However, if you just want to clean up a stove you have used before.....

Take it outside if you can, if not, put drop clothes under and around it.

Vacuuum it first.

Scrape off any crusty-ness you can get off with a wooden paint stick.

Using a wire brush work on rust spots.

When it's all clean, you can coat it with stove blacking, or even high-temp rated black stove paint. Both of these products will make it look very nice, however the first few firings of the stove will be very stinky, and may even set your smoke alarms off as the paint cures. If you've never fired the stove before, you may be hard pressed to know whether or not to ignore those alarms, so it might be better to fire it first and get used to it, then let it cool and then paint or black it.

Oh, yeah, and please, before your first burn get your chimney cleaned and checked, too!

Molly

And to Molly....I wish I could have my chimney checked before lighting a fire. I have the coolest fireplace/mantle, which I believe is actually a coal burning fireplace (it's cast iron), but the last PO had the top of the chimney knocked off when she replaced the roof. The chimney goes up into the attic but that's where it ends. :( Already way overspent getting this grand old lady where she is, so no money to have the chimney rebuilt. It's a dream....

Terry

We have a similiar woodstove, too! Someone had it out by the side of the road to be taken away but it was too heavy for the trash folks. We saw it from the garage sale next door and went over to look at it. If we would have asked, they might have given us something for hauling it away. We used a wire brush in a compressed air drill to clean the rust and rough stuff off. That took the rust and spackling off real quick. They had been remodeling so there was spackle and paint drips on the stove. I don't think it had been used much if at all, though. It had been put outside a house in Hawaii Kai on Oahu and it doesn't really get too far into woodstove weather there. We are too close to sea level over here on the Big Island to really need it, but at the "price" we couldn't resist. If we move to a higher elevation it will come in handy.

Stove blacking is easy to use and inexpensive, too. I think it is wax with soot added, but it makes it a proper sort of black. I reblacked the stove a year ago last spring and it has been sitting in the storage area under the house for a year and looks as black as it did the day it was finished.

A hui hou,
Cathy