I posted this on
another forum that I use, but I thought you might like to read my thoughts on the one I bought...
A place in Twickenham (
Funky Leisure) had them for sale at £49.95 and I popped down to have a look at one and to see if it would fit into one of my camping pots. It did, so I bought one.
So here's what you get:
A good fill of twigs:
Some smaller stuff and some paper:
Touch a match to it...
Within a couple of minutes, the woodgas catches:
After about twenty minutes (unless you feed it more fuel), you end up with this:
I did feed it some more and kept it burning for about an hour. Here's the aftermath:
Pure charcoal
The verdict? This thing knocks my home made stove into a cocked hat. Seriously, it's smaller, lighter, cleaner and focusses the heat that much better.
But wait - there's more...
I was wondering whether there was a way of fitting a Trangia burner into it. This is the stove with my Tatonka Trangia-pattern burner (same diameter, but stainless rather than brass and has a bigger reservoir).
You *can* just use the upper half of the stove as a pot support and put the burner on the ground like so:
...and the simmer ring works like this:
With a pot on it, you get something like this:
It works well enough - the burner's a little low maybe, but it's not bad. My only criticism of the stove design is that the fold-out pot supports don't go to the horizontal, so you need a big pot to cover them all for maximum stability. You *can* use a smaller, bushcraft-style pot, but it won't be as steady.
You might want to put the whole thing on a sturdy base - like this:
You might also consider a windshield if you're on meths:
Pondering the issue of how to raise the meths burner to a slightly higher position, I had an idea. Don't you just love it when things fit together this well?
(Julian hardly ever uses her granny ring these days, anyway
)
Now you can see where the burner (and simmer ring) sit when the top goes on:
There's even enough airflow that I can use this sturdy sheet ally windshield as a pot support, like this:
So there you have it. A kick-bottom, lightweight, top-lit, gassifying wood stove with added bikey goodness. A meths burning option for when you don't want to scrub the soot off your pan.
It all nests together into the first pot in these photos, along with the windshield and the burner. I'm going to knock up a nice little pair of soot-proof fabric drawstring bags for it all and give it a thorough testing on my first tour with it next week.
