Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting What's wrong with this stove?

You can buy this stove for $50. That includes all the flue pipes and accessories. You can get it for less of you want to bid for it on EBay. I see several stoves priced at $200 to $300. In some cases that is for just the stove and you still have to buy the flue pipes and accessories.



http://www.ebay.com/itm/Portable-Mi..._DefaultDomain_0&hash=item484c781e1b

Examples for comparison include the Camp Chef stove at Cabelas on sale for $200, the Two Dog steel stove from Four Dog Stoves for $200, and the Valley stove from Davis Tent for $349.

My question is what's wrong with this stove? Why would anyone spend $200 to $350 on the same kind of stove from another source? Is the quality that much better? This is advertised as a military surplus stove so the quality must be pretty good, right?

KC

dunno, but curious myself. looks decent enough.

Finally someone made a stove with rocket launchers.

I thought those were torpedo tubes.

KC

Maybe it's just me, but the legs look really weak and wobbly. I bet it is pretty cheaply built.

You couldn't buy the iron for 50 bucks. Has to be made in china.

It may be big enough to heat a tipi/range tent or 8x10 wall tent.

Go for it KC!

You've got deep pockets.
Heck $50 is only 1/2 a tank of gas.
Report back on whether it works or not.

If it falls apart you can use it for a composter ... or something.

I bought one of those a couple of years back. For 50 bones, it really is a good little stove. For cooking, since there is no flat on top, the heat is only in the center, but I can deal with that for the price. There are plenty of draft adjustments for a decent fire and the legs are quite adequate. Since I use mine outside, I only use 2 lengths of pipe and fold up a piece of steel door screen to stick in the top for catching cinders. I don't want to start anything in the beetle kill high country.
Downside...the wood must be cut a bit smaller to fit in the door. And yes, it's made in China.

I was thinking the same thing

Not really. No more cheaply built than your bbq grill out on the back porch.
I had the same reservations for quite awhile before I figured fuggit and put down my $50.

30 lbs total cant be very heavy duty built. With free shiping though, might be worth a try

If nothing else, the legs could be modded to add strength. If the main body turns out to be too thin some extra steel could be added to help out as well.

IDK, but usually if it seems too good to be true it probably is....

I've always thought that wood burning stoves were over-priced so it doesn't seem to good to be true to me. ikesdad has convinced me. I've gotten by with a used sheet metal sheep herder stove for over twenty years. This has to be an improvement. But I won't throw away the old stove until the new one has proven itself.

KC

KC, how big is your old sheep herder stove?

Don:

It's pretty big. I just measured it. The firebox is 16" wide x 24" high x 24" deep. I can put several good size chunks of wood and a lump of coal into it. The firebox on this stove looks like it's a lot smaller.

KC

yeah. it says 18 long...Eyeballing the diameter it may go 9-10 inches. Burn times won't be long. And with a 2 3/4 inch flue, output can't be much. I don't think I'd want to heat my little 9x12 with it, as you'd be runnin' it wide-open and sitting in front shoveling in the wood. It would be good for an ice-fishing shanty or small tipi.

Mine worked good here in southeastern Oklahoma but really had a hard time getting a good draft with the 2 3/4 stove pipe when camping during elk season at 10500 ft. Also burning dead spruce we had to take the stove pipe down daily to clean the pitch out of it.

It heated my 14 X 16 Davis tent fine once we did get the fire going. I did have 2 extra pieces of the pipe making the stack pretty tall and that may have been part of the problem.

The next year I bought the Camp Chef Alpine Heavy Duty Cylinder Stove and I have not had any more problems.

So, cheap ass paint and non-galvanized steel.