Hey guys. I thought I'd post a picture of my latest hobo stove creation. It's a bit on the large side, but once a year I have a get together with a group of friends that requires a larger cooking system. Rather than hanging a pot over the fire, I made this...
I just did a forum search thinking that I'd posted the start of this earlier in the year, but it looks like I didn't. It's a 23 litre pan to give you an idea of scale.
It's been changed a number of times and could well still be changed more because the air flow isn't right. On the camping trip in May I had to do some fancy cutting of three beer cans to hold the pan above the stove. It's such a tight fit that the smoke didn't have enough room to escape, and it wouldn't burn.
The idea is that the pot slides fully into the bottle to make it as compact as possible. It all holds together with a buckle strap, very similar to a Trangia. I've drilled three holes about an inch from the top that I push six inch nails through to act as pot supports The pot stands on them perfectly, again a stolen idea from the Trangia stoves.
This is the third adjustment I think - I've now got twelve 16mm chimney holes just under the pot stands, and for a flat out burn I've added some 22mm copper pipe stands that hold the pot well above the top of the stove. That should mean that the fire can really rage until I bring whatever I'm doing to the boil, at which point it should be able to sit down on the nails and restrict the fire so the food doesn't burn. It's got a sliding vent on one large hole at the front for control so I need to get the little vent holes numbered to just allow it to burn when that's closed. I'm hoping to be able to simmer stuff gently, so I'm drilling a few holes then lighting it, shutting it down and then repeating the process until it's right. This could take a while!
What do you think? It's far too heavy to pack around but for a static camp it's pretty functional. It acted as the tea urn at the last meet, so we could just dunk a cup whenever we fancied a brew. Hopefully next year I can get it controlled enough to do a venison stew - one of the guys brought half a pig last year, and we had a roe deer the year before that. As you can well imagine, we don't go hungry!
I just did a forum search thinking that I'd posted the start of this earlier in the year, but it looks like I didn't. It's a 23 litre pan to give you an idea of scale.
It's been changed a number of times and could well still be changed more because the air flow isn't right. On the camping trip in May I had to do some fancy cutting of three beer cans to hold the pan above the stove. It's such a tight fit that the smoke didn't have enough room to escape, and it wouldn't burn.
The idea is that the pot slides fully into the bottle to make it as compact as possible. It all holds together with a buckle strap, very similar to a Trangia. I've drilled three holes about an inch from the top that I push six inch nails through to act as pot supports The pot stands on them perfectly, again a stolen idea from the Trangia stoves.
This is the third adjustment I think - I've now got twelve 16mm chimney holes just under the pot stands, and for a flat out burn I've added some 22mm copper pipe stands that hold the pot well above the top of the stove. That should mean that the fire can really rage until I bring whatever I'm doing to the boil, at which point it should be able to sit down on the nails and restrict the fire so the food doesn't burn. It's got a sliding vent on one large hole at the front for control so I need to get the little vent holes numbered to just allow it to burn when that's closed. I'm hoping to be able to simmer stuff gently, so I'm drilling a few holes then lighting it, shutting it down and then repeating the process until it's right. This could take a while!
What do you think? It's far too heavy to pack around but for a static camp it's pretty functional. It acted as the tea urn at the last meet, so we could just dunk a cup whenever we fancied a brew. Hopefully next year I can get it controlled enough to do a venison stew - one of the guys brought half a pig last year, and we had a roe deer the year before that. As you can well imagine, we don't go hungry!
