DS and I have been working on making homemade hobo stoves for the past few weeks. Here's our most recent creation - a fire kit to help 8 yo DS practice his fire making skills. (It's little heavy for my liking but easy enough to pick and choose for each adventure.)

The entire kit is contained in a reclaimed Pirouline cookie tin. There are two hobo stoves - a big one made of an apple juice can and a small one made from a regular soup can. Between them is a 750 mL can for boiling water in.

Between the cookie tin and stoves there's: a piece of foil from a AMK Ritter PSK, 1 waterproof tampon holder containing strike anywhere matches (protected with nail polish), 1 LMF fire steel and striker, 5 fire starter sticks, 12 esbit discs (in original packaging).

Inside the stoves are: 3 tea lights, 1 mini bic, 1 mini fire steel and striker, 2 skewers to form a grill using holes in stoves, 1 small can of sterno and 1 tin (that used to hold hot chocolate) of vaseline soaked cotton balls.

Before the lid goes on the kit, a black garbage bag is added. Here's how it all looks:

Very impressive!

So is your son a Weblo or Boy Scout?

He's a Cub Scout, Dagny. I think that translates to Weeblo. He's loving Scouts. He loves the outdoors and survival stuff. He hasn't mastered fire starting yet, but he's working on it. Our Scoutmaster is pretty awesome. They're going to let him hang with them at our upcoming Winter Camp, including letting him sleep in a quinzee this year if we get any snow.

We made a smaller version last week that fit in a different cookie tin, that's only slightly bigger than the 750 mL can. That one only had the small hobo stove, a couple tea lights, fire steel, mini bic, matches, smaller container of cotton balls, skewers, foil and garbage bag.

Once he figures out that this one is a little bulky and heavy, we'll likely adapt back to the smaller kit and put that in the bigger hobo stove.

Very nice kit.

Just saw a Pirouline can that looked to be about that size at Costco tonight.

Discalimer - No affiliation to either

Regards,

buckeye

Jackie.. you can get a little more durable cup (with stainless handles) with a Swiss Ranger Volcano stove, but wouldn't have the fun of making it yourself....you can get a sterno can and slightly smaller Trangia burner in it from the side if you open up the fuel feed hole (which is designed as a twig or Esbit/hexamine feed hole), or lower the smaller Trangia down from the top with a piece of wire... the Sterno is too large to just lower from the top... makes a 4" diameter x 10" long kit...and you would have an additional metal bottle (they have a cork top).. I got 2 new old surplus for about $20 plus shipping

That's it, Les. Feed the addiction. I saw a swiss volcano stove on you tube and thought "I want one of those!"

We're having fun making our own. We both carry a stainless steel cup. He's currently got a small soup can stove inside his, with his kleen canteen in that. It's worked pretty well but I can see already see that this is going to a long, possibly never-ending, quest to find the perfect set-up. Damn you stove guys!

Even better - that one would be filled with cookies. Mmmm!

We wanted something that could hold everything securely and also be used yo carry water or wild edibles if need be. I don't these types of cans would hold up to boiling but they make a nice, lightweight and durable storage container.

Hey, now wait just a doggone minute here.

HJ

LOL! You know I love ya Jim. I'm a little scared to start venturing into the fancier stuff I'm learning about from you though, in case my addiction grows.