I'm going to try the lighter trick. If it's not bad, I will do the same and just wait till the heating season is over. I agree that if I'm going to monkey with it, I might as well just do the whole thing.
Are you going to replace the gasket between the glass and door frame also? I usually take out the glass once a year for a good cleaning, but I don't remember it being all that bad last summer when I did it. Seems like this gasket really shouldn't need replacing for a long time since it doesn't get the constant wear like around the door edge.
Its not just wear and tear that eventually wears out gaskets, its also the heat that breaks down a gasket.Constant heating and the unit cooling down puts a beating on the gaskets and eventually need replacement.We had a lot of equipement in the Navy that ran 24-7, and we rarely had problems with them as they never cooled down.In our engine room we had a forced draft blower that had never been taken off line since 1971, and had 145152 on its hour meter and had never had a gasket replaced on it,ever. The other blower was taken offline regular, and it had gaskets replaced twice in its life time.
Do yourself a big favor, wait until spring time when you dont need your stove running if you can, then replace every single gasket in the thing at once.It will save you some grief in the future.Gaskets are cheap.