Ikea Hobo Stove & Cook Kit - Part 1

fortunate over the last couple of years to acquire a number of Smallwood Burnie shows otherwise known as twig solos or sticks toes one example is my folding firebox stove which my wife gave me last Christmas lovely so great enjoy using it another example is the solo Titan I was able to pick this up second hand for a very good deal through Kijiji love using this stove as well and as nice as those two stoves are for some reason I keep coming back to the humble Hobo stove made with an IKEA utensil strainer lightweight effective very inexpensive easy to make very interested in seen how I make them now maybe you can make one for yourself stay tuned okay before we get started I thought I'd take a minute just to go over the existing hobo Stover Iko Hobo stove that I use now just to give you an idea of what the end product will look like and the one we're going to build today so I do have a separate video where I demonstrate this video this stove in use and how it all goes together but I thought I'd just go over that very quickly so the basics of the stove are they're hot IKEA hobo strainer and to that I've added a couple things one is the feed port on the side and I'm going to explain more about why I chose to do a fee port on the bottom half of the stove and when we go to build a new one on the bottom of the stove I've added a couple of small bolts as feet to raise it off of the ground just slightly to allow some airflow to come in through the bottom and on top I've created a crossbar system or dove some aluminum first off that you can make easily and I'll show you how to do that and go on top and those things together sit on a small piece of aluminum which I can place on the ground because of course unlike both the firebox and the solo Titan there is no floor plate to the bottom of an Ikea utility or a utensil strainer and as a result wood ash can fall through and scorch the earth and they even worse potentially ignite a fire in any Duff that's underneath so I like to have a small piece of aluminum foil that I can use to protect the earth and I have a windscreen that will go around outside but this is a complete cook kit so in order to have a complete cook you need to have a cook pot so this is a coffee canister to which I've added a bail and a pitcher hanger for the top of the lid so they'll sits on top and together this makes in a very effective very lightweight cook system and if you're interested in seeing more about how this works please refer back to that other video what I like about this system is the fact that once it's disassembled everything goes down inside of cook pot I should have put that in first there we go burrs and now and I also have a small sewing stuff sack that I put this in because of course they do get kind of dirty on the bottom all right that's the one I have but let's put that aside and start with the basic materials you need to build one of your own so I have a brand new well brand new I picked up secondhand at Value Village for $0.99 I carry utility strainer now this is the standard size one the one I showed you in the kit a second ago if for whatever reason slightly smaller than this one but this is the one if you're gonna buy one brand new at IKEA now or if you find one at a thrift store like I did this is probably what you're gonna find there is a taller version which I don't have any of I have seen I just haven't felt the need to pick them up to use them as a wood stove because this seems to work so effectively by itself so this is going to be the foundation for our stove build I'll put that aside at the same time in the same day I was able to find another canister this one is a sugar canister not sure if it'll show up but it's actually engraved sugar on top so it has a nice lid it's all polished on the inside the lid goes on nicely and what I like about this combination is is the sugar canister will fit in as if it was made to order right inside the IKEA stove now it does take some searching sometimes to find the right combination sometimes you'll find a canister that's a little bigger and the stove will fit down inside or if you're lucky like I was this time you'll find a a canister that fits just inside of the so so that's the foundation of our build but there are a few more items that you need if you're going to build the stove most effectively and I'll share those with you now all right in addition to the I ka ho or utensil strainer and the sugar canister which I'll set aside now there's a couple things you're going to need you're going to need some way of supporting the utensil strainer off of the ground now it's not absolutely necessary we'll talk about that in a minute but what I've chosen to use for this project are three quarter inch angle brackets and those three quarter inch angle brackets are going to act as feet on the bottom of the strainer now to put those brackets on I need it some lots of bolts and lock washers so I chose to use some very inexpensive machine screws number ten machine screws nuts and lock washers and they will be used to hold the brackets onto the bottom of the central strainer on top of the sugar canister I need some way of being able to lift the lid off so for that I chose a pitcher hanger and here hopefully you can see the pitcher hanger and I'll show you how that gets attached as we move through the project and that will go on the top lid and that'll work nice just nicely now bring that back for a second on the other okay a hobo kit I have a piece of aircraft cable that's loops around and is attached to the sides and I will show you how that's done because I have had a request to show how I did that on there but for this project I'm going to do something simpler and something I think just as effective maybe even more effective depends on your point of view and that is a stainless steel skewer and I buy these by the I think it's a package of eight at the dollar store here in Halifax and these stainless steel skewers have come in handy for I can't tell you how many different projects I've used them for so we're going to make the hand handle that the hanging handle for this project using the skewer one last item probably the most expensive piece altogether this piece of bar stock so this is one inch aluminum burst off three feet in length that I picked up here at Canadian Tire and I think it cost you around six dollars so that's the single most expensive piece that you will need to buy for the way I'm doing this project and there are options which we will talk about you know I also had found an old filing cabinet the thing that goes in filing cabinets that supports the the file folders and they had to be made of aluminum one inch now they had to have holes drilled in them but I was able to pick that up for nothing at one point and I was able to use that just as effective as this but just because I wanted to show you an option so this is the bar stock that you can pick up at a local hardware store now in Halifax it was about six dollars in less rohtul constant urea but that's gonna make the plant stand on top of the hobo stove so those are the items that I have now you also have to see what tools I'm going to use for this project so stand by for that okay you don't need a lot of expensive or high-tech equipment for this project you have options I'll show you what I use I'll show you a couple of options and some of them are very inexpensive but before we begin on that on the tools that I'm going to use there's something we need to cover right away and that is protective measures so hearing protection of some type whether or not it's a pair of hearing muffs like this or appearing ear plugs if you're using power tools I believe that's an essential piece of equipment also essential is a piece of some way of protecting your eyes so I'm using goggles that I'll put over my glasses when I go to do this project again if you're using power tools it's essential even if using hand tools you don't want small slivers of metal flying through the air and getting in your eyes so those two things are essential you may also consider adding a pair of work gloves because you are going to be working with sharp edges of metal and we'll talk about how to address that as we go along as well so those are three pieces of safety equipment you want to consider even before you start assembling your tools all right let's put those aside now as far as tools are concerned for me and cutting the stainless steel utensil strainer I'm going to use a dremel tool now my Dremel tool has the extension handle on it and I'm going to be using a wiill on the end of it and I'm going to show you close up because this one is just a bit worn out and I do need to replace it so I'll show you that one before the project begins but as an option you could use if you're handy with and you have available to you you could use a angle grinder and the angle grinder I have used it in the past it does take a bit of practice because these things if you're not good with them or if you haven't practiced with a much they can get away with you and they can cause injury they can also over cut what you're trying to cut as well but an angle grinder is a great tool and you can use this for this project you can't even use a pair of metal shears now I've got a pair of the curved metal shears here and you can get in and cut through the holes I will tell you it's a little bit more difficult to do it's not quite as even and smooth but you can address all that afterwards through the use of a couple of other tools which I'll show you now you're going to end up with some raw edges when you cut the hole you want to smooth those out you don't want to have anything that's going to catch them and cut your skin you don't want anything it's going to catch on any of your equipment whether it's in your backpack or even the stuff sack so having a file of some type in this case it's a Nicholson axe file or a piece of sandpaper if it's if the roughness isn't too bad or both of those tools they're they're good to get rid of all those rough edges a couple of other small tools just a pair of simple pliers and the pimp and a pair of or not a pair of sorry a a screwdriver with multiple bits and just because I chose it for demonstration purposes and there's just simply to put the nuts and bolts together when you put it on and finally I'm using a flexible metal ruler for this project it does not have to be a metal ruler at all can be anything flexible and a marking pen so I can know where I'm cutting and the reason I want something flexible is because I'm going to be wrapping it around the outside of the utensil strainer so that I can mark my cutting lines with the with the marker all right basically that's all there is to the tool so not a lot you can go very simple but if you have to have a few tools that you the angle grinder the dremel tool it's going to make the project much easier for you alright let's start talking about design okay so the nice thing about the IKEA utensil strainer is it can be used as is for a stove you don't really have to do anything to this to use it you simply can build a fire in this right on the ground place your pot on top and it will work now not very effectively but it will work and there's on it there's a few things you can do to make it work more effectively without doing anything at all to the strainer one of which is placing it on top of some small stones now I've just used a small blue piece of material and some little stones here and there since the stones are white I wanted to place them for contrast but if you can find a couple of small stones and place this though or the IKEA strainer on top of that you're going to get airflow underneath which is going to enhance the the airflow through the fire and make it much more effective still you need to do something about the top now you can do this it may not be the most effective but it's not bad I have just a couple of pieces of dry wood here but if I was going to do this in the woods I would use green sticks for this and that is I would build my fire inside take two green sticks because they're not gonna last forever when you do this place them on top and then I can place my pot of choice on top of that that allows for air flow and flames to come up from underneath and through and around the outside of the pot so you can use this absolutely without any modification at all but we can do much better so let's talk about what are some of the options for changing this into a much more effective design all right in doing some research and deciding what I would do for myself there are basically two types of feed systems for wood stoves one is the traditional top feed system that you're often fine especially with Wood gasification stoves where everything is loaded from the top and this style has a feed port that's open that allows me to drop sticks in and of course optionally I could be building a a top-down burn and then add sticks in afterwards but essentially as long as the pot while the pot is on top I can still feed the stove by dropping sticks in that way so that's one option so we could create or modify the aquella hobo strainer for that type of a burn and that will work well that's not the option I'm going to choose enough so I'll demonstrate why so one of the design features I really like about the firebox stove and in fact the ember lit stove has the same basic design feature is that yes you can feed it from the top if that's your your preference absolutely especially if you have a lot of small sticks it's very easy to feed it from the top but the firebox stove is designed so that there are two ports this is the generation 2 firebox two ports on the side that allow me to feed sticks in from the side one on this side and another on this side now the benefit of this is twofold one I can constantly feed sticks in without removing my pot from the top of the stove and two I can use longer pieces of wood they still have to be small enough to fit through the feed port but they don't have to be broken down into small pieces that will fit in through the top so that's one of the options I really like in addition because there is a bit of a height to the feed ports from the ground this sticks off and rest at an upward angle well of course they do unless you support them some way they're going to go at an upward angle this creates a bit of a tepee effect inside of the stove and you get a lot of airflow through the wood and it does burn very well with very few sticks so this is the design I want to replicate on the sides of my IKS you central strainer so in order to do that what we're going to do is we're going to cut out some of these holes in a pattern that will allow me to feed sticks of different sizes not so large that I either affect the structural integrity or everything wants to follow it on its own just large enough that I can feed sticks in through and still have a little bit of a height differential off of the off of the ground so the sticks will go in in an upward angle that way I can feed longer sticks in and at the same time if I want I can still drop in smaller sticks to the top as I go as well that often is nice to do if you really want to get just an extra boost of flame to bring your water to a boil you can just drop in some small sticks while small larger sticks are fed in through the side for a continued burn so how're we gonna do that let's go into that next okay for this design I was just considering where I wanted to cut the hole for the feed hole on the side of the utensil strainer and I wanted to decide how big I was going to make it so what I have decided for this one is I'm going to you'll notice that there's holes running up and down the side and that they make a nice square pattern so if I go three holes by three holes I'm going to get a square feed hole that I can use and the benefit of using those holes as guidelines is is there's less metal to cut through if I cut just along the edges the bottom and or outside edges of each of the holes it makes it just that much easier to cut now you do have to be careful you are going to end up with some ragged edges or some sharp edges which you'll need to smooth off now alternatively I could make this a little larger in a couple of different ways I certainly goes across the the support section here and choose as many holes as I want to but my experience has been that large feed holes are not necessary for this to work you don't need a whole lot of sticks going in from through the side when you're at that point that you're feeding sticks in is more of a maintenance if you're really gonna start a good fire going get a base of coals you're probably gonna do it through the top before you even get your pot on so I'm going to start with the smaller one now what I can do if I start with the smaller feed hole three holes by three holes big I can always expand that if I thought it that it was too small after the fact so what I need to do now is just draw some lines to connect those up now could you freehand this absolutely you could I'm gonna recommend drawing lines to work with just as a guide to try to make it as straight and even as possible so in order to do that I'm going to use my ruler trying to do this so you can see what it is I am doing as best I can I have my little longer my permanent marker might just mark to the top on both sides or along the outside of those holes as I mentioned and across the bottom as well now this is where the flexible ruler comes into play here and you can use plastic you could use just about anything that will flex and allow you to form it to the outside of the utensil strainer so you can see roughly what I've done here is I've marked with my blue permanent marker the outside of those holes and now I'm going to cut that with the the dremel tool I'll start the process of showing you how I go about cutting that but I won't make you watch the whole thing so stand by for that all right let's get started cutting out the holes on the hole on the side of the utensil strainer I have decided that I would make it a little larger than I first thought it's up to you of course how big you want this feed port to be I don't feel it needs to be very big at all but for this one I decided to make it just a little wider than the 3x3 holes and that's where I get that cut I'll assess it I could always make it a little larger again if I need to it's better to start with a little too small and then make it larger even if you wanted to test the stove out and do a burn in the stove with wood and then you can always decide to make it a little larger if you want to if you end up alternatively if you cut a great big three inch by three inch hole and you find that it's too big for your needs you know you can't go back and edit metal to it so it's better to start small and even though it's a little bit more work it you know it'll give you the option to make the hole larger afterwards all right I'm going to use my tool now I did change out my cutting wheel as you can see I've got the full size cutting wheel not just a word on cutting wheels there are basically two types of cutting lists there's the small one that I replaced you can see why it was I decided to replace it's too small for this work there are two types of cutting wheels at least that I have one is the one I'm going to be using which is the one that's fiber-reinforced it's very similar in a lot of ways to what you'll find on a angle grinder and this the other one that it seems to be made of a porous material that is somewhat like sandpaper compressed and what I find with these ones is that while they'll make a ver fine I'll give you a close-up of it and I'm not sure what these are called but while it will give you a very fine cut I also find them especially fragile so if you're cutting in the middle and you have the least bit of twisting snap they break and then of course you get pieces flying everywhere so I prefer not to use those for this type of work I like the cutting wheels that have the fibers in the wheel itself for reinforcement they seem to cut better and they you know they'll tolerate a little bit of side to side play if you're not as accurate as you would like to be all right I do have to put on my safety equipment so my goggles are on ear protection is on and I will course edit out the noise because I find this annoying I'm sure you will as well so let's get started here [Music] [Music] once I'd cut and it will get a little warm by the way and you probably should know that make sure your fingers stay out of the way while you're doing this it would have been faster with the angle grinder without question I would be doing that outdoors if I was using the angle grinder but I decided to go with the dremel tool for this project because it is allows you to be more accurate and not cut too large and I find a little bit safer as long as you are handling the tool appropriately so I'm going to cut the other three sides and then we'll pick up from there

Channel: Mark Young

Views: 127,456

Rating: 4.8156457 out of 5

Keywords: mark young, shunpyke bushcraft, shunpyke, bushcraft, hiking, campng, camping, hunting, fishing, survival, cooking, firebox stove, stick stove, twig stove, wood stove, camp stove, Ikea stove, ikea cook kit, hobo stove, hobo cook kit, DIY stove, budget bushcraft

Id: gH-WQUF3vQg

Length: 21min 39sec (1299 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 27 2017