taz's plans for hobo stoves

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

I use the small cat food cans or tuna cans. Cut CORRIGATED cardboard into strips which has a width just under the depth of the can. Coil this as tight as you can get it and put into can on edge. Keep adding cardboard until you can get no more into the can. Should look like a cinnimon roll. Melt paraffin or candle wax and fill the can. Pour the hot wax slowly as it has to work its way into the cardboard. When its full, set it out in the hot sun. I use my solar oven for this. The heat will keep the wax liquid longer and allow it to work its way down through the card board. The next day top off the can again with hot wax and put in sun again. Repeat this until there is no room left in the can for wax. You now have your high tech fuel source. Now take a 3# coffee can and and cut a hole the size and shape of the can full of wax. Cut it just big enuff to slide one of the cans in when the coffee can is turned upside down. This is so you can add another can of fuel in the middle of cooking something without having to remove the food. Now around the side of the bottom of the coffee can (opposite end from where you cut the hole) cut or punch out some holes, about 5 spaced evenly around the can. Diameter whould not be bigger than a ball point pen. About 1/3 of an inch. Light your fuel by laying a little piece of paper on it or if you use a kitchen match, lay it across the fuel. It takes a minute for it to catch fire and then spread across the whole can. Turn your coffee can upside down over the fuel and you now have a cook stove. When cutting the cardboard, it really helps if you have a paper cutter. Cutting and coiling the cardboard takes a little energy, thus I limit myself to making one a day. Not near as easy as making candles. If you don't have cat food cans, Old Git will send you some. Taz....who likes her coffee and food hot!

-- Taz (Tassie @aol.com)

-- zoobie the nutbag (zoobiezoob@yahoo.com), November 27, 1999

Answers

Thanks for reposting this, zoobie. Taz's hobo stove was the hit of the show at a y2k prep talk I have in September. Hey, maybe THAT's what I'll give people for Christmas: A three pound can of coffee, a tin of tuna, a manual can opener, a bar of wax, Taz's cool instructions, all in a corrugated cardboard box.

-- Faith Weaver (suzsolutions@yahoo.com), November 27, 1999.

I work with developmentally disabled adults. We plan to make a bunch of these (probably this next week) as an extremely cheap backup means of cooking for folks that are used to microwaving frozen dinners as their main cooking skill. Thanks for posting... clearer directions than I have seen elsewhere.

-- Linda (lwmb@psln.com), November 27, 1999.

Taz kicks ass...watch out,some women can shoot!

-- zoobie (zoobiezoob@yahoo.com), November 27, 1999.

Thanks for the reminder, zoobie, and thanks to Taz for the instructions. I need to make a few more of those. Some have gone in care packages for my next door neighbors, in case they can't make it through the "3-day storm". Now I need to make more for myself. It's a nice backup to gas and charcoal.

-- Margaret J (janssm@aol.com), November 27, 1999.

Taz,

Good invention. I did something similar while camping once, and my only suggestion would be that it might cook faster with a few more holes in the coffee can. I think I'll make some of your fuel cans as an additional backup in case propane gets low. Do you know about how long they will burn fairly hot?

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), November 27, 1999.



Hawk...I am sorry to say that I don't know how long they will last. But longer than you might think! A pot of coffee, a couple of kettles of food, at least. Depends on how good a job you do of filling in with the wax. For your info...its not a Taz invention, its been around for many years. Probably came out of the hobo camps thus named hobo stoves. It was a friend of mine who lived in the wilds of Alaska that gave me the directions a long time ago. Good Luck...I need to make more myself. I have given all mine away. I think the Xmas gift of coffee, can opener,wax in a card board box is REALLY great. Might add a nice coffee mug to it. Chubby Hubby brings candles home from the landfill and I have them coming out my ears. I make lots of cat food tin candles and then recycle them back to the fellows at the landfill who pull them out for me. I have made hundreds of them in the past two years. Checked my stock awhile back and I had only about 20 left. So need to get on that too. Taz...who may kick butt, but can also shoot a rifle VERY WELL!! Hell, even my mother in law has 3 black bears to her credit. Ate every bit of it and rendered out all the lard from them.

-- Taz (Tassie123@aol.com), November 27, 1999.

We made those in cub scouts. I think they were in the handbook ....

Squirrel Hunter >"<

-- SH (Squirrl@huntr.com), November 27, 1999.


Click to see picture" of this device on the cosmoaccess site. Great info there.

-- johno (jobriy2k@yahoo.com), November 28, 1999.



-- v (a@f.b), December 13, 1999.

Moderation questions? read the FAQ