Picked Up A Cool Old 22 in MBH Black Kettle - OfferUp for FREE!


 

Jon Tofte

TVWBB 1-Star Olympian
I was trolling through OfferUp and came upon a 4-minute old listing for a "Grill". I looked at the picture and new it was a Weber MBH (metal bowl handle) kettle that had to date to the 1970s. Best of all, it was FREE!

I contacted the seller and had it back at my house an hour and a half later:

I will need to look it over more closely in better daylight, but it doesn't look half-bad. Has all of its bottom vents. Based on the vents, I have dated it to 1975.

The only sad thing was that when I showed the seller a picture of my 18" restored kettle he saw the ash pan and said that he had it "somewhere". He looked a little but couldn't find it. It was free, so I couldn't really push the issue. There is a guy in the Weber Kettle Club who makes amazing replicas of these old ash pans, so I plan to get one from him.

Anyway, look forward to a fun restore and this time actually USING this kettle. It will go great with my matching red MBH kettle.

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Great find Jon I would love to find one of those. I finally did find a 22 kettle for my kettle pizza in good shape for $20, I pick it up this afternoon. I've been looking for almost 6 months all I found was beat to snoot kettles and they were asking $50-60, for that price or a few bucks more I could have bought a new one.
 
Rich,
That was a fortunate find. I really love the very old kettles like this one with the metal handles and individual bottom vents. You have to put up with their idiosyncrasies, though, especially the much slower and dirtier clean up. The one touch and ash container combination is definitely a lot more practical. I don’t get to use kettles as much as I would like, so it isn’t that big of a deal for me and I get to enjoy the charm of using a REAL Weber kettle from back when George was overseeing the action.
 
What's the guy's name that makes the pans?

His name is Jeff. He actually doesn't make them but distributes them for a guy in Austria who actually manufactures them. I haven't seen one yet, but the pictures and folks on the WKC confirm that they are top drawer. Not cheap, though! (I sure wish my "seller" could have found the original. You can do quite a bit with a patient, multi-step process of restoring these old-style ash pans as shown on the WKC site.)

Here's Jeff's email. Let him know that you received it from me if you decide to inquire:

jkolodz521@hotmail.com

Jon
 

 

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