Hi there,
I've got a new Vargo hexagon woodstove (titanium) and have tried it out today afternoon in my backyard. Unfortunately I can't upload any images (yet) but I guess many of you know how the stove looks like.
Just want to give you my newbie opinion on this stove and one lesson I have learnt from my experiment with my very first woodstove.
First of all, it fired very easily with the help of a cotton ball, some dried wood shavings and my ferro rod. The chamber is pretty small (roughly the size of a clenched fist) and therefore creates a lot of heat inside, so that any new stick that is added catches fire very fast and burns quite fiercely. The draft inside this little oven is very good, with the right dry wood it does not create any smoke (also not with my US army mug on top) and burns all the wood to small white ashes.
So far so good. Now to my lesson:
I had originally planned to fire two good hand fulls of sticks and then prepare my brew with the glowing embers. But that is hardly possible since the heat is so intense that the wood burns too fast and therefore the embers are reduced to ashes very soon. Although my water became hot enough for my tea, I could not get it to a rolling boil. Before it did I ran out of wood.
From this I learnt that my Vargo (and woodstoves in general, I guess) needs constant fueling with wood and cannot work on embers alone, at least not for a time long enough to boil water.
Next time I will prepare much more wood in advance, especially when I want to brew more than just some tea, and feed it constantly so that there is a good flame throughout. So, although my woodstove does not need much wood at all, it is necessary to stay alert and add new wood all the time (roughly every ~3 minutes I'd say).
Otherwise I'm really happy with my new stove and my little late-afternoon experiment in my garden. I look forward to taking it into the woods.
Cheers
Willow
I've got a new Vargo hexagon woodstove (titanium) and have tried it out today afternoon in my backyard. Unfortunately I can't upload any images (yet) but I guess many of you know how the stove looks like.
Just want to give you my newbie opinion on this stove and one lesson I have learnt from my experiment with my very first woodstove.
First of all, it fired very easily with the help of a cotton ball, some dried wood shavings and my ferro rod. The chamber is pretty small (roughly the size of a clenched fist) and therefore creates a lot of heat inside, so that any new stick that is added catches fire very fast and burns quite fiercely. The draft inside this little oven is very good, with the right dry wood it does not create any smoke (also not with my US army mug on top) and burns all the wood to small white ashes.
So far so good. Now to my lesson:
I had originally planned to fire two good hand fulls of sticks and then prepare my brew with the glowing embers. But that is hardly possible since the heat is so intense that the wood burns too fast and therefore the embers are reduced to ashes very soon. Although my water became hot enough for my tea, I could not get it to a rolling boil. Before it did I ran out of wood.
From this I learnt that my Vargo (and woodstoves in general, I guess) needs constant fueling with wood and cannot work on embers alone, at least not for a time long enough to boil water.
Next time I will prepare much more wood in advance, especially when I want to brew more than just some tea, and feed it constantly so that there is a good flame throughout. So, although my woodstove does not need much wood at all, it is necessary to stay alert and add new wood all the time (roughly every ~3 minutes I'd say).
Otherwise I'm really happy with my new stove and my little late-afternoon experiment in my garden. I look forward to taking it into the woods.
Cheers
Willow
