Hobo Stove help please!

[Nagual]

Hi there,

I was inspired by the thread on the hobo stove being made from the Woolworths cutlery drainer ( my local Woolies didn't put them on sale, they added 50p.. ) However I noticed Poundland had stainless steel cocktail shakers. I bought one today and bashed a few holes out of it and tried it out. It sort of works, while I blow into it, I get good gasification (sp?) and no smoke but for the most part lots of smoke, for it's size.

I've got a couple of pics of what it looks like, unfortuantly the light in here and my rather shameful 1.7meg cam make the pics a bit poor.

Looking down into it you can see the holes in the base and large hole on the side near the bottom.
Here you can see small holes that continue around the bottom of it.
Another view


So what can I do to improve things? Do you think I've scoobied it right from the word go?


Cheers, Nag.

 

[bushscout1]

Nag

Just bear in mind that it may become a bit top heavy, esp. if its got a small base.

I'm talking from experience here

 

[decorum]

Hi Nagual,

As you're getting a good burn when you blow into it I'd say that you need some more holes higher up the stove. Low air ways have multiple problems in a small, contained, area. It is likely that your fuel will block the air ways which causes problems with both incomplete combustion (smoke) and more importantly actually keeping, if not getting, the fire going. The lower holes will also become blocked with ash/embers which will then cause further combustion problems.

Hope this helps.




Oh, like the sig - I did and thanks

 

[scoops_uk]

Hi Nag,

There's not rally much you can do wrong. The smoke is either, not using dead dry wood or not enough air. Try it with dry dead wood (break a *small* dead branch off a tree, don't pick one up off the ground) and leave it for a good burn, things might improve once things get going properly. If it's still smoking it's probably no getting enough air.


Wood gas stoves are a bit more complicated than a simple brazier type thing. Have a look at http://zenstoves.net/Wood.htm for a few ideas

Experimenting and refining your ideas is half the fun

Scoops

 

[Ogri the trog]

If after adding some more holes it still hasn't improved.
you could always try turning it up-side-down, so you use the inverted cone as a chimney. Might require a little more lateral thinking but if you're stuck.........

HTH

Ogri the trog

 

[stevesteve]

Hi Nagul,
I recently used my Woolies stove for most of the cooking on a trip with my son and it's very effective but it has a lot more holes.

I tried to make a small gassifier stove, similar to yours with an old blow torch tin ~3" diameter and ~10" tall. It ran quite well for a few minutes once gassification (pyrolysis) started and the secondary flames were quite impressive. The downside was that feeding it with fuel killed the process so it only ran as a batch burn. Being small it only ran for a couple of minutes at a time.I think there is a size limit for passsive (no fan etc) gassifiers.

Also as Bushscout1 pointed out mine was too narrow and fell over twice while trying to brew up. It is sitting in the garage filed under prototypes that were interesting and nearly worked!
Cheers,
Steve

 

[Bodge]

Hi Nagual
I dont want to dampen your enthusiasm with your home made stove but, I think you could find it a bit of a challenge to get it working in a safe efficient manner.
IMO you would be better getting a wider one and following Waylands hobo stove plans from the ravenlore site.
http://www.ravenlore.co.uk/html/cooking_kit.html

I made this stove in 3 hours from a coffee caddy from wilkinsons for £3 ish
I had a small billy can already that fits snugly in the top. I found a billy can lid from an old cookset I had too.
It will burn anything you can fit in it. I use a tin of chaffing fuel for my first morning brew before I light the fire. I also take a few blocks of charcoal briquettes which burn for hours if I want to keep the stove hot.

I found my dremmel like tool to be most useful in the cutting of the square hatch too.

If you want any photos of mine let me know. like wise if you needed any more help.

Bodge