For the past few months, I've been playing with a few different stove ideas to get lighter and multi-function. I think I'm finally getting pretty close. Essentially these are UL Sibley style stoves. There is no bottom, but the smaller one works with a stainless pan. You can't cook and heat on them at the same time, but you can cook or heat with them.

I do believe, that these are the lightest stoves period. The medium size one, weighs a scant 2.65 ounces, and the larger one, which is 15 inches tall weighs 4.5 ounces. With a damper, and pipe , you still can be under one pound. Thus far, I've been really pleased with the last two. The first one I made last summer, I ditched and thought the idea was horrible, but after circling around, and changing the profile and door, I think it works well. Not as well as a big box, but well and great for when you might want some heat, and it cooks very well as well.

Below is the large one, I haven't spent much time calculating size, but my guess is 700 cubic inches.



Currently, I plan on taking it out and doing a fair amount of testing. Perhaps we produce something at some point, or perhaps i just have a lightweight utility stove for wandering in the woods. I'm curious to hear your feedback. Perhaps after refining a bit more, if it's something we want to pursue, maybe we will put out a tester.

Thanks

QUITE interested!

How do you use it to cook, Kevin?

Maybe I'm missing the obvious, but how do you cook on it? Have you tried it in any sort of wind? looks like pipe movement could lift the bottom a bit.

Good questions,

The damper is a little special and doubles as a cooking platform essentially.

I have not tried wind, admittedly I need to tighten up the damper a bit, there are some things to do there.

It has hold downs for keeping it stable.

Maybe I'll just leave the stove stuff to you! I was playing with the same idea, but never got so far as a prototype. Couldn't quite come with a cooking method I liked the idea of. Looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

very interested! make us prototypes so we can help test!

This is a fun discussion of stove building:
http://zombiehunters.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=26369

The Sibley stove pops up a couple times. Here's a picture of the original:

Yeah, what he said!

Awesome. I was just thinking it would be neat to use a kelly kettle with a chimney pipe but haven't figured out what to do with the fire once the water was boiling. Shape looks very similar to your design.

This looks so sweet, I am very interested in this.

Thanks I will post some more photos shortly as I refine a couple things.

Here is how I envision using it. You can use the stove base on it's own, for cooking or use the base + pipe for heating. If I was day hunting, I might grab the base and take it with me, if I wanted midday tea or something I would light a little fire and heat some water. Although I love wood stove, in mild weather I don't always want to carry them. By integrating the cooking , and the stove and getting it to around a pound with pipe, it becomes much more palatable when the weather is good, since the stove base doesn't weigh much more than an alcohol stove with some fuel.

That being said, how would you guys use it ? Would you mostly want to heat water ? If it was adapted for use with stainless bottles would that be attractive ?

Thanks
Kevin

Don't ask me how I would use cool schit before I have it. I just know I want it, and I'd use it.

Yeah, an adaptation integral for using a stainless bottle would simplify heating water, that's for sure.

What I'm envisioning is using it to heat with, and heat water as a secondary, with an alcohol stove or one of those micro-rockets as "cook stove" set-up.

Can you show it in "cook mode"? I'm having a hard time seeing how you'd cook with it and not fill your tent with smoke.

You would not cook in your tent usually, perhaps a little I have a couple ideas on that, but currently you would cook outside as any wood cook stove that is not fully contained

I see said my blind eye. Gotcha.

Kevin,
I very rarely cook on my box stoves, mostly because when I get back to the tent at night, I want hot water "now" to start my dinner. I just use my pocket rocket to get dinner going and the stove to warm up and dry out. Wonder how much a weight a light plate for the bottom would add? Would make ash removal much easier, and would be safer by not having smoldering ashes on the ground.

Good point SpenceG

The smaller one was sized to use a 8" stainless burner cover on the bottom if desired. The bigger one is close to using a 10" burner cover, and I'll modify an upcoming one to be that size. The burner covers are available at target for $15.00 I think.

I have not weighed them.

I would be using this for heating my shelter and cooking would be secondary.

My may concerns is that it doesn't blow around with wind, it can be fed easily, and the design allows the "box" to be filled with wood. Obviously lightweight and packability are main concerns but i think you got that covered.

I am like the others. I am interested in the heat. For cooking I keep it simple with a 3oz stove just to heat water. I am very interested in a quick easy setup, and something that is not bulky to carry. A long burn time is of interest, but that probably is more of a product of what kind of wood is being used (hardwoods vs softwoods).

Is this something that can be a DIY project fairly easy with no special tools required?

Setup should be very simple (like seconds), and it should be very compact.

As far as DIY, yes with some titanium and some figuring. I'm not sure, if the savings will be tremendous for DIY, as one of my goals is to make is very simple and elegant that not a lot of manual labor is required. Heck, I still have some figuring to do , but there is always tomorrow.

Kevin

Best thread ever: http://zombiehunters.org/forum/view...amp;sid=c0b423de8f5bd03dd3ca5278cf821211

So who wants to sign up as a tester ? We will provide a stove only, so you need to have a tent and the required pipe and the ability to give it a few burns and provide some good solid feedback. A good story, setting or trip certainly helps as well.

PM me if interested. It would likely be a couple / few weeks out as we are pretty busy with stoves that are in production, so it's not a priority at this moment.

Thanks
Kevin

I love the stove Kevin_T. What diameter pipe does it need? I propose that a standard test fuel for wood stoves should be those new "Eco Bricks". One could time how long they last at what temp and then set up a comparison of different stoves available.

When I look at making the wood stoves smaller and lighter, I wonder why the pipe has to go up vertically through the highest peek of the shelter. I know about building codes and minimum clearances required from the peak of a structure but do they really apply to a tent/tipi shelter if you incorporate a properly designed spark arrestor or if you vent out the smoke and sparks into a tunnel made of snow, for example?

If not, you could then place the stove closer to the periphery of the tent/tipi, have the pipe go out at an angle that is closer to horizontal and thus not use as much pipe. Placing it close to the edges of the interior space may allow two things: 1) save more interior room where you need the stand up height and 2) perhaps use a reflective/space blanket to both protect the tent/tipi material closer to the stove AND bounce/focus short wave energy back into the interior living space, right back at you.

I guess you could just use a low height shelter and save pipe that way.

Alukban, I think it depends on damper use or not. In an undampered Kifaru stove, a tremendous amount of the overall heat is generated by the stovepipe. I put a jack in the sidewall of a Kelty Origami 4 and couldn't for the life of me keep the shelter warm. I moved the jack to the peak and it was a whole different world. As Kevin has observed elsewhere, a dampened stove will conserve heat lower in the pipe or even limited to the firebox and perhaps eliminate that problem. When it comes to space usage, if you've got that center pole, might as well put the stove there as well. Having the stove on the side when I did have it on the side didn't produce the extra usable space that I thought it would.

Evanhill,

In addition to providing more warmth, doesn't a longer stove pipe also draw better and thereby reduce the chance of smoke backing up in the shelter?

I am guessing then that a tipi's whole interior cone does a lot of bouncing the heat back down to a lower level when the stove and pipe are placed in the center? I wonder what kind of temperature gradients with height exist in various tipis with different shapes.

Has anyone tried a "space blanket ozan" or liner in a tipi to create a tipi version of the "Mors super shelter"?

Hi Alukban

A lot of heat is lost in the cone and the temperature difference can easily be 60 degrees from ground to near the top.

We have some ideas using reflective materials in the works actually thanks for making us spill the beans !!!!!

I should clarify, a bit of joking on the beans part, however we are looking into a couple things with reflective material, and it will be awhile before we know anything for sure. It has to be easy , durable, lightweight and most of all effective

Cool enough

I think the next UL wood burning stoves and pipes will be made of glass woven fabric with metal ring stiffeners - maybe Thermashield 1400. It doesn't have to be made of metal at all. There is UL. There is volume/bulk. There is also packable form factor.

I think the air intake control would still have to be some thin metal to be precise, however.

I really like this idea. I see the biggest use as a heat source instead of cooking.

If using it to cook you have to set it up outside, start a fire, stoke it, put a pot of water on, stoke it until it boils, then let the fire die and the stove cool enough to take it back inside the shelter, set it up, put on the pipe, re-light a fire, and start heating.

I would rather take a light alcohol or canister stove to boil water with and use this stove to heat. I like the fact that I CAN cook with it though...that's a nice backup in case your fuel runs out or something is wrong with the primary stove.

Overall I'd say it's a really good concept. What kind of burn times are you getting with it? How often does it have to be stoked, and how much heat is it putting out compared to a box stove?

Someone from ZS mad a batch of SS stoves like the OP's and sold them a year ago.

Hi Woods

A little history, before we did our box stoves we did some round bottomless prototypes but it really never came together in the way we liked so we abandoned them. I remember seeing the stainless cone on zombiehunters, and made a ti mockup, that was pretty different than the stainless one, but still basically a cone. I wasn't impressed with the one I made at least so I abandoned it again (to much heat went up the pipe). Then 2 -3 months ago, I thought I would try again with a couple changes , but once again abandoned it. Finally, without trying to make a heating stove out of it, I said let me try to make just a cook stove that was very simple and efficient, but would roll up easily. The cone is great for cooking efficiency, so that was the route I chose but the profile was different than before. I was purely going for something else, just for myself. It worked pretty well and the profile created a lot better heat, so always tinkering I said, let me adopt a damper to it, and it was better. I had my doubts about how well it would damper down, but it worked well. Finally, I made a larger one, and it created serious heat, as evidence by the coloring of the titanium. The early ones, with more of a flatter cone had all the heat go up the pipe and you really needed to feed it for not much heat(why it was always abandoned). The main change from earlier ones, was the profile, it stood up much more and radiated a lot more heat, more like a Sibley stove profile. I still have a couple more changes to do (adapt it to a stainless burner cover size base) and a couple other things and then we will make a couple / three tester stoves to get some feedback.

We have agreed, with a couple testers, and I thank everyone that offered. We will make up 2 -3 proto's and show it around, and decide if it was just a fun project or a real stove.

I put the last one, on a postal scale with damper and it was 5.6 ounces. Figure about 1.8 ounces per foot of ti pipe, and it is very very light and rolls up just like the pipe, but a tad longer. With 6 feet of pipe, it is just over a pound. Not bad. The only way to shave more weight, is a smaller diameter pipe, but the weigh savings will be on the order 1 or 2 ounces and it won't work so well as a cooking platform.

Thanks
Kevin