A practice rocket stove my father built. Photo by Grey Catsidhe, 2014
I’ve been really curious about rocket stoves. I see people interested in sustainability, survival skills, and camping post about them from time to time. Turns out, my father has been interested too. He’s more mechanically-minded than I am, so he made one using BPA-free cans (supplied by yours truly). I also helped him by gathering fuel on my most recent nature walk. He finally tried it and, for just a tiny test stove, it was really impressive! Before I got my camera out, the flames were quite large. My father feels confident that he could have boiled water with that.
I might not have a proper fire pit, but perhaps a little rocket stove could get the job done if I ever wanted a flame large enough to make offerings into.
Have you explored rocket stoves?
No, I haven’t but I’m going to now!
They’re so fascinating!
There’s a lot of videos on the web about how to make them, but for humping a pack for a few days I either use a Fire Maple turbo stove (gasoline powered), the coleman WW2 standby for the car camping, and most recently I got a biolite stove with a kettle. The first two use standard easy to find pump gasoline, but the biolite is just amazing.
http://biolitestove.com/products/campstove/
It’s heavy – really heavy compared to the FireMaple which has been a good stove for hunting but less heavy than the coleman boat anchor. I’m not personally huge on the USB charging feature, but what it does is have a fan so it’s a rocket stove which uses the electricity generated from the fire to power a fan, which increases the efficiency of the rocket stove. Plus they’re fairly good folks who design the thing too.
If you’re careful, you can get them at EMS for half off when they’re on sale. It’s still pretty steeply priced compared to two tin cans, but being able to automatically maintain that rocket stove fire with just wood and being able to carry the thing (the outer cage doesn’t get hot) is a real boon.
Thanks for the thoughts and suggestions! Much appreciated. 🙂
I built one last year to boil maple sap on. I was getting tired of going through a small mountain of wood every year to make syrup. The rocket stove is way more efficient although unfortunately it requires constant feeding. If you are interested, pic here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10202144159226927
Oh my gosh, I can only imagine… I work with some people who produce maple syrup, and I had no idea what was involved until I toured their sugar shack. I commend you for looking into alternatives! Yours is much bigger than our little experimental model!