Wood stove for hiking

[insect_eater]

No worries! Zen Stoves is a truly eye-opening cornucopia of stove history, innovation, and tinkering ideas - I suspect that it would take years to plumb it's depths.

I started my journey with a stainless steel solar computer-fanned retort/'gassifier' unit, which worked quite well, but ultimately it was heavy, relied on battery back-up, and its heat control was no better than simpler systems. Like the cone kettles they are good for car, motorbike, or horse/donkey/camel camping. The cone kettles I know are really focused on just boiling water, and most require separate cookware, increasing overall weight - so not really hiking-suitable.

The cone shields are very light and simple (and cheap if you DIY), can be multi-fuel, allow you to cook in your pot/mug, and can be rolled up and stored easily. Retort/'gassifier' systems can be incorporated to increase efficiency, at the cost of added complexity.

Have fun! Mind you - it's hard not to when you get to play with matches!

[disco stu]

Cheers. Out of interest, what sort of foods are you typically cooking on your set up? I don't like being limited to dehydrated foods, and given the activities I often do I will likely be frying up a bit of fish or meat of some sort

[insect_eater]

As you suspect, most of my hiking cooking is of the re-hydrate or one-pot type camp cooking. I found that once I'd gone to thin pot materials (especially titanium), heat doesn't spread, and spots burn easily. Combined with narrow heat spots from small stoves, frying becomes very tricky. Carrying oil/fat and cleaning up afterwards adds complexity and weight that doesn't add to my experience on the type trips i do, although i can imagine trips where it would.

With car camping, I take a blue-steel commercial crepe pan, perfect for pikelets, bacon and eggs, a few sausages or a couple of scotch fillets. It's light and flat (for a frypan) and indestructible. I use a wide-flame Kovea gas burner to spread heat as wide and even as possible. Even then cooking become a focused activity.....

If I was a keen fly-fisher walking big hills them the balance would be different. The Zen stover in me would fashion or find a smithy to shape a simple handle-less blue-steel pan to suit my my likely frying needs, and build a cone/shield to suit - to both support the pan and direct the heat. A leatherman squirt P4/PS4 (or similar) would be the handle.

My experience suggests that between the pan and the heat source it all comes down to creating an even spread of heat reaching the food, and controlling the level of heat. Frankly, I struggle with this one the stove top at home sometimes, so your skills must be way above mine.

I'd love to know what you end up with as a workable solution, I'll have one too!

Maybe the situation is analogous to the old engineering maxim* - maybe we can only choose two of: light, even heat spread, or fuel efficient when it comes to choosing a hiking frying system?

(*I suspect I'm about to learn that the old engineering maxim of only two of three particular things is nothing to to do with engineering, or maxims, or the number 3)

[disco stu]

Just cut it small and keep it moving! I do often carry a heavier pan for the frying than what others would, but it doesn't weight heaps and means I can cook a variety of foods (when I say do, I mean used to......haven't done much of sleeping out of a pack for a fair while now, due to health/lack of energy and time constraints. This is me trying to get back into it)

My intention is for this not only to be for overnight trips, but often if I'm intending to cover a lot of ground I like to throw a cooker in the pack to cook a decent meal/coffee. I would like to not have to worry about fuel with this sort of thing, just have the stove itself and grab some sticks where I am.

Not sure if you've seen the link I put in here further back https://timtinker.com/about-me/

I do like the solution he has where he just lays longer sticks in and pushes them further in when they burn in half. He says he gets reasonable control just turning off the blower to cool it down, turn it on for a little for heat to increase etc. I find most of my cooking out in the bush isn't set and forget so I'm there controlling things the whole time anyway.

That guy even has a 1kg packable tent stove with chimney that ha carries to use in the snow. Bright guy who seems to have played around a lot to get his solutions

[insect_eater]

I like your answer - cut small and keep moving is another heat management strategy.

Tim certainly likes the roar of a furnace, he obviously has an enviable workshop, and his gear looks like a lot of fun. It'd be exciting to spend an evening in the middle of nowhere in a Bell teepee with a tiny furnace to keep toasty warm - especially given his mention of tent pole/flue collapse - which would certainly add some spice to the night

In most forests there is ample fuel, and sticks are plentiful, so feeding a fanned stove makes best use of an ample fuel supply.

The gasifier approach (https://energypedia.info/wiki/Gasifier_Stoves ) has lots of drawbacks, but it has the key advantage of maximising the output of whatever small solid fuel is available. So if you only have twists of grass, leaves, twigs or dung, the passive retort system extracts the maximum heat from small amounts of fuel. So for me, camping in everything across wet forests, spinifex, savannah, or coastal scrubs, I need to be adaptable to my fuel type. It would get nowhere get as hot as a fan-based system, but if I was fuel limited, it would give me most usable heat for cooking.

However, being a fan of barbecuing on small Japanese konro (charcoal barbeque made from diatomaceous clay), I'm also a keen on the judicious use of the blower. What do you think about a tiny blower unit that could be used on any type of fire? Something that could be used on an open fire or into a stove of any type. A micro supercharger for the fire? Would fan speed be adjustable?

[disco stu]

That's a good point you make about frugal use of fuel, and what I was originally going for. If I'm honest though, the majority to all of my use would be in places where I'm not scrounging around for tiny scraps but would have enough to use blower style. That doesn't mean I don't want to still perfect the first idea.

On the zen stoves site I saw a link to a more perfected woodgas stove that actually seems to meet something I was thinking

http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/WoodgasStove.pdf

They talk about flame wick in there, and I pondered making the smoke/gas go through a smaller passage to increase the velocity instead of having taller chimney type for the same purpose. It might mean it can be made short enough that it is really stable, I'll just have to play with it. They also have a grate at the bottom to control air flow achieving my other desire of some heat control.

He does seem to use the little blowers that he has for larger fires, burning out stumps etc. Interesting guy with a lot of cool thoughts. I wish I had a spot welder of his calibre for various things I like to make. Maybe one day I'll put one together