I decided to make me a slightly larger wood gas stove than I've done before and try creosote bush sticks out in it. 1st order of business was to go to my favorite creosote hunting spot with my Son last Saturday and shoot some sticks loose with a 22
Then located 32oz and 34.5oz cans, made the stove and filled it up with sticks...
Fired it up using a piece of parafin/sawdust starter. This is five minutes after lighting...
Burned with yellow flame for ~10 minutes, then settled down to low red & blue flame with high heat output and no smoke. Continued in this condition for ~15 more minutes...
~40 minutes after lighting, flame has gone out but it's still plenty hot to cook on...
And can still boil a quart of water after another 10 minutes...
After dinner & coffee, there's still enough heat from the coals to toast some marshmallows
Here's what's left in the bottom when it's done. Note the stainless steel mesh to hold the fuel off the bottom of the inner can...
This is the inner can. You don't have to go nuts making holes like some designs you'll see (unless you want to create a mini blast furnace that burns out in 5 minutes)...
Here's the ash that's left. I can position the mesh on one of the inner can's ribs to support an alcohol stove at different heights...
Notes:
Still have to make a pot stand of some sort.
I did add another 4 holes (for a total of 8 ) around the top and tested it again. It
appeared to burn the wood gas better due to adding more air, but that's just by my eyeball. I have no real evidence that it did.
You need an effective windscreen with these things. Even a 10 mph wind can blow them out and you'll end up trying to cook over a smudge pot
The larger the size, the longer the time you'll have to cook.
As I suspected from previous experiments, creosote burns real good in this thing
My Son and I had a lot of fun making and testing this one. It will go with us next time camping. I plan to do a demo on making one with his Boy Scout troop.