Hi!

> Maybe you're just not waiting long enough for it to come to a boil...
> you're expecting too much. Gas stoves are notorious for taking a
> long time to bring water to a boil compared to electric stoves. Even
> high powered residential stoves can take a long time. 15 to 20 to 25
> or more minutes is not out of the ordinary.

I gave up on the thing after 25 minutes. It heated the water to a point, and
just plateaued (sp?) after that according to my infrared thermometer. At
best, the water got to be around 190 degrees (F).

My parents electric Hotpoint range (http://greyghost.dyndns.org/stove.jpg,
640x480, 46KB) has no problem getting things up to a very good and rapidly
rolling boil in about 12~16 minutes. I'd love to find one of those stoves
somewhere, but I'll bet they are hard to come by.

> On gas burners being adjusted properly, if the burner is "too lean",
> with too much air getting in, they tend to be quite noisy (and maybe
> hard to ignite). If the burner is "too rich", the flames are no longer all
> blue, but have a lot of yellow or orange in them.

The burner ignites fairly easily, and the flame is a nice steady blue color,
with the odd yellow/orange tip. There's some soft hissing from the burner as
it runs, but nothing more than any other gas appliance would make.

Interestingly enough, the burner controls are not completely independent of
one another. If another burner is turned on, the flame drops in intensity
with the other burners.

Is there any kind of standardized procedure for adjusting burners?

> Regarding the age of your stove, I would think it is a lot older
> than 1998 if it has a mechanical digital clock.

The design of the thing is very reminiscent of a late-80s stove. But the
date under the cooktop is clear--February 1998. It must have been a *very*
cheap stove. On the plus side, being as the clock uses the 60Hz AC line
frequency as its reference, it is very accurate.

The numbers roll over on a cylinder.

Thanks for the information. The more I think about this, the more I think of
selling this stove to someone who can use it. Since I'm going to be gutting
and rewiring the house, I think I'll just take the gas line out and put a
stove plug in its place.

William