Vargo Titanium Hexagonal Wood Stove - Anyone tried it?

[NetFrog]

I bought my Vargo Titanium Hexagonal Wood Stove about a month back and have done a fair bit of testing with it. The reviews looked great and on arrival I fell in love with the design, weight and flat pack.

However the love affair ended there. I just cannot get the thing to stay alight long enough to heat anything up. It has huge issues with lack of airflow, even with the door open. I'm going to drill out two holes on each side to see if this improves it (will lose some weight too which is a bonus) but this seems to be a pretty major design flaw.

It took me over an hour to heat up water long enough to cook some lentils and fry a few flat breads and at no point did I get 400ml of water to boil and the frying pan barely got spitting hot. Very disappointing but keen to hear other peoples opinions.

 

[woof]

Interesting, as there is one on ebay at the moment. So air flow is poor even with the door open ?. Have you tried raising it off the ground, so more air can come up from underneath. What are you trying to burn, maybe the pieces are to thick ?, not meaning to be insulting, just thinking of solving the problem. Do the air holes fill up/clog with ash easy ?. Have you tried a fire starting block to try & get the fire going.
I was interested in looking at one of these, what made you choose it over the honey stove ?.

Rob

 

[R.Lewis]

I have had no problems with mine. Not used it that much though. Being that the airvents are underneath and thus very close to the ground can cause issues. For example when using on grassy ground. Fuel is important, the wood you burn is critical for performance, for example with horse chestnut I gave up and used trangia burner in it (which really works great).

I have found that flames will come out of the holes on the base scorching the ground bad, in fact I burned a large hole in our garden table despite putting it on a scrap of one inch ply when testing it. SWMBO was not impressed!

 

[NetFrog]

I've tried just about everything - never on grass though ;-) Tried on the ground, on a wood offcut, and placed on the center of 3 stones to elevate it. Burned a great big hole in the wood offcut but still would not boil water. Tried with larch, birch and heather twigs. I am selecting very small twigs and mixing it up a bit, nothing thicker than my index finger though. I can get it to burn nicely sporadically but never for long. The heat stays at the bottom and defies the law of gravity by burning down instead og up! (hence the burned out hole in the offcut)

I chose it over the honey purely for weight reasons.

The bottom holes do get clogged, buring it for an hour to try and boil water will do that! 6 handfuls of twigs at least and forever having to re-add fuel. You can leave it without fresh wood and you have some nice hot charcoals glowing red but the heat is too far down and it goes out unless you add more, as which point it dampens and you wait another 5 minutes before repeating.

I've not given up on it yet - maybe drilling the holes in the sides will help, no idea why it did not come this way though!

 

[R.Lewis]

Maybe I need to try mine again, mostly used it as windshield for coke can alcohol burner! Will have a go maybe over weekend..

 

[NetFrog]

I have tried a fire starting block but only because I ran out of birch paper bark. No difference.

btw - how do I edit posts on here, most probably blind but I cannot see and edit button :-(

Oh - "You may not edit your posts" too much of a newbie? :/

 

[NetFrog]

Ahh that would make a difference perhaps R.lewis - try some wood and see if you can get a rolling boil long enough to do anything with.

 

[PDA1]

Here is an interesting video and discussion of a superficially similar wood burning stove.

http://www.bushcraftusa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=39905

This obviously works. A major difference is that the holes are in the walls, and there is a big hole for feeding wood.

Last eekend I was with friends in the woods and one used a paint can based stove. Big hole in the side to allow air and fuelling, and holes around the perimeter at the top to induce updaught and provide an exit for exhaust. I'm posting a picture on my web site at http://espressopaulo.com/11.html
It was a hot sunny day and the wood was extremely dry.

Looks like the holes in the bottom of your stove don't contribute much to airflow.

 

[ged]

Before you go prototyping with titanium at great expense, can I suggest that you make a carbon copy of your titanium stove using thin sheet steel? then you can experiment on something cheap and (if and) when you get the thing working right you'll know what to do with the titanium one.

As the maker of the Honey stove will tell you (he posts on here) it's no mean feat to get the air flow right on these things and it will certainly take more than a couple of guesses.

 

[NetFrog]

Agreed PDA - I did see a nice post elsewhere on an IKEA cutlery jar which made a most excellent stove. However it was non foldable of course which is one of my primary concerns. I'll post back with the results on drilling out holes on the Vargo - hopefully this does the trick

btw - I like the look of that emberlit stove, I should be able to reproduce that with the vargo - it should have came that way though! Cheers for the link.

 

[NetFrog]

That was an excellent video PDA. The emberlit looks to be far more advanced yet the same rough size and idea. Just goes to show how an idea can be implemented correctly and work well but a variation on the same idea can fail. Just under 50 UK bucks for the vargo. Fingers crossed is can be modded to give similar results. I empathize totally with the guy in the video on breaking up small sticks and expending a lot of energy doing so just to keep other similar burners alight (vargo in my case) it sounds like he has tested a few and encountered exactly the same problems I have having with the Vargo.

Shiny new kit is great but disappointing when it doesn't work well - I looked at that Vargo for a month before buying it *sigh* Just seeing that bacon sizzle in the vid and a boil in under an hour is making me drool ;-)

Much appreciated, great link and vid. Well found.

 

[NetFrog]

*boil in under 5 mins... edit function for new posters would be very nice ;-)

 

[rik_uk3]

Titanium is about the worst metal known for conducting heat so I'm not surprised at your stoves poor performance to be honest.

 

[NetFrog]

http://www.engineersedge.com/properties_of_metals.htm

Better than steel according to this chart.

Around ten uses so far on the vargo and it's starting to warp though.

 

[PDA1]

I looked at a few vids on Youtube of the Vargo. Certainly looked to burn OK, at least when the door was open and very small twigs were used as fuel. Another consideration is that it (usually) doesn't rain persistently over here in the US (except Pacific NW) so the fuel tends to be very dry, and stuff like pine cones have a lot of resin content, which helps ignition. BTW, agree with Ged re cutting your expensive stove without prototyping first. You can experiment easily with soup and vegetable cans to get an idea of the required air flow.

 

[NetFrog]

A more careful man than me would test - i'm just going to drill.

I have watched most of the vids - most seem to be endorsements of a kind (see how shiny new the vargo is in the vids). Real life testing for a month proved it really does not work so well.

Admittedly I am in the north of scotland where we are not renound for hot weather, but these were dry days and tinder dry sticks. Enough times to put some decent warp into the titanium.

It simply does not work as advertised. I'll post my drill holes next week

 

[ged]

...It simply does not work as advertised. ...

Then send it back and get a refund. I'd be damned if I'd put up with that.

 

[Paul_B]

Titanium is about the worst metal known for conducting heat so I'm not surprised at your stoves poor performance to be honest.

I don't follow that statement's relevance Rik. Its the flames that convect the heat not the sides of the burner. If anything the side walls of the burner not conducting heat well surely means more is staying in the stove to be convected up to the pot.

The Vargo stove is unusual I think in that it has a narrower top than base. That is described as a benefit as it concentrates the heat onto what you are heating. I wonder if there is insufficient draft of air from above the heat ends up being reflected back down. What I mean by draught is like what happens in you chimney. It is not the air blowing up from beneath but the wind blowing across the top creating a "drag" or a draught which kind of sucks the air out and sucks more in from below to replace it. The holes at the bottom need to work with the hole at the top under the pot too. Unless I'm way off the mark. I know I've seen somewhere windshields with holes at the bottom to be located at the front into the wind and holes at the top leeward to aid this draughting of the air.

I think as someone said try not to experiment on the titanium stove but try to mock your experiments with some cheaper materials if you can. Afterall stove airflow is a complicated thing, its effectively aerodynamics or fluid dynamics which I know from uni days is very much a complicated thing. Jeez! I still remember the equations involved in fluid dynamics. They're horrendous!!

 

[Andy BB]

Return it, then get a Pocket Cooker from the States for about $12 that works brilliantly and folds up small. True, its a bit heavier, but provides a decent rectagonal top for use with pans etc (much more stable than the Vargo), and works like a charm. Can even use a penny stove in it (can't remember now if the Trangia fits..)

http://www.innoprousa.com/pocket_cooker.htm


Update - according to Bushcraftusa the Trangia fits inside as well.

 

[mountainm]

Return it, then get a Pocket Cooker from the States for about $12 that works brilliantly and folds up small. True, its a bit heavier, but provides a decent rectagonal top for use with pans etc (much more stable than the Vargo), and works like a charm. Can even use a penny stove in it (can't remember now if the Trangia fits..)

http://www.innoprousa.com/pocket_cooker.htm


Update - according to Bushcraftusa the Trangia fits inside as well.

I have one of these I'd be will to swap for something?