What is a wood chip stove?
A wood chip stove is a good alternative to a gas burner, because when you are away from civilization, it is very difficult to find where to buy gas cartridges for a gas burner.
And taking a whole backpack of cartridges with you is not a very good idea. This is where a wood chip stove comes to the rescue, helping you to heat or cook food.
The wood chip stove works great on small twigs, cones, dry fuel and other similar types of fuel.
Unlike a pyrolysis stove, a wood chip stove, although with difficulty, can operate on damp fuel. And this makes it more versatile and attractive for tourists. After all, for example, in winter it is very difficult to find dry branches, pine cones, etc.
The wood chip stove allows you to cook economically and quickly in areas where there is a shortage of firewood. The stove uses natural draft rather than forced air.
A practical option for equipment for tourism, hunting and fishing. An indispensable thing for cooking in the field.
A well-designed stove directs almost all the heat from combustion to heat the cookware.
That is, you do not need to build large fires to boil a relatively small amount of water. Wood chips, twigs, cones, etc. are used as firewood.
When hunting, fishing and on a camping trip, it is vital to quickly warm up and prepare food when there is an acute shortage of fuel; perhaps without leaving the tent.
At the dacha - in the summer, cook dinner or boil water without wasting gas, without starting the house stove or without building an outdoor summer house.
The choice of one or another portable compact heating and cooking device or campfire equipment is another matter.
But in any case, a device known as a wood chipper or Bond stove will help out: such a stove using waste wood fuel can be built from scrap materials, using only a knife, it is omnivorous and in some, the most difficult cases, it can properly perform its function in places where wood fuel no and cannot be.
A country stove-wood chipper weighs up to 1.5-2 kg when folded and has a volume of less than 2 cubic meters. dm allows you to cook soup for your family; the portable one is three times lighter for preparing one serving and when folded it takes up 0.2-0.3 cubic meters. dm.
The cost of high-quality materials for a durable wood chipper is unlikely to require more than 300 rubles, and you can almost always get by with free spare parts.
For reference: a more or less reliable all-weather gas burner will cost from 1000 rubles; You will need to purchase an additional 3 liter cylinder for it. All this equipment will pull (with a filled cylinder) 4-5 kg and take up the same amount of cubic meters. dm.
The oven has a simple device.
The furnace is made of a cylindrical shape from a pipe or a rectangular section from individual elements.
The height of the device is usually about 200 mm.
The lower part of the stove is equipped with an improvised grate; there are holes in the side surface for supplying combustion air.
The upper part is made in the form of a grid - dishes with water or food are placed on it. A rectangular hole is cut in the side surface for adding fuel. The hole is usually equipped with a door. Segments are often cut along the top edge to accommodate skewers.
The stove has legs - this provides a gap under the grate for air supply and ash from burnt firewood. Good stability of the stove is also necessary - if the supports are weak and uneven, it can tip over.
Main advantages
In comparison with a pyrolysis furnace, a wood chipper can function when damp fuel is placed in it. This explains the increased interest in it from tourists. For example, in winter it is quite difficult to find dry cones or branches in nature. The following advantages exist:
- The ability to quickly and economically prepare food in areas with an acute shortage of firewood. In such a stove, not supercharging is used, but natural draft.
- Due to the clever design of the device, almost all the heat generated during the combustion process is used to heat the installed cookware.
- There is no need to build a large fire to heat the kettle. Instead of firewood, cones, twigs, and chips are suitable.
In extreme conditions, there may be a vital need for heat for warmth, heating water, creating food with minimal fuel available. The wood chipping camping stove can be used even inside a tent without danger to humans.
The device will be appropriate on a personal plot in the summer, because you won’t have to run a house stove, build an outdoor version of it, or waste gas. A similar dacha stove when folded weighs no more than 2 kg with a volume of about 2 cubic meters. dm. It is suitable for quickly preparing soup for a family of several people. The camping counterpart, designed for quickly preparing one serving of food, is several times lighter, and when assembled it takes up about 0.3 cubic meters. dm.
There are no costs for high-quality long-burning material. If the purchase is carried out, then the amount does not exceed several hundred rubles. In most cases, a person makes do with improvised and free devices. As for a gas all-weather burner, it will cost from 1000 rubles. A special cylinder of 3 liters or more is purchased for it, but the total weight of the load will be from 5 kg.
Advantages of a wood chip stove
The main advantages of the wood chip stove are as follows:
- Proper manufacturing of the stove will ensure good draft. This means that any available combustible material is suitable for lighting this stove and obtaining maximum thermal energy from it.
- The wood chip stove does not emit open fire into the surrounding area and does not leave behind coals, so it can be used in areas where lighting an open fire is prohibited.
- Thanks to its small size, the wood chip stove can easily fit into a tourist’s backpack.
- In emergency situations, when it is not possible to find a suitable fuel material, alcohol or dry fuel can be used to operate the wood chipper.
Super light and super durable, the universal wood chip stove is your faithful companion on a hike of any complexity.
Made of titanium, the wood chip stove, complete with any of your mugs, is useful for cooking food, boiling water and will allow you to quickly get a source of heat in any conditions.
The original design of the stove allows you to concentrate heat, intensify and protect the fire from the wind - and this with the very minimum amount of fuel!
Using a dry piece of cloth will protect your hands from a hot mug - just wrap it around the mug and put it on the stove. You can easily cool the liquid if you wet the same patch.
A wood chip stove will come in handy for disposing of small garbage while camping, can work as a candle light, or heat water for a container with insecticidal aromatic oils.
A camping stove consumes a minimum of fuel; to ignite a good flame, you will need a small armful of dry wood (chips, branches, fir needles, cones, bark, etc.).
For example
The simplest flaming wood chipper can be built from ORDNING cutlery dryers sold in IKEA, trade article 300.118.32, pos. 1 and 2 in Fig. The advantage of this workpiece is the material, quite thick food grade stainless steel, so the “IKEA” wood chipper will last a long time. However, it is only suitable for a morning mug of tea or soup from a bag, so the blank needs to be supplemented with a burner made of bolts (item 4): the diameter of the ORDNING is 130 mm, which is a bit too much for a traveling mug.
Wood chip stove from cutlery dryer
Already with soup on the IKEA wood chipper, problems arise: one load even of pine or birch chips is not enough, so you have to cut out a window for additional loading, pos. 3. It is inconvenient to put small chips into it, especially in the cold with numb hands. The Ikea wood chipper is not very stable, and a clumsy beginner will almost certainly topple it when adding fuel.
Finally, you can only run the IKEA wood chipper outdoors, but then you need legs. No matter how you make them (positions 5 and 6), in the backpack they cling to something and tear something. In general, an IKEA wood chipper will be useful if you take it in the trunk on a fishing trip or at the dacha for quickly heating small portions of food.
Video: example of making wood chips from an IKEA dryer
DIY wood chip stove
Very often there are situations in everyday life when it is enough to use minimal resources to solve a particular problem.
For example, in order to boil a kettle or heat up lunch in a garage, in a country house or on the river bank, there is no need to build a powerful stove.
To do this, it is quite enough to make a small stove with your own hands, which will perfectly cope with the responsibilities assigned to it, using wood chips, tree branches, pine cones, etc. as fuel.
The wide popularity of small stoves, indispensable when camping or fishing, is due not only to their simple design, which lacks batteries and electronic control circuits.
The demand for small furnaces is due to the wide possibilities of their practical application, as well as ease of manufacture.
Every home craftsman can make a compact wood chip stove if he has the raw material, the right tools and the necessary skills.
The wood chip stove is a compact mini stove that allows you to quickly cook food on the go.
In addition to its compactness, the wood chip stove has another very important advantage over traditional stoves; it does not require a lot of firewood to operate; just a few handfuls of wood chips, small twigs or dry bark are enough. This allows you to use the stove on a camping trip in places where there is no possibility of finding firewood and opportunity to make a fire.
Materials for making a wood chip stove
- Galvanization.
You can’t make a stove like an army cauldron from a tin can - the size is too small and the shape is wrong. Some sheet metal is best suited for such a wood chipper. The most affordable material is galvanized sheet. It comes in different thicknesses.
- Aluminum.
Since the material is very soft, it bends easily by hand and is very easy to drill, cut and process. Therefore, it is only suitable for a small pot.
- Stainless steel.
Stainless steel is a much heavier material and is very difficult to drill. A stove made of stainless steel 1 mm thick will be very heavy, although quite durable.
- Titanium.
Making a stove out of titanium would certainly be very good. But titanium is an expensive and rare material. It is quite difficult to drill. But the stove made from it will be very light in weight and at the same time quite durable.
Self-production
It’s easy to build a wood chip stove with your own hands, which requires minimal resources. To heat up lunch for 1-2 people or boil a kettle, you should not build a powerful and large structure. A compact stove would be quite appropriate.
Wood chippers, often used for fishing and hunting, have gained popularity due to their simple design, devoid of complex electronic circuits and batteries.
The demand for such devices is also explained by their practicality and wide possibilities in everyday life, and ease of manufacture. If you have the minimum skills, the necessary tools and the starting material, anyone can make a stove.
Wood chip stove from a washing machine drum
Using a grinder, part of the stainless metal is cut off from an old washing machine that has outlived its useful life.
You will need a stainless steel strip 18-20 cm wide, which will determine the height of the stove. The length of the strip should be 65 cm, and you need to twist a pipe from it.
On the side, the structure is equipped with a hole with a door, which, in the open position, serves to store firewood, and when closed, directs all the heat upward.
Stepping back 5 cm from the top, you need to make holes for the skewers, and equip the upper part with a wire rack for dishes.
A grate with three holes is equipped at the bottom for installing pegs that fix the stove in one position.
Wood chip stove from a can
The simplest option using scrap materials is a wood chipper from a can.
To make it, you will need a regular tin can, with holes made around the perimeter for air circulation.
This miniature design is suitable for heating a mug of water using wood chips or dry fuel.
You can not only make a wood chip stove with your own hands, but also buy it in a store.
Advantages of the stove:
- Compact and low fire hazard, moreover, fuel for it can be found in any forest. At the same time, the efficiency of burning wood in such a stove is much higher than in a fire, but lower than in a turbo stove.
- A wood chip stove is not an open fire, which means you can safely heat or cook food on it during fire season.
The wood chip stove has only one drawback - it is not suitable for large groups. One or two people - that’s the whole group that a wood chip stove can serve.
A wood chip stove, which can be purchased in a store, is usually made of technical stainless steel sheets 1 mm thick. and has a quickly assembled design.
This design is very light and compact, consists of several flat parts and is suitable for tourists, cyclists, hunters and fishermen.
This wood chip stove is certainly not a pyrolysis stove, but it has advantages over a pyrolysis stove and is quite capable of replacing gas burners, and in places where there is a lot of wood, it is simply a necessary thing.
The small and medium wood chip stoves are equipped with covers for storage and transportation.
