My Portable Wood Burning Stove (AKA BushBuddy)

I was looking for a lightweight solution for a camping stove. I came across the SOLO Stove first and realized it was based on (or perhaps made by/licenced via) the Bushbuddy Stove. I was intrigued, so I made a test stove...

Worked great. Heated well, stayed lit for a while, but I noticed a few things. #1, it was flimsy. #2, it will rust easily. (steel rusts quickly once the protective tin layer is burned off).
I decided to build a better one. I scoured kijiji and found a lady who had 4 stainless steel cannisters, and I found a stainless steel kitchen utensil holder at Wally-World. I used a small piece of expandable metal (used for doing stucco) for the interior ramp. I tested it last night with a 4 inch long piece of pine tongue and groove. It was 4" long x 4" wide x 3/8" thick. I lit it with a firestarter (cotton ball soaked in vaseline). This VERY small piece of wood burned for 13 minutes and the coals were red hot for another 8 minutes! That is 21 minutes of burning from a very small piece of soft wood pine. It IS a bit heavier than the tin version but will last much much longer.




I used the cannister lid as the bottom. I left it on during the whole burn. It did not interfere with the fire/coals. In fact, it caught the small dropping embers and ash. The amount of ash left over was equal to the size and thickness of a nickel. pretty much nothing. Very efficient.

All of the images require joining/logging in to that Wilderness website. I'm curious to see what you have done. After the nice 22 degree camping on Valentines day with 40+mph winds bringing that number way down the camp-mate and I were looking into things like the TiGoat cylinder stoves. The more information we can get the better.

Oops! Fixed it! Used dropbox instead.

Looks pretty neat! I'm guessing with the open design and the lack of any venting this is an open vestibule kind of stove?

The air enters the outer canister holes in the bottom and feeds oxygen through the holes in the base and bottom of sides of the inner cannister. Heated air travels up between the canisters and exits the holes in the top of the inner canister. You can see in the first image of my test stove, that the flames actually exit the inner top holes. Virtually smoke free.
As far as it being "open vestiblule" im not sure what you mean by that. But, to make it trail safe, you could place a piece of expanded metal (like what is inside at the bottom) on top, under the pot stand. That would make it an enclosed fire. Here in Manitoba, when the fire ban is on, this would make it compliant.
Heres a diagram of how the design works:


And FYI, the tester I made was a small coffee tin and a chunky soup can inside. only a few ounces in weight.

Open vestibule being one that has the flaps open for ventilation. I would be more concerned about asphyxiation without having a vent to the outside for the spent gasses to go.

One of the reasons I like the TiGoat series is they come with chimneys and you can easily make almost any tent stove-ready. However, at $275+ to start they are not nearly as cheap as a couple of coffee cans.

It's a cooking stove. Not a heating stove. Not to be used inside of the tent.

That makes a lot more sense. When I had been researching the heating ones they were still listed as wood burning stoves and that's what I had on the mind. Oops!

A couple of years ago I started making wood burning stoves. They were pretty neat. But, then I started thinking about it. If I was planning on using a wood burning stove, the reason would be because of plentiful fuel, and no fire restrictions. If fuel is plentiful, then I am not concerned with efficiency and cook times. If I don't care about efficiency, then the type of stove doesn't really matter. If, at the end of the day, all I need is a small fire to boil water with, then a couple stones and a small cooking fire, or stones, two steel rods, and a small cooking fire is all I need.

Anyways, you did great on the stove. Have fun with it, and report back after taking it on a couple trips.

That's pretty much the same conclusion I've come to.

The trips I did this past season convinced me that I don't need a stove here at all. On one of them I forgot my fuel. When I realized it I got upset with myself but after thinking about it I started feeling a bit silly for even carrying it because it's really just for amusement.

Bill, there's nothing amusing about the prospect of not having at least a hot cup of coffee in the morning

Ain't that the truth!!!

Lucky for me it was the alcohol fuel I forgot and not my cooking pot otherwise it would have been a tragedy