Home Made Rocket Stove! With pics and results

For quite some time now I have had this home made rocket stove. It works well, very well, as you will see with the results towards the bottom of this blog. In the next week I will make another one, and create a "how to" blog on making one of these stoves.


I have tried to take pictures for this blog 3 separate times this week, but it keeps getting dark so I miss the chance to get the shot of the thermometer at the end. So if it appears like I am cooking in the dark, but taking the "finished product" photos in mid day light, this is why.

Here you will see me lighting the paper that will kindle my humble fire.


As in any fire you stack small twigs and work your way up. To start the fire in this particular stove, you drop your supplies in through the top, but once it gets going you load the sticks in through the side via the port hole, so if you need to replenish your fire, you don't have to take your pot off the top and load, you can keep your pot on the stove and load through the side.


In this next photo you will see the side port hole where you will load your twigs once the fire is going. This is a very nice feature to have. As stated above, there is no need to remove your corn to load sticks through the top, you can simply push them in through the side.



Once the fire is roaring you can set your pot or can on top. I used corn for this experiment. It is a can with a net weight of 15.25 oz, so just under 2 cups. I puncture a small hole in the top with the can opener so the pressure can escape.



After just 3 minutes (yes 3 minutes exactly, I had my stop watch out) you can see the contents of the can reached 135 degrees. This was warm enough that I had to blow on the first few spoon fulls of corn before I ate them.

Here is a picture I took before I started. These twigs ended up being enough to cook my dinner the first night, and the second night of the experiment. Hows that for efficiency.


All in all, this is not something that should be hailed as the best stove on the planet. I have seen far better ones in camping stores. However, it was free to make, it works effectively, it takes a renewable fuel source, and very little of it, It is smaller than a #10 can, and weighs very little.

I will follow up later this week with a "how to" on the construction of such a stove.

Enjoy!