I'm looking at this Solo Stove. Size and weight are fine.
Should I consider anything else?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJWj7OzWV_g

Quite frankly, you'd probably be better off just getting a coffee can, punch some air holes and get a small grill to cook on.

Or just buy a MSR Pocket Rocket or a Jetboil.

quote:

Originally posted by RVF400:

Should I consider anything else?

How do you plan to use it? Backpacking, car camping. Where are you going to use it. Does the locations have easy access to dry wood.

For backpacking I find it hard to beat a gas stove that runs off the little bottles. Weight and easy of use play into my trips and when I;m backpacking.

A solution looking for a problem.

If I'm gonna burn/cook over wood, and I'm looking for some kind of gadget convenance, I'm gonna bring something like a standing grate which I can cook over and/or set a pan/pot on top of. Snowpeak usually has some solid products in this realm.

Otherwise, give me a backpacking stove from Jet boil, MSR, or Primus...much more efficient, faster and easier cleanup. Anybody that's experienced in backpacking knows how to make your meals efficient and stretch you fuel. Everyone likes to romanticize surviving and cooking over a wood fire....then they realize all the time they need to gather up usable firewood, getting it lit and prepped, making sure you have appropriate cookware, THEN you have the clean-up afterwards, yeah soot everywhere.

I have the solo stove. I was an early adopter when the guy first started selling them.

I've used it once on an actual trip, for shits and giggles.

I'm just meh about it. I mean, it works and does what it is advertised to do, but for backpacking it just felt like way too much of a hassle.

You've got to find some little branches for fuel, and then you've got to break them up to appropriate sized pieces. Then you gotta get some tinder going--cotton balls with vaseline or whatever. Then you gotta get a fire going. Real slow, a little bit at a time, so as to not smother your kindling. You've got to burn a whole bunch of sticks to get that real nice base layer of embers going. Eventually, finally, the secondary burn kicks up and you get a fire going big enough to put a pot or kettle over the stove.

It goes for a bit, and then you gotta pull the kettle off and put more wood in. Finally your water is boiling or your food is burned (burned because what's the point of building a tiny simmer fire on a double walled wood gassifier stove). You gotta wait for the fire to burn out. Embers to cool. You shake it out. Wipe the soot off your pot. Wipe the soot off your hands. Pack it all up.

By now, your friends have already pulled out their Jetboil, boiled 12 oz of water for their meal, boiled 12 oz of water for YOUR meal while you fuck around with a fire, and boiled another 12 oz of water for hot cocoa after the fact. They've finished eating. They've packed up their cooking stuff. And now they're just kinda waiting on you while you still fuck around with the fire--because, goddamn it, you packed it with you and you aren't quitting.

And they don't have soot and woodsmoke all over their one change of backpacking clothes.

Jetboil. And I often just use an Esbit. Simple. If weight and bulk are not an issue, I have a Sterno stove, too.

30 years ago I used MSR Whisperlite. Then upgraded to the Dragonfly. Now I use Jetboil.

Svea. Although not necessary, the small aftermarket pressure pump that replaces the fill cap is really handy. Bulletproof. The amazon shows them but not in stock.

I have the bottled fuel stove covered. I was looking
for wood burning stove recommendation.

I use an a snopeak giga power and with emberlit backup when packing. I also use camp fires when camping with a steel grill and cast iron.

https://emberlit.com/products/...e-wood-burning-stove

https://www.rei.com/rei-garage...stove-manual-renewed


They are excellent for one person but that's it, if your cooking for two it's too small but the trade off is weight and size, which I've learned the hard way is all that matters when packing.

I use FireBox, the nano. Lots of youtube videos on it.

Besides being well engineered, I really like that it folds flat.