Originally Posted by Jaguar
Maybe you have already considered this, but a little advice from experience on self-fabricated stoves: You might want to test it for smoke leaks well beforehand to make sure the stove does not fill the tent with smoke. A buddy built a stove for one of our trips to put in his little tent. The way he had the door open clear to the top of the stove allowed about half the smoke to come out the front at the door opening (with the door closed) rather than out the stovepipe. He also did not have a proper intake vent. The stove was so small that you could not move the fire back away from the door. It filled the tent with smoke. I did make a makeshift flange for it down over the front with a Coleman fuel can, but that didn't fully solve the problem. It made the stove considerably less useful. I would recommend studying available stoves for designs.

That is a nice looking tent. Will you have extra sleeping or gear storage tents? With cots up inside, and the need for space around a stove, a tent can shrink down smaller. You will need the stove away from the tent walls/ When you have it set up this summer it might be good to layout what will be inside it to check floor and movement space.


We heat our house with wood quite a bit of the time so I understand where you're coming from on the smoke but it's a Vermont Casting model. Open the doors too fast before the flue is hot and you get some smoke. Have to open a window when starting a new fire sometimes too so it drafts. The stove door will have a fiberglass seal and I intend to make it as airtight as possible. I had in mind to keep the door lower to avoid the smoke when you open the door. Many of the commercial made stoves are wider than tall and mine is going to be 18" wide and tall so that in itself will give me more room above the door to keep the smoke in.

Bravo sells a cook shack that fits onto the front of my tent, enclosed too. I plan to order one before long. The entire roof will also be covered with a snow slide. Good idea on laying things out in the tent when we put it up. I plan to do that. I know too well how a poorly set up camp can make for a lousy hunt. My one and only drop camp had a wall tent set up in the Flat Tops and when we knocked the snow off from the inside we ended up with a 2 ft. rip in the roof, rotten canvas. No way to patch it either until some of his guys brought us back a cheap poly tarp a few days later. This is my first camp to be using my own equipment. I've seen many problems in the past that should have been avoided. As I'm sure you guys have too. That's another reason for my thread so I can miss out on as much grief as possible.

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