Homemade Wood Stove

I'm pretty anxious to hear your results. It sounds pretty easy to do, and if the results are good, I have my first mod to my new stove. Good Luck with the trials!

Sorry if this is too big, I'm still playing with the sizing. However, this is the wood stove that I made. The pics are a little late, but I just got my camera. Let me know if there are any questions or modifications that I should make.

Kyle.. how does it work.. I mean enough draft to it and burn hot enough to burn clean?
Eddie

I'm still working on it burning clean. If you get it hot and get a good bed of embers going, It'll burn real clean, but when thats gone, you're out of "clean burning" heat. I just accept that when I put sticks on it, its going to burn w/ some soot. No real draw back to the soot, because you're already backpacking which means your dirty. I do however have to put a handle on the soda can, so I can lift the boiling water off of the stove.

It works really well a lot hotter and more efficient than I had thought it would. Plenty of ventilation. Although if I use something (like a Heiny pot) that covers the whole top opening, the fire doesn't have enough oxygen and slowly goes out. I boiled a coke can full of ice water (it really did have a couple of ice cubes in it) from my Nalgene bottle in about 8 min. The time went by fast, because, lets be honest, who doesn't like playing with fire?

hahaha.. yea well I never was on a time table when trying to cook. lol. there to have fun anyway.
Eddie

willky:
Great looking stove. I do like your idea of using a coffee can as your stove can. I do see where it will clean out easier than the one I made. Which you do know what THAT means? Back to the garage. LOL.
Thanks for posting the pics.
UL

No problem UL, and good luck. It wasn't hard to make, I just had no idea where to start. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Can't wait to see your new one. One word of advise. Put more venting holes than I did. If I use a Heiny pot, the fire goes out because the top opening adds to the chimney effect and helps with venting. A larger hole in the side for feeding the sticks should fix that problem, or you could put two 1"x3.5" holes on opposite sides. Just a though, and good luck!

willy:
It may be a little while before I can get to it. I'm nursing a really bad jellyfish sting that I received as a parting gift while in Mexico , so my right leg is not allowing me to do much more than just sit around for the next few days. But as soon as I can, I post my results.
Thanks,
UL

It was so kind of the jellyfish to leave you with a parting gift. I hope you had it on some bread or mabe some toast before you left.. lol
Eddie

Sorry about that UL. Jellyfish stings are horrible. I know how you feel man!

Thanks guys. Sorry eddie, they were out of bread at the time. LOL.
The doc's got me on steroids and $10.00 a pill antibiotics . Thankfully they seem to be helping quite a bit.
UL

just make the stove while you're sittin in you recliner. No big deal, just get the drill, a recipricating saw, and whatever else you need, and you've got it. Good "get well soon" project for yourself! Haha...

This stove was mentioned on another site. It looked like it could be simply reverse engineered and possibly down scaled.

Thought you DIY guys may be intrigued.


http://www.kellykettle.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage_new.tpl&product_id=2&category_id=1&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=67

Thanks HBH:
Unfortunately, the kellykettle in the link is quite a bit bigger than the woodstove that willky and I have made. The kk weighs 17 oz., while the ones that we made weigh slightly over 6 oz. and is only about 8" tall.
But thanks for the link.
UL

That was why I added the part about down scaling. Theirs was large and appeared heavy built. 3-5 minutes boil time on a wood stove was impressive to me. Not that I am usually in a hurry at all when BPing.

Sorry, HBH:
I mis-read your post. Thought you said it had already been down-sized. My bad.
BTW, I'm getting about a 6-7 minute boil time out of my WB stove.
UL

No Problem. Those are impressive boiling times. How much have you used it. Is pot sooting a problem? Hard to get going in a fog or mist where everything seems to be soaked? Do you carry a small bottle of alcohol or something to "boost" the starting?

HBH

I usually carry some cotton balls with vasaline on them. They're light and they burn long enough to get everything going. It doesn't take much wood so all the cotton balls are there for (I think) is to dry out the little sticks enough so they will burn, and then you just keep adding wood to keep the process going.

Sooting isn't really a problem. In the beginning it was, but now the pot is stained black and there isn't much soot build up at all.

HBH:
The first time I used this stove was when we had several inches of rain the night before we started a hike and it rained on us, off and on, during the first day. That evening I found some dry tender in an old hollow log and broke several damp twigs into small pieces. I used a cotton ball dipped in alcohol gel to get things going. Even with the damp fuel, the stove did great. It boiled the water in that 6-7 minute time frame and worked like a champ.
After I completed the stove, I started a fire in it to burn out the plastic film that lined the stove can. Once I did that, sooting of the pot can has really not been an issue. I keep the stove in a mesh bag and put it inside my pack and have not had any ash problems, etc, getting on my gear inside.
This is my main stove when hiking here in Arkansas, so maybe I can show it to you on a hike sometime.
UL