Can the tent stove be made bigger with less bit?
This post is an answer to the question of making a miniature tent stove bigger and have less bit. Less bit possibly. Bigger will make it less hot.
Introduction to a bigger stove with less bits.
I have had superlative compliments about my Miniature Dome Stove- A three-in-one backpacking stoves which are very gratifying. However, in the same breath being asking for it to have ‘less components’ and be bigger.
“To me this a bit like someone saying that they adore my new breed of miniature cactus, but can you make it bigger and while you’re at it, dehydrate it so it will be lighter for me to carry home and oh can you get rid of that nasty prick!”
In fairness, I don’t think the stove critic can be expected to imagine just how hot my stoves feels in a small tent. Yes, such a small stove burning so few fuel sticks looks like a boy set on a man’s task. However, it is because of its small size (as described later) that it works so well. “I have made larger stoves that have a crappy performance by comparison when using similar sized burners.”
At this early stage, I also will point out that all my best tent stoves are incapable of being loaded with a big charged wood. This is very very different from most other tent stoves that burn an entire batch of wood, often incompletely.
Instead, in my stoves, only the ends of a tiny bunch of sticks are pyrolysing to producing wood gas at any one time. The burning gas is the main source of the distributed heat. It is, by comparison with other tent stoves, a lean & mean & clean stick burner. It burns about 400g of sticks/h and discharges very little smoke. “That is only about 7g/min or 0.24oz/min for such delightful cooking and warmth”
It is technically a quasi-gasifier burner, where the glassification and gas combustion are not fully separated.
This little Instagram video reveals the nature of the combustion process. The gentle pulsing of the gas flame can be heard.
The photos below may give some idea of the heating potential. “This is not a toy stove.”
When using the stove in a small tent, the doorway zip is usually left partially open to prevent overheating. It has to be experienced to be believed.
I used my first tiny tent stove for the first time in the middle of my tent. Michael, my long-suffering camping companion said with a big smile from the other side of the tent “Tim, that is amazing I can feel the heat as soon as you lit it!” And that was before it started to have dancing patches of glowing red colour over the stove body as in the above photos.
The parts make the stove heat people well while in a small tent. It provides convenient and generous cooking & snow melting power in a tent. The three-in-one stove functionality allows the stove to be used with alcohol as a backup and as an outdoor stove for fast cooking with damp sticks if required.
Lastly, my early stoves had many parts welded onto the combustion chamber. This resulted in fewer parts to be lost. However, the stove was bulky and poorly shaped and hazardous to other delicate ultralight items in a backpack. They could not be conveniently packed within a customised protective cooking pot, as with this stove. Aso, it was difficult to pack equipment inside the burn chamber.
In contrast, for my current design, the many components are removable so that they can packed into the smoothly finished fire dome that fits inside the cooking pot while backpacking.
Some components must also be removable so that they can be replaced after many hours of exposure to the ravages of the internal intense wood combustion (1,000C+). This avoids the whole stove going on to the scrap heap when a part burns out.
Stripping back the stove fittings
I thought it would be interesting to see how much the stove could be stripped back according to the ‘critics requirements’. Although I don’t think many enthusiasts will complain about the ~650g weight of the full deal which includes a 1L cooking pot and lid and the versatility of the three modes of operation (wood stick fired tent stove, outside stick fired blower stove and a backup alcohol stove).
Size matters. For a start, it is a Miniature stove. That is what it is and it must be small (75mm high*150mm dia). The small size is critical to its high functionality and is described in detail within Micro tent stove design for strong radiant heat and robust flue pipe draft
This small round smooth shape makes it a strong and companionable backpacking load that can easily ‘nest’ with other commonly available and cheap ultralight cooking pots.
Smallness also makes the stove have a very high surface temperature to give comforting radiant heat for cooking and warming bodies. “With a steady heat input, a bigger heat exchanger equals cooler exchanger.”
The small combustion chamber also provides strong heat feedback into the fuel to make the stove function adequately with damp bush sticks for fuel.
Making the stove bigger, without a bigger burner and flue pipe, will make for less comfort, slower cooking and more difficulty burning of damp wood. The bigger stove will become more of an air heater, rather than a heat radiator to directly heat bodies.
“Trying to heat the tent is a looser game in a frozen world with a 0.03mm thick layer of silnylon as your only protection from the elements. The air in the tent will warm, but the direct radiant heat from such a small stove is the most effective source of warmth. “That is why we point our bottoms toward a source of radiant heat on a cold night”
Similarly, having a much greater load of wood fuel at first seems tempting. However, it will make the combustion less controlled, less cleanly and less efficiently.
Ground mounting. If the stove does not need to work conveniently above a deep snow surface or above the ground it can simply sit on the ground or a rock/rocks. This will greatly simplify the design. These surfaces will provide mechanical support for the light aluminium stove base without the need for the mechanical support of the supplementary stainless steel foil disk.
The ground or rock surface will also become the support for the protruding long fuel sticks. Consequently, the fuel stick slide and the mounting cone will not be necessary. This configuration will provide poorer heat distribution and does not allow for the convenience of a fuel stick storage/drying rack to be made below the stove.
Another option, without the convenience of a fuel stick slide, is to sit the stove on a very large rock so that the rock can provide the support for the long fuel sticks. This is a very nice option if such a rock is available at a campsite. It can be set up on three other rocks to form a shelf or table. From experience, the heat that will transfer into the rock will make it a very pleasant and long-lasting hot table and heat-bank.
In the above situations, an alternative solution would be to reduce the fuel stick length to about the diameter of the fire dome so that they can be fed right in with no need of extra support. This would entail a lot more effort with fuel preparation, particularly for thick sticks, compared with using long sticks as is possible with the current design.
[Add photo of the stove on a ‘rock table’ with plenty of support for the fuel sticks.]
The components that could be retired would be: 3 pole leg mounting fittings (est 10g each), the supplementary base disk (15g), fuel slide (10g), fuel slide mounting cone (est 35g) and stick lifter wire (est 5g).
Without a fuel stick slide, it would be difficult to run the stove up above a snow-covered surface. It would also take some tricky bush engineering to provide support for the protruding long fuel sticks.
Lastly, without a fuel stick slide and entry cone, there can be no stick lifter wire and this will reduce the operator’s ability to adjust the stove power by lifting or lowering the fuel sticks.
Here is a little Instagram video of the fuel stick lifter in action.
Minimal cooking simplification. If the stove was needed mainly for generous body heating and less for cooking, the stove could have the fuel stick entry from the stovetop (as in the photo below). This would remove the weight of the fuel stick slide and any need for its support. The stove would have a small, but obstructed cooktop.
The next simplification would be to have both the stick feed and flue pipe exiting directly from the stovetop. This would not require the use of the elbow fitting (12g). It would be similar to my Pudding Bowl Stove. By my assessment, this configuration gets 100C hotter than the Miniature Dome Stove, so this would be nice!
However, this inverted burner configuration is in effect a J-burner that will exhibit the problematic and hazardous ‘reverse burning phenomenon’. “This is absent in the Miniature Dome Stove and was one of the driving factors in the design.”
This configuration still leaves room for a tiny cooking pot. If you only need a steady supply of boiling water for drinks, instant noodles and instant ‘pour-in-boiling-water’ meals, this may suffice. However, this pot will not ‘nest’ with the fire dome for backpacking as the custom pot does (more separated bits).
This Instagram video shows the pot boiling on a Pudding Bowl Stove.
Having no elbow would also limit the operator’s ability to tilt the angle of the flue pipe where that may be required to mount the stove in some tents such as a tarp tent. The same adaptor cone that I use either in the elbow or in the stovetop provides some angular flexibility.
Overall, the removal of the 10g stick slide and 12g elbow and 100C increase in stove temperature does not seem to compensate for the loss of a large cooktop.
No blower or alcohol stove mufti-functionality. Removal of the blower and backup alcohol stove from the mix is as simple as leaving the fittings at home. It would save the weight of the USB fire blower unit (~47g) alcohol burner (~5g). “Again not big savings for such a loss of versatility.”
Conclusion about a bigger stove with less bits
The minimalist tent heating Miniature Dome Stove could weigh 450g and have only 7 components including cooking pot and lid: fire dome (est110 g), foil bottom (~11g), roll up flue pipe (~250g), flue pipe elbow (~10g) and flue pipe cone connector(est 5g) and 1L cooking pot (130g) and lid (4g).
For comparison, the fully equipped equivalent Miniature Dome- three-in-one stove can be used as a tent, blower or alcohol backup stove. The stove kit weighs ~650g and has 7 additional optional components that make it compatible with mounting above ground or over deep snow, on raised rocks or stick platforms while camping. The extra fittings that make these extra options possible only weigh 105g [3*pole leg mounting fittings (est 10g each), supplementary base disk (15g), fuel slide (10g), fuel entry cone (est 35g) & stick lifter wire (est 5g)].
The value of the loss of deep snow compatibility and the other two modes of stove use (blower and alcohol) can only be assessed by a user and their likely requirements.
However, from my viewpoint maintaining this flexibility is invaluable with dealing with changeable climatic conditions in an alpine environment. The extra weight for the full kit is only very little.
“What to take on an extended trip? Take the lot. It’s an easy answer. Share with a friend and it halves the weight. The only remaining difficult and perplexing question is how much alcohol and who to trust to carry it?”
Now for the ode to someone else’s bigger dream stove with fewer parts.
Say no to the dream of a bigger stove with fewer bits!
Small is compact so the backpack it fits,
Small for strong radiant heat and cooking your meat,
As for fewer parts, it just gives me the irrits.
Addendum
Some time after writing this post, I have designed the ultra-simple KISS Stove that is the same size but has fewer bits and exemplar heating power. So maybe there was value in the provocation about fewer bits after all.
Tim
