Super Size Hobo Stove

so a few weeks ago I was part of a leadership team that took 25 people on a guided hike through the blue mountain birch Cove Lakes wilderness area and we took them on about a four four-and-a-half hour hike up to the look off overlooking Fox Lake and it was a beautiful day yet it was very cold so we decided to be really nice if we could put up a comfort station so one of the other guys and myself we got together and we've created a comfort station where we heated water for a hunt for hot chocolate and tea and it worked out pretty good but it got me thinking that I think we could come up with something that would work even better if you're interested in seeing what I came up with stay tuned okay before I show you the solution or at least the idea come up with because it's still an untested idea we're actually going to test it out today let me show you what we were using so first my setup I took my firebox stove my Gentoo firebox this is always proven to be an extremely strong performer especially out in the winter time it's just the volume of this thing creates a haunt and tents fire along with that I took a 20 cup percolator aluminum percolator of course without the the incise it was just for boiling water with so that's what I took and the other guy that I was with took along a stove just like this this is one of the small Coleman peak stove white gas stoves and he also had one of the 20 cup percolators that he could use for hot water now here's what's really interesting we both started up at the same time I had gathered up enough wood for the fire to bring my water to a boil he lit up his gas stove the firebox brought Matt the water to a boil in less than half the time the white gas stove and I wouldn't have believed it and he didn't believe it either but the heat that was generated by the firebox was intense enough that I could bring my water to a boil give him my pot take his bot and bring his water to a boil before it even brought the other pot back to a boil I'm telling you these things put out a lot of heat so that was what we use and it did work out but we didn't have quite enough water to have every cup coffee or tea not coffee sorry hot chocolate or tea for everybody so we had to be adding water constantly to bring it up to temperature and I thought I wanted something that would be all in one much larger volume something that I could have enough hot water all at the same time for everybody now let me show you what I came up with okay so this is what I came up with this is a stock pot strainer so this would drop down inside of a stock pot if you're cooking I guess spaghetti or if you're cooking anything else that you wanted to remove from the stock and have the stock separately this would drop down inside of that part then you'd be able to lift this oke let it drain and set it aside look at it it looks like a giant IKEA utensil strainer it looks like it would make the perfect Hobo stove so that's what I thought when I saw it and I decided to pick it up for two or three dollars at the Value Village the thrift shop in my area and brought it home now I looked at it and thought how am I going to use this well this and my mind had to be a simple DIY project and the reason I wanted to make it simple because that is the hallmark of a good DIY project at least one that I want to share with you it has to be something that is available that you don't have to spend a lot of money on and that takes minimal tools if any tools to put it together and put it into effective use so right now I have used absolutely no tools to make this an effective stove I may yet make modifications to it and I'm actually going to open it up and ask for your suggestions as well but let me show you what I've done to make this usable as is okay to start with I wanted to raise it off the ground a little but I wanted to give it a little bit of height and at the same time see if I can't give it some stability so what I put on it these are and I'll give you a close-up these are conduit clamps used for attaching conduit to a wall or anything else I have some simple bolts holding them on to the bottom right through the existing holes I may replace the nuts the regular hex nuts that I have I may replace them yet with wing nuts to make it a little easy but so far there they're not loosening up and these are the 1 inch size conduit clamps so they provide me with a couple of things one they give me the clearance off the ground so a one inch clearance off of the ground they also extend oh past the outside of the strainer so that I've got some extra stability and the fact that they are rounded means that when I put them inside of a bag of any kind either restricting my backpack although I do have a large size stuff sack which I'll show you in a few minutes they're not going to cut through the material so they work extremely effectively as feet for this on the ground here's what they look like I'll give you this close-up this is the 1 inch size this is the only thing that I had to purchase at full retail value and I got these at Home Depot for anybody that is interested I think the value of this was 399 I could be wrong Oh change if it is more expensive than that there was 5 in the bag so I had one spare for a future project I guess so that is how I got the thing to sit up off the ground what else do they need well to make this a complete system I needed a pot also purchased at Value Village this is a 6 litre compost pot and they are sold through Lee Valley here in Halifax and across Canada and I'm not sure if they're available across the state I'm sure there's something similar 6 litres stainless steel pot and yes I did sterilize it don't worry about that so this makes a huge pot of water to put six liters in there and it drops down inside nicely so it wasn't perfect the way it is but I'll show you what I had to do to make this usable this is quite compact now than that I can get both of them together by the way these steel pots are available in two sizes and I was able to pick up both of them for a couple of dollars 6 litres and 4 litres so if you're looking at something a bit smaller or want something a bit smaller this is the 4 litre version and the 6 litre version alright let me show you what I had to do to the pot to make it effective so as you'll notice there's no way for the keep the Bale upright now that's okay if you're suspending this over and open fire because then you can use a big toggle to hold it up but no way that I could use this overt over the top of the stove and I'll show you how I'm going to support it over the stove in a second I could over the stove and not have the handle fall down and then potentially get very hot and you know the risk of a burn even with the gloves ceasing can get very hot so I wanted some way of putting I'll having this stand upright I fooled around with some wire trying to make some kind of a clip that would be something like that you might get on the new zebra pots sold by the Firebug stove I couldn't come up with anything that was looked like it would work successfully there but then the answer came to me quite easily one of the other things I needed was some way of lifting the lid off without reaching in and grabbing the the little knob because as you can see the knob is recessed on this well I had to have a piece of paracord nearby I just tied a fisherman knot on it which opens up and closed up around the top of that knob and now I have a means of lifting the lid off either with my finger or with a stick if I want if I'm reaching in over an open fire turns out that this little loop and this loop may not be the final size that I leave it at this is just where I have it at right now turns out that loop is going to serve a dual purpose so let me pick up I have a stick this will not be the stick I'll be use and it's just when I had here at home right now and what's interesting is if I put the stick through the loop the handle now sits upright now you can see I have some adjustments to do I don't want it too upright because then it's likely to fall over but I have some adjustments to do to keep it in just the right position I want it so the stick has to be about ten or twelve inches in order for this to work so I can either grab one I'm on the trail or I can take one with me I'm not sure which what which I'll do at this point the other benefit of having a stick with you of course is that you need a good sized stick if you look at this bail you need a good sized stick in order for that to work so I would have a clove hitch or some other knot around the center of the stick run it through as if there was a rope on it and then I could use the stick for holding this over an open fire of course again that can be made very quickly on the trail so here's the two-part system that I have so far and as I mentioned now I needed some way of suspending the over the fire well the simplest thing was to grab this also at Value Village this is a 10 inch cake pan so this would be what you put in your counter when you take a cake or cookies or anything else out of the oven and you want to cool it off this is a cooling rack just happens to fit perfectly inside the top of the pond strainer or the stockpot strainer now I look at this and yes it'll work to support the pot above the fire it has two challenges one is I would have to take this out if I wanted to refuel put more sticks in okay that's not a big deal the little stick will help me take that out I should be able to reach in even with a pair of gloves of course would be a lot of flames so it's probably use a stick of some type to lift it out the other thing is this is very very thin wire it's not intended to stand up to heat ideally I would use a much heavier gauge rack and you can get them I just don't want to paper CH full price for it but a 10 inch barbeque grill will also fit inside of there because it's a perfect fit for anything that's ten inch in diameter I'm not going to pay full price if I find one on sale or if I can find one at Value Village or one of the other thrift stores that's what I'll do so that's one option this is the one I'm going to start with but it's not the only option something else I picked up out there was a much heavier grill this also fits on top and gives me a bit more support for larger items also a nice grilling so if I use charcoal or let my would go down to coals I have a nice heavy weight grill that I can use over the top of this it's just gonna be a little bit bigger to pack it's also going to be a little easier to get off of the fire because the part of it will be extended oh past the the top of the pot one other thing that I found is this was picked up at Dollarama one of our dollar stores and the area this is just a truth that you might use for putting a kettle I bought this for use with a Dutch oven that I have that I also picked up at Value Village it didn't have feet on it but I wanted something that I could lay in coals so that's the purpose I bought this you can see it's brand new I haven't used it for that purpose yet but low and behold it also sits in perfectly and gives me a little bit more height above the flame if I want that and also gives me places where I can feed more wood in or invert it and it sets in just below the surface and there are some advantages to that yes I'm taking a little bit of the volume away from from the fire in the wood inside of that but this is huge this is going to be a big fire to start with but it does give it a little bit of a windscreen to round the outside so with the pot sitting on top of this it's just below the surface it provides a little bit of a windscreen brings it a little bit closer to the fire not sure which one we'll use yet I'm probably going to start it with the 10 inch one and we'll see how that works out I may end up using this I like the pack ability of the smaller ones another option and this is something I'm sure somebody will recommend and it is a good option is that I drill holes at different heights and then run to heavier gauge maybe eighth inch pieces of iron bar through or make just one long u-shaped one that I can run through and set the pot on at different heights if I want that will allow me to put a pot in and feed wood all around it I may yet do that I just wanted to start off with no drilling no tools whatsoever so that is the setup I have now the only thing left to do is to get out and test this oats outside so let's do that oh just one thing before I do let me put that aside those little conduit clamps this is another one of my project ikea Hobo stove so they're made from the ikea utensil strainer and I know somebody's going to pick me up on how I'm pronounced to not care go ahead I don't mind this is the way I pronounce it but this is a two-part system this also comes from Ikea and it makes a perfect fit for a hobo stove the kind of plants work on these these are the smaller 1/2 inch conduit clamps so I get added stability I get height off of the ground and I get a rounded surface so that when it's folded away it's not gonna tear into any stuff second aid so you can purchase those for that project as well alright let's get outside and put this stove into action so there's a reason why I'm doing this test in my backyard today look at the size of this thing and that's the reason right there this is not something I'm going to drag into the woods just to do a test on it's huge and that's sketchy I'm gonna give you all the measurements the weights and everything else I'll put those in the show notes and below and possibly on the screen as well of what this project turned out like you may hand up with something different of course depending on what you purchased it puts up together like this so once again the purpose of this is for larger groups where I want to bring a lot of water to a boil or if I want to use it as a charcoal barbecue or a wood pellet stove it's something that I can carry now the nice thing about it is even though it is big and bulky it's not exceptionally heavy that huge six litre pot inside will give me an opportunity to put a lot of my normal contents inside of this that'll still fit inside my backpack I just have to be efficient in the way I pack it you'll notice that I have it in a stuff sack really simple stuff sack pillowcase purchased you know Value Village just a couple of pillow cases that I wash they make great stuff sacks for larger projects like this and some other projects I'll be bringing to you okay I'm going to set this up on the ground we'll get a fire going we'll see how well it works with a pot of water all right scenes how this is not a video on fire craft in the wood so I am going to cheat a little bit I'm gonna use a gas lighter a little bit of my hangar 51 fire strip roll some birch bark and some cut and split wood so this is gonna make a quite a huge fire but I do have quite a bit of firewood here to go with it so the first thing I want to do or the first thing I'm gonna do anyway is put a few pieces of wood inside kind of create a place almost like a start the starting of a log cabin style fire just a place so that I can put the birch bark and everything down inside of it without smothering it when I put the rest of the wood on so put most of that first perk down inside mold dry Bert's Brack and I know I've shown this before it's one of the things I like about the hangar 51 stuff take out a little section of it I'm gonna fold some of it up because when you do that it burns a little slower and hold a bit of it out like a wick now like this and take it down the side lights up nicely move it around a little bit it's birch bark of it that's better [Music] put a few of these small sticks and of course it is gonna be smoky like that from the birch bark my splits could be smaller but they are what I have but I think I've got enough birch bark inside and this is really really dry wood a little luck we'll have a fire going in a few seconds a bit of a teepee fire going in the inside right now that's mostly haphazard so the way the woods going in but it should help it night a little faster yeah there's air club lots and lots of airflow all the way around the outside of that you've had a few sick seconds to catch on then I'll add some of my larger stuff and once the fire seems to be a bit more established we'll put the pot of water on and see how long it brings to brings to boil whew that's catching on fast or it's gonna take a few minutes for the wood to catch and drop down inside there and that's when I'll bring it back and we'll put the water on it's not a speed test this is just a general idea how long would it take a of like this to bring 6 litres of water to boil and it's right now it's about minus 5 degrees Celsius so just below freezing not very cold but yeah this should be fun now we do have a bit of a breeze as you can see so well that'll have an effect on it I don't have a windscreen big enough unless I want to go get a piece of plywood or something in the woods I'd probably do this in a more sheltered area but wow that's certain to generate heat ok I'll bring it back in a few minutes when we're ready to throw the water on all right I think that's maybe ready to put my pot of water on 6 litres of water pretty heavy so here's the trick I was mentioning about having a stick kind of hold the pot off ooh I can see an issue already and that is that wire is not going to be strong enough to hold weight especially under the fire but there we go I guess I better get the timer started on this and start all right we'll get an idea I don't expect this to be any land-speed record of any type I'm already not happy with how the great is holding it up the depart so I think that'll be the first and last time that great gets use there's some heat coming off of that yeah what a bit of heat I have to keep an eye on this now I think I'm a little concerned about how much bending is taking place on that little cake stand yeah that'll be the I won't be using that again there is some wind but it is starting to work all right I'll bring it back when it comes to a boat boiling unless something else happens along the way so far this thing is putting out a tremendous amount of heat I don't think we'll take too long to bring six liters of that's cold tap water I don't think it'll be too long before that comes to a boil okay about four minutes into the test I had to take the pot off the top of the fire if you can see that or not that's the end of this cake rack don't use a cake rack that's my lesson learned use something much sturdier so I grabbed the other rack that I had in the house bigger but much sturdier let's see how that one does so I took the opportunity to add a few more sticks to the fire this should be easier for me to grab and hold up to take off if I need to add sticks to the fires just a little larger than I wanted to carry alright the test continues all right as you can hear there's a my neighbor's dog is barking in the background tired rolling boil take that off so that was clocked I'm 50 or 18 minutes but you have to remember I had it off of the fire for three minutes while I went in and got the other great so 15 minutes to bring six liters of water to a boil in -5 degrees Celsius weather not too bad alright I would call that a successful first test with the exception of the cake stand that I put on top for a grill this grill is working much better I think it's a much more functional grill in any case but yeah I would consider that successful so I'm wait for a few minutes for this to cool down and then we'll wrap this video up okay a few observations and some closing thoughts on this new super-sized Hobo stove first off we'll take the pod out and set it aside the pot strainer itself withstood the heat admirably it really did there is no deformation change colors obviously but it hasn't buckled or melted or bent it or anything else so this is worked perfectly for the job intended the folio feet on the bottom worked perfectly they withstood the weight of the the would fall the so full of wood as well as the pot full of water so that worked well one of the things I didn't mention before which is kind of interesting is this two handles on either side now while I wouldn't necessarily pick them up even with gloves on while there is a fire I could use a couple of hook sticks to come underneath this and lift this whole thing and move it to another location if I had to speaking of locations something interesting did happen I had this sitting on a patio stone that I have out in my backyard just for doing tests like this and there was enough heat generated coming down through the bottom of this to crack the patio stone the mind mind you it was frozen so but it would have warmed up slowly with the heat but there was enough heat what that tells me is and it's nothing I don't think I wouldn't realize anyway is that the bottom of this while it didn't let any ash or hot coals out it did generate a lot of heat be sure of the surface you put it on out in the woods so that you don't generate enough heat to cause any Duff or any anything underneath smoldering that might later cause a forest fire if you're a little concern you don't have a rock base or something else that you want to put it on you know here's something else I picked up at Value Village it's just a pan of sub-type well if it's a cookie pan or was out of something else but I picked this up very inexpensive I it'll fit in the same peg with everything else and I can lay this down on the ground and place this on top of that and then I don't have to worry but that heat transfer into the ground underneath so that was the observations where's that other piece of now garbage there it is hold on alright as I mentioned outside I don't use one of those thin little 10 inch cake rest Spain's things that just completely bow that that's it's now a piece of recycle garbage so that finally this heavy-duty one withstood the heat but I'll tell you there's still a little bit of bending taking place in a couple of birds if you're going to build something like this and generate that much heat get something heavy-duty ideally a barbecue grate which is intended to it to take that much heat so there are still a few ideas such as putting some heavy-duty bears across the top of this which I may do yet I just like as I said I just wanted to do this without any modification to it okay so those are my observations what I want to do at this point is open it up to you if you have any suggestions for what you might do with this differently how you might modify it yet to make it more effective please leave them in the comments below I think it's fair to say that this will not be going with me very often in the woods because of the size of it because of its intended purpose it's a great car camping thing it's something you might take as a base camp and set up if you wanted a nice contained fire at a base camp or the intent that I have for it is for taking for large groups which by the way in two weeks time I will be part of a guided hike to take another large group out so I think I probably will take this along and give it a try the other thing I have left to do with it is trying with charcoal and of course wood pellets to see how they work in it alright so if you have any comments please leave them in the show notes below but until you see this thing and use again next time get out and explore and take that path let's travel it'll make all the difference bye for now

Channel: Mark Young

Views: 89,155

Rating: 4.874763 out of 5

Keywords: Mark, Young, shunpyke, bushcraft, hobo stove, ikea hobo stove, hobo stove (product category), wood stove, camp stove, stick stove, cook stove, survival, camping, hiking, shunpyke bushcraft, twig stove, cooking, mark young, folding stove, fishing, wood stove cooking, diy, make it yourself, Do It Yourself, how to build a hobo stove, hobo stove build, hobo stove cooking

Id: ZWvpKYIas3I

Length: 24min 58sec (1498 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 16 2019