http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIANWSJAVGM

I want to make one!!!

Any others like it out there?

This is a great stove design, but I have been unable to contact the creator. Hopefully he will update his information.

In the meantime, I am building J. Falk's wood burning trail stove (http://trailgear.org). It weighs only 6 1/2 oz. and nests inside a tiny pot. I've used a Stratus wood burning trail stove for years (http://trailstove.com) and love it. But J. Falk's design is simple to build, costs around $2 for materials, is half the size and weighs more than 60% less than the Stratus.

Anyone else use either of these stoves, or do you prefer some other wood burning stove?

If I use a wood stove, it's a ZZip (http://www.zzstove.com/). It's heavier (17 oz.) than some, and not free but it burns like a forge. I've gotten flames a foot high out of mine and boiled water faster than my range at home. Charcoal, dung--it all burns under forced air and the ZZip will eat wet wood if that's all you've got.

If, however, you like to tinker, there are a ton of DIY stoves here:
http://zenstoves.net/Links.htm

Interesting concept. Cheap (always good), pretty good fuel economy, fuel probably easily obtained, but big, heavy (compared lets say to a soda can stove), and takes forever to bring a bean can (or so) of water to a boil. Probaby better than a plain old fire tho...

Hmm, that seems like an overly large downdraft woodgas stove. They work great if all you want is to boil water. You can make them a lot smaller though.

-Blast

Greetings ...

My name is Jim Falk inventor of the Compact Wood Stove. The Compact Wood Stove is a new design from my original one piece wood burning trail stove. It's a 2 piece nesting design with a pack size of 4-1/4" wide x 4-7/8" high and weighs only 6.5 ounces. It's the perfect backpacking stove because it's 4 stoves in 1. It's a wood stove, food warmer, slow cooker and a pot stand/windscreen for a backup alcohol stove. Get complete details on my web site at http://www.TrailGear.org.

You can also see a demo of the stove on YouTube at the following links ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN30_tG7S3A - demo video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XuwdQs5o0A - assembly video

Jim,

Welcome to the ETS campfire! I've looked at your stove a few times, I like how you can keep feeding wood to it unlike my wood gas stove. The 6oz weight is very nice, too. Do ou know if it's allowed in Big Bend? Campers aren't supposed to collect wood there for campfires, but I'm not sure if a small stove like yours would be allowed.

-Blast

Hi,
I wonder if what you mean is that it doesn't produce enough heat to boil anything other than water. Is this because when gasified it loses temperature?

I am wondering, approximately how long and how much fuel (I think they traditionally only hold 2 oz) would it take to boil 32 oz (1 GI canteen full) of water with a soda can alcohol stove.

The problem is that for downdraft woodgas stoves to work properly you need a tall chimney (at least 5" higher or taller) for the system to work properly.


The downdraft woodgas stove is a very efficient way of heating water. Twigs (brown lines) are loaded into the burner section of the stove and it on fire (red/yellow ^ lines) at the top. Once the twigs start burning air gets drawn down through the outer shell and up through the wood from the bottom. The fire heats the air (blue-purple-red line) as it flows down past the burner unit. The air becomes hot enogh that it begins distilling out the methanol and flammable gases from the wood. These gases begin burning and the wood turns to charcoal. Once all the gases have been burnt the charcoal ignites and burns down to fine ash.

The container holding the water (orange thing) to be boiled sits down in this chimney. I haven't had much success using a frying pan or sauce pan on top of the chimney as it doesn't get the full effect of the heat plus such a tower was unsteady. But it boils water GREAT.


Downdraft stove in action.

-Blast