Vernois A26 Mt. Vernon Il

Hi all, just visited your site and hopefully someone can help. Just bought this Vernois A26 wood stove. Looking for history, age, ect... but no luck, after 10 days of looking i stumbled upon this site. Wife and I are going to retire in a few years to a piece of property and thought this would be a nice addition to our cabin in the woods. we will be totally off grid, with neighbors within a few miles of us. Now... the burn chamber is cracked but hopefully we can get it welded, it does have water inlet and outlets, so we thought his would be a nice backup to heat water. I have seen similar stoves of this type (but not many, 3 to be exact), the other one that is very similar is called an "Ideal B48W". The grate in the bottom of the burn chamber is round, with a spoon type of slide, not sure if its coal/wood or just wood.

Can anyone tell me what the general age of this is, or where i can look to see if its a japan knock off ? Is this thing that rare ? Been looking in Antique websites, ect.. cant seem to find any information on it anywhere.