Tom,

It's an old Dickinson Newport Solid Fuel Heater. It works great, but I have seen the newer ones and would not get one. This older model has lips on the inside of the door so no ash comes out. A firend got one after seeing ours and was VERY unhappy as the lips were not there and he kept getting ash fall out.

We use a product called "Fat Wood" to start our stove. It's full of pitch and so sweet smelling we LOVE it. We then use wood a lot of the time.

We have also used charcoal briquets, like the ones for Bar-B-Q, and have used them often. What I do is use the brown paper lunch sacks and put 5 or six in each one, then tie it up with a bit of twine. I know that each bag will heat the boat for about 4 hours. By looking at how many bags I have handy, I can tell how many hours of heat we have aboard. They also make stoking the stove easy with no messy hands. Jill likes that.

I tried hard coal, Anthracite, but was NOT happy with that. It burned to hot and was harder to control.

Recently (OK, so a few years ago) I found an oil lamp with a square base to it. I raised the fire grate and move it back, then light the oil lamp and put it in. I can then close the door and open the viewing port or not. If I place the oil lamp directly under the chimney, a lot of the heat goes up and I consider that the "low" heat setting. If I push the lamp back, the heat hits the inside top before going up the chimney and the unit puts out more heat, the HIGH setting.

When we had the boat on a lake back east it was always fun when it snowed. All of the foot prints on the dock seemed to end at our finger. Noting like hot coco with a shot of Amaretto in front of the fireplace!! BIG SMILE ON MY FACE!!!

Yours sure looks sweet!

Greg