Old Ovens ROCK!


 
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So, a few months ago, I used the heatermeter to test the efficiency of my high end Viking electric oven. Here were the results ...

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Notice the crazy sine wave of temps, and never really reaches the digital set temp but only overshot mostly.

Now, since I moved into a new house, I inherited an old 1958 Wedgewood gas oven (yes, built in 1958).

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And here's the temp graph of this beast running for 2 hours ... and this was setting a manual 1958 knob to exactly 350 on the dial.

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Amazing how manufacturing has changed, an the attention to detail and longevity has gone to pot.
 
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That Westinghouse is in beautiful condition, I love those old classic appliances. I noticed the same temperature thing with my KitchenAid Dual-Fuel "Commercial-Style". The temps always had 20+ degree oscillations and never really around the setpoints. What I did notice is that if I used the convection settings, the temperature would be a pretty much straight line at any temp from 160F to 350F, although that line might be +/-5F and it would change every time you'd open the oven. That's pretty awesome though that the old Westinghouse is dead on accurate and still there after all these years.
 
My grandma had a old stove like that. I bet that sucker weight a ton, I kid you not. I would have loved to keep it, but what do you do with a 2000 LBS stove? LOL
Congrats & enjoy. Just don't plan on moving it any time soon
 
What you witnessed there is not the fact that old ovens rock but rather the difference in characteristics between on/off control VS some sort of modulating control on the gas valve.

The electric oven element is controlled by on/off control. it's the simplest way of controlling temperature when using an electric resistance element. It works well enough that no one can tell their food tastes off when their food is baked in their oven controlled by this method. You didn't even know it cycled like that until you trended the temperature.

In the gas oven, my guess would be that the oven uses some sort of bulb w/ refrigerant gas as the temperature sensing element. As the gas expands/contracts with temperature change, it turns a gas valve to allow more/less gas into the burner. Modulating control can yield a very flat response as what you've witnessed. It does not make sense to use on/off control in a gas oven because the burner would be cycling on/off way too much.

In theory, if a manufacturer wants to make an electric oven w/ a flatter response, they could use a PID controller w/ a solid state relay to pulse the oven element. This kind of control is commonly found in lab ovens that require tighter temperature control. I doubt there's much benefit to cooking your food under super tight temperature control though.
 
A Lee said:
What you witnessed there is not the fact that old ovens rock but rather the difference in characteristics between on/off control VS some sort of modulating control on the gas valve.

The electric oven element is controlled by on/off control. it's the simplest way of controlling temperature when using an electric resistance element. It works well enough that no one can tell their food tastes off when their food is baked in their oven controlled by this method. You didn't even know it cycled like that until you trended the temperature.

In the gas oven, my guess would be that the oven uses some sort of bulb w/ refrigerant gas as the temperature sensing element. As the gas expands/contracts with temperature change, it turns a gas valve to allow more/less gas into the burner. Modulating control can yield a very flat response as what you've witnessed. It does not make sense to use on/off control in a gas oven because the burner would be cycling on/off way too much.

In theory, if a manufacturer wants to make an electric oven w/ a flatter response, they could use a PID controller w/ a solid state relay to pulse the oven element. This kind of control is commonly found in lab ovens that require tighter temperature control. I doubt there's much benefit to cooking your food under super tight temperature control though.
Click to expand...

But it's COOL!!
 
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