If anyone's interested I just posted directions for building a woodgas stove on my blog:
http://intotheborderlands.blogspot.com/2008/01/homemade-wood-gasifier-stove-revisited.html

Woodgas stoves are twig-burners which preheat the air used in combustion. This hot air vaporizes assorted flammable molecules out of the wood and these molecules are what burns in the first half of the run. The twigs are converted to charcoal as these molecules are burned off (think making charcloth). After all these volatile compounds have burned off the charcoal begins burning and burns all the way down to a small amount of ash.

Not bad for three tin cans and a peice of steel mesh.

Sidenote: there are a lot of large pictures in the post so those of you on a dial-up connection might have a slow time with it. Sorry about that.

Sidenote #2: As with a alcohol stove, do NOT replace the recommended fuel (twigs) with Coleman fuel/kerosene/gasoline/cat/etc.

-Blast

Nice!

Dave

Izzy,

Well, she doesn't let me do the grocery shopping anymore as I would buy food based on the can it came in.

-Blast

Blast, cats don't burn well at all. The long 'wick' on the end is useless, as it doesn't soak up much fat, since most cats don't have much fat. They aren't even good as punks. But for batting boxes of strike-anywheres around the kitchen floor, they're great.

Sue

The use of any liquid fuel in this kind of a stove would probably be messy. It would probably be difficult to stick the chimney can on top of the other two, after you ignited the liquid fuel pooled at the bottom of the largest can. It would look more like a distress signal than a camp stove.

I think I'm going to try and make one of these myself! I love home made gear like a cat can stove but this seems much MUCH less finicky. And a wood burning stove is just what I could use in my cooker collection.

Okay, I've weighed this stove. It's total weight is 13.6oz which breaks down as so:

water bottle with cork: 2.6oz (74.6g)
burner with grate: 2.8oz (79.6g)
wire skewers: 0.5oz (12.9g)
chimney: 3.7oz (106.3g)
outer shell: 4.0oz (114.8g)

The weight could be reduced more by either cutting out the bottom of the outer shell can or replacing the outer shell can with a tube of aluminum cut from a heavy-duty disposable aluminum baking pan.

This weight does not include the petroleum jelly cotton balls used to start it. Wild tinders can work just as well.

-Blast

Blast -- when I grow up I want to be just like you. Seriously. Some people talk, others do. You're a do-er.

Neat stove.

Digimark,

Ah shucks... I'm just a paranoid egomaniac who hates tv and only sleeps four hours a night so I have plenty of time to tinker. Everyone here does cool stuff, I just talk about it more.

-Blast