Do yourself a favor, use your "really neat" antique heater as a conversation piece, maybe put a really neat plant on top of it but leave it at that. A professional person who looked at your heater gave you very intelligent advice on something you know next to nothing about. So now you are asking people in a forum who will never be able to see just what condition the heater is in or what exactly it needs to help you get it going. Maybe blowing your house up will convince you.

Well in that case the heater you have probably doesn't have a redundant gas valve so if the pilot blows out there is nothing to shut off the supply of gas. It'll keep letting raw gas into the burner until a source of ignition like the telephone ringing ignites it. Maybe someone can match up a valve for you, hopefully its someone who can totally check out the heater for you after its installed.

Theres no reason you couldn't adapt a Honeywell V800 series standing-pilot valve to your heater. You'd need a control transformer, wall thermostat and some type of limit control. You could even go with a programmable if you wanted it really fancy. Any competent HVAC or appliance tech who has some spare parts laying around should be able to put the system together. You'd want your pilot and main burners cleaned up and adjusted to make sure it all works properly.

Two things will happen. 1- you will destroy any antique
value of that heater if it is to remain an antique and sold
as one. 2 - that heater was never U.L. approved and it has to be recertified with U.L. approval after any modifications. You might want to talk to your insurance
company that holds your fire policy. They are the ones that sign the check after you burn the house down. Yes it
can be altered very easily with a safty device. I do it all
the time with obsolite gas fired restaraunt equipment ( hmmm, seems i've forgotten how to do that just now ) but it still has to be inspected and C.S.A. approved with a
new information plate and dates of the alteration. Your
system of codes may be non exsistant where you are but this is what we have to go through. Good luck

I have restored 6 Victorian homes over a twenty year period. I have always bought Humphrey gas heaters that were in good shape, ordered replacement ceramics if needed from a company in New York and had a plumber install them. Did the same with my Magic Chef gas stoves. Never had any trouble, they fit nicely in old coal burning fireplaces and work when ice or snow knocks out power. They are reliable and I hope you find a safety valve installation if the guy has scared you to death. The above hvac dude may never have seen one of these fully lit. It would take a hurricane to blow out the entire fire base as it rises up the ceramics, you don't have a pilot light going like on old wall heaters, to turn it on, you have to roll the gas knob and light a match, no pilot to be blown out. Then you turn it off when not in use, shutting off the gas completely.

My old gas-fired boiler had a thermocouple-controlled gas valve: the thermocouple in the pilot generated enough power to open the gas valve - to light the pilot, you had to hold the gas valve "open button" while holding a match under the thermocouple. Once the pilot lit (and the tc was hot enough), you could release the open button and the gas valve remained open. It was a great and, as far as I can tell, very safe system; it worked even during a power outage. However, when I replaced the boiler for a new, more efficient one, that system disappeared.

HU-927834475 - What comapy in New York has the replacement ceramics? I am fixing up a Welsbach and can't find replacements. Also, I will be using mine outside in the fall and want to run it off of a propane tank, anyone see an issue with that if I regulate it properly?

@Doug Hooper https://eastwaysales.com/ sells them

so this may be a dead topic but i bought the pilot light turn-off kit for a gas log fireplace ang hope to install it on my vintage heaters. Has anyone done that ben