Split Log Stove - One Log Fire For Camp & Trail Cooking

Over the past few months I've been experimenting with a variety of long

stove

s trying to find something that was quick and easy to light and keep lit and something you could control the heat on, so if you wanted a higher heat for frying or boiling, you could do that or if you wanted lower heat you could also achieve that and what I came up with is the

split

wood

stove

for this wood stove all we're going to do I need is some type of saw and a tool to make a

split

in the wood. I found this dead spruce wood and the section of wood that I'm looking at here is about eight inches in diameter and you want to try to match it.

The diameter of the log you get with the diameter of the pot or pan you will use. My skillet that I'm going to make my breakfast with is about eight inches in diameter, so this log should work fine. We are going to make three cuts in this trunk, in the first cut we are going to make at the widest end so that the trunk narrows from this side, this way it becomes narrower up here, the tip of the tree is that way and base. of the tree is that way, so I'm going to make my first cut down here, so we made our first cut.

Now we're going to go up about two inches from there. We will make another cut that will give us our base. There's our nice thick base that will work perfectly, so now we're going to go up about 10 inches from that cut and make our final cut. The next step is to split this log in half, one split is all we need now that our log is split, I'm just going to do one extra step, you don't have to do this if you don't want to, it just helps a little with the distribution of the heat, determine which side you want your top to be on, so this is the side where my pan is going to sit and all we're going to do is remove a little bit of this wood from the inside of the log near the top, which it'll help the flame spread a little bit, what's going to help with heat distribution doesn't take much, just a little bevel like that, that's all you need, okay, with both of those ready, let's light this up.

Now that our stove is completely ready to

fire

, we're going to take our base and set it down. on the ground, just make sure it's good, sturdy and as level as it needs to be, then we'll take our burning logs and place them on top. I usually like to sit them a little better on the ground and make sure that the top of my stove or my pot or pan is going to be sitting, it's nice and level, getting this wood stove going is super easy , we're only going to open one side at the back here, both trunks are still touching, we just have the front side opened to create this air channel.

You can throw some tinder on the bottom and today I'm just using birch bark. There are plenty of birch trees around this area, so you might as well take advantage. I'm just going to dump some fuel. At the top I try to tilt my fuel back where it is still closed so it doesn't fall out. All we have to do now is just light our tinder and I think you'll be surprised how quickly this thing goes. a lot of other long stoves take a long time to really light up but this one goes out pretty quickly and requires very little fuel to run well, this goes very loud, let's put my kettle in there it's making some coffee so it's probably been about five minutes , so I'm going to add my ground coffee here before it boils too much.

Oh, that's good, so the coffee is already made, the water boiled, um, I don't know, maybe around six-seven. minutes or so, it's not so bad what I've done now is I've spaced these logs further apart, you can see how big the gap is between them and all it's going to do is stop the logs. burning so fast they're not going to interact with each other as much so now we're getting a lot less heat so it's probably good to start

cooking

our breakfast so this is the advantage of this long split stove is that you can move these logs to control the heat, so when I move them apart as they are now, these logs stop interacting with each other and they stop feeding each other, so the

fire

loses a lot of its heat and in fact, if you separate these logs just leave them, they will also go out relatively quickly, maybe in 10 to 15 minutes they will go out completely, so it's a great way to conserve fuel, if you just need to boil some coffee, you can separate them, they will die and then go out. light it again and once these logs are burned inside, they relight very easily, so now I just let these logs cool, I have them separated right here.

It's another reason why this base is so useful because it just gives you a platform to work on and move these logs, you don't have to worry about the ground being level or stable or anything like that, so it's a really good setup, so What these logs are starting to turn to ash inside, so give them a few more minutes and we'll be ready to cook. A few more minutes have passed. I've got these logs spaced about a little over an inch apart at the top here and I've got a relatively medium heat, so we're going to start

cooking

.

Now I know there will be people who will argue that this setup is not good because you only have one divider so you will only get heat in the center of the pan, but that is not the case. to absorb that heat that's going to spread like on the edge of my pan oh yeah that's too hot to touch and this bacon is frying up really well the coffee boiled up really well so I would call it pretty effective that's a good thing about This setup with this base is that it keeps the fire off the ground which is great for situations similar to mine where it has been very hot and dry the last few weeks, there is no humidity and the ground is very dry and there is potential for a forest . fire, this is a great way to be able to cook food, boil water without having to have a fire in the ground, the heat is going down a little bit more than I want, so I'm going to come in here and bring them a little bit closer.

I'll turn up the heat, it should be good for our eggs, so hmm, that's really good, oh man, have a breakfast of champions right there, okay, I'll break

camp

once I'm done here and continue down the

trail

, so I'll do it. What I'll do is move. these burning logs as far as I can put them on this base and leave them and they will go away on their own, I will finish my food and pack my things and by the time I finish that I should be ready, well I already have my I washed the dishes and went for a quick swim.

It's very hot today and that's the only way to beat the heat here, but this has been sitting for probably half an hour, maybe 45 minutes or so and it's outside, maybe there's not even any heat left. just a little bit hot on the bottom here but that's no big deal, same with this side base here, yeah it's a little hot so you can see underneath, plus it's just flattened out, no damage , now there's a little bit of ash and stuff. that guy, but there's no burns on the ground on the base, there's no burns, it didn't burn, it came up a little low here, but that's why we make our base about two and a half inches thick, so there it is. have.

Split wood stove, it's quick and easy to use and you can even control the heat which is a big plus when you're trying to cook here so I recommend you give it a try, it's a fun little project. and it works great and let me know what you think if you made it this far. I just want to say thanks for watching, I really appreciate it. I have many more videos coming soon. We're almost done with summer. We are almost done. The heat and the bugs, which I'm so excited about. Starting in the fall, we'll have some really good videos here, so yeah, I appreciate you checking it out and I hope we see you in the next one.

God bless you and happy

trail

s.