cabinet, for painting. And I found another tag! It was clipped on the top right, front of the cabinet. Approximately centered between the front burners.
This tag is roughly 1.5 inches long and 1/4 inches wide. It reads: 1B-1596. This ties to the, mostly unreadable, tag I found under the right front burner. Well, the last four digits are the same. I can't make out any thing else on that tag.
This number looks like nothing I've seen in previous posts. What's the deal? Have I got a FrankenStove? Freak of stove nature? Perhaps the 41C's were numbered differently?
Hey! There is another 41C on Ebay right now. Maybe I can get them to take a look at their tag and list the serial and model number.
Well, that was no help. The lady replied right away but, this unit doesn't have teh ID tag. FIGURES!!!
Well, I'm going to start another thread. Maybe there is another 41C owner that can help me figure out the mystery.
Look at the front of your service manual. There is a photo of the 41-c there. So that means that they were made in 1949. Some where I have an adv. from 1955 that shows the 41-c. I also have found the extra tag that you found on several but not all ranges.
If I recall my culinary history correctly, the 41C was produced during the later years of WWII. They were secretly commissioned from the Chambers company by the 33 1/3rd division U.S. Army special forces mess command.
As such the existence of the 41C was officially denied by the Chambers company and the U.S. Defense Department up until about the late 1980's when then-President Reagan declassified hundreds of previously-classified military cookware, kitchen equipment, and battlefield recipes.
Cooking technology is a key enabler of any successful war machine, and those combatants who can cook with the gas off have less gas to transport to the front lines, leaving more for special operations, and for fuelling vehicles and heating tents and such.
So given the secret origins of the stove, it's not surprising that the 41C's have no tags.
Smart(_I_)