Portable Wood Stove II – DIY

Like I mentioned yesterday, my portable wood stove wasn’t burning that well. I used an extra piece of chicken mesh to (theoretically) improve it.

Below you can see my extended woodstove, placed on a solid surface and already filled with tinder.

Filled with wood, ready to ignite.

The goal of the evening was to boil a liter of water in my mess tin, and to make some tea. In order to save as much energy as possible I used my big mess tin as a lid on top of the small one. Let it burn! As it was pretty cold, and I didn’t use a windshield, I had to add lots of wood.

Only after 40 minutes the water was almost boiling…

The tea I made had a strong taste of mess tin and thermos. In other words: yak! Before you will like this, you’ll have to hike another 40 km. Sitting on the freezing soil for 40 minutes was not enough to appreciate it.

So what went wrong? To much heat got lost because of the lack of a windshield and because the mess tin stood to high above the fire. The opening in the wood stove was not big enough for easy refueling. So I had to use a windshield and probably also a lot less water. The wood stove is being recycled now and I’m already looking for a new container to build another one.