Cheap home made Tent heater / stove

[coloradoclyde]

Sounds interesting....just so as it's well vented....dying from carbon monoxide poisoning is not the way I want to go..... :shocked2:

 

[Loyalist Dave]

There is a article in the current issue of BACK WOODSMAN about construction of a stove made from a military ammo can interesting.

Speaking of Backwoodsman, a few issues back there was a very small article where the guy heated his tent by carrying a pair of small, plain, terracotta pots that he got at the local, garden, warehouse store (iirc). He heated these over the fire, and then moved them into the tent, and they radiated heat, warming up the interior air. Not so toasty one was in shorts while it snowed outside, but it took the edge off the cold inside the tent....

LD

 

[R.C.BINGAMAN]

Wonder if you could build a fire and place the can in it prior to building the stove, wonder if it would warp. Funny how these type of things take you back in time, while a tour in the marine corps we threw hundreds of ammo cans away. go to the local gun show next time and price one.

 

[coloradoclyde]

Perhaps if you threw the entire can in a fire......lid off of course.....that might burn all the paint off...
But there are far better more H/C P/C'ish alternatives than a military ammo can....

Funny!, all I have to do is think about an ammo can and I can smell the enamel.... :haha:

 

[Loyalist Dave]

But there are far better more H/C P/C'ish alternatives than a military ammo can....

Um..., in my tents no stove is correct. :haha: So converting a standard ammo can for under $50 including the stove pipe, vs. buying a rectangular box made for the same reason for $125+ is OK by me.

I suppose I could have a Sibley Tent Stove repro built, but it's not right either.... besides an properly constructed ammo-can stove will allow me to heat a kettle while the Sibley will not....



LD

 

[Black Hand]

Would it not be easier to purchase a small sheepherders stove and put it in the tent? http://www.cabelas.com/product/Sheepherders-Alaskan-and-Packer-Stoves/744761.uts

Even a 5-10 gallon barrel appears to be more easily made into a stove...

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Easier as for effort, just unpack and use..., but it's $120 and the stove pipe is like $55, plus shipping.

All the tools I would need for ammo can conversion is a power drill, a jigsaw, and a pop rivet gun..., which I have.

LD

 

[coloradoclyde]

Easier as for effort, just unpack and use..., but it's $120 and the stove pipe is like $55, plus shipping.

All the tools I would need for ammo can conversion is a power drill, a jigsaw, and a pop rivet gun..., which I have.

LD

A cheap jigsaw. $35.00
Blades......... $5.00
A cheap drill . $35.00
Drill bit.....$2.00
Rivet gun.....$25.00
steel rivets...$8.00
Ammo can.......$15.00
Total................$125.00

Cost of doing it yourself......PRICELESS... :rotf:

 

[Sean Gadhar]

:surrender: ok I've put about 12 seconds of thought into this :surrender:

(just got a call my oldest has invited himself, his wife & their baby up for the 3 day weekend. No notice! and our house is torn up the wife is remodeling the master bed room }

Anyway if you are going to all the trouble and not going HC, why not run a condensing line? you could zig zag it right under your sleeping pad, returning the cooled water to the source. That way if a leak happens it is warm water not poison gas, you are wet not dead.

 

[coloradoclyde]

Stoves in tents is as common as leaves on a tree in my area....If one is not accustom to burning wood in a stove, they would do well to get some learning experience first....

I knew a newbie once who got his stove to hot, red hot and he was afraid something was going to catch fire......so he opened the door and threw water on the fire to cool it down.....
BIG mistake....He's lucky the explosion didn't seriously injure him or burn his house down.........

 

[zimmerstutzen]

buddy of mine had a 10 x 10 wall tent. Joe claimed a single candle burning would raise the temperature of the air inside the tent on a calm night by about 10 degrees. If it was getting down to about frost, three candles would do the trick.

Frankly, I never used a heater at night. Just loaded up with extra blankets. I would though use a heater on those cold damp rainy or snowy days at rendezvous when it was not fit to be outside.

 

[coloradoclyde]

Totally agree...I sleep hot...At home the bedroom is not even heated and sometimes I still have to open the window in winter...
Candles yes....but don't discount body heat. It too will raise the temperature of a room.

Cold rainy snowy windy days.....a stove is nice on the joints..

 

[necchi]

A lot of that depends on the person and their conditions.
Does he work outside,, Farmer, Construction? Or stuck in a climate controlled factory?
I had a small wood stove to knock the chill out of a tent,,
Until one October rendezvous an early norwester blew in,, we'd been having 65-70 temp days until this one came,, the 20-30mph Northwest wind followed me down to the camp, it was blowing snow when I set up and temps dropped to 20° that night!!
I slept like a baby, woke up crying every 45 minutes just to toss more wood in that little stove.
I bought a Buddy Heater and a 20# propane tank the next day and haven't looked back.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

A cheap jigsaw. $35.00
Blades......... $5.00
A cheap drill . $35.00
Drill bit.....$2.00
Rivet gun.....$25.00
steel rivets...$8.00
Ammo can.......$15.00
Total................$125.00

Cheap jigsaw, after 50 previous projects, .70
Cheap drill $25, after 100 projects .25.
Package of cheap blades (10) at $10.00 = 1.00
Drill bit $2 for pop rivet holes
Drill bit $5 for holes for legs
6" stove bolts w/nuts for legs .45 each $1.80
Rivet gun $9....but at the yard sale $5..., after four previous projects, this being the 5th... $1
Dewalt variety pack of rivets (120) $8..., price per rivet .07....actual cost of rivets $1.40
Ammo can at the gunshow $15.00
Elbow vent 2 @ $5 ea. $10
Duct pipe $8

Actual Total $43.35...saving $100+ over the catalog product....

LD

 

[coloradoclyde]

:yakyak: :haha:

 

[Black Hand]

Actual Total $43.35...saving $100+ over the catalog product....

A great savings to be sure.

However, what you have saved in $ will be easily surpassed in the amount of sheer manpower expended getting up every 20 minutes to feed another tiny bit of wood into the minuscule firebox as well as all the time expended in making the tiny pieces of wood from larger pieces of wood. I would also suspect its heat holding capacity is at least equivalent to an average #10 can...

 

[EricHudson]

Dude, I don't trust home-made technology at all. It's easier to spend a little money on Amazon than to come up with mechanisms that are very likely to fail.

 

[Glock21user]

Dude, I don't trust home-made technology at all. It's easier to spend a little money on Amazon than to come up with mechanisms that are very likely to fail.

Why are they predisposed to failure? The technology has been around for literally hundreds of years.
There is a certain pleasure in making something/anything with your own hands that most will never know, instead the idea that everything can be bought seems to permeate them.
Do the huge auto makers never have recalls, does the FDA never issue warnings or is everything that is made on a machine with cheap labor safe and infallible?
Anything that we enjoy at one time or another was an idea and a home brewed idea.
I am very fortunate to have been raised by men, men that understood hard work and the use of ones hands and common sense could overcome problems and create a better person who can make it through what is called today a catastrophe or disaster.
We look at these things as a way to teach our children how to survive and make the best of things.

 

[firestick]

I welded up a tent stove from an old 15 gallon diesel fuel tank that was a great advancement from a sheepherders stove. From their I went to an Alpine Cylinder stove from Camp Chef and I'll never look back. Feed it once during the night. If we had good hardwood around here it would go all night with the draft and damper adjusted right.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Dude, I don't trust home-made technology at all. It's easier to spend a little money on Amazon than to come up with mechanisms that are very likely to fail.

You have NO idea the level of training and expertise in that factory in Red China. These are the same folks that put lead paint on kids toys and antifreeze in dog food.

So you order a stove online from a guy who builds them in his garage but has a web presence, and that's "more reliable" than if the same dude built one stove for his personal use?? Not sure how having an online store, even if it was Amazon, guarantees a lesser chance of malfunction.

OH and the now long old comment from a different reply above about how I'm going to have to get up every 20 minutes to "feed" my stove, simply is not correct. My tent is a small tent, and a standard ammo can will hold a decent amount of charcoal. If I was in a walled tent, I'd be looking at a converted steel drum stove.

LD