Has anybody made themselves a rocketstove? its just a 20L steel paint bucket with a pipe inside insulated with pumice stone, light a fire in it put a pot on top or a hot plate and away you go. Its amazing how much energy you get from a small amount of wood. I have had a lot of fun with it, you can cook for many and its a good party trick. There all over u tube if you search it. Im no supporter for this type of food but everything in moderation as they say.
i've wanted to I think I will make one now that you have. looks like you got a good boil going there. How did you line it with pumice stone? and where did you get a pumice stone source?
Its a good design specially if you have a backyard and lots of trees around where wooden branches is in abundance and save on fuel cost. Its not practical even for car camping. They are for its intended purposes efficient cookers. Ron
got a huge mango tree with wood aplenty you can tell its not something you want to move but more for village use kind of thing. They have small battery powered stove that works on the same principle called the Sierra stove. Dont know how well they work though.
Hi john The pumice stone is purchased in 20kg bags at garden supply stores, its crushed to about 20mm size pieces, cut hole in the side of bucket, insert inner pipe, fill space between bucket and inner pipe with stone, cut pipe hole in lid and slip lid on. drill small holes in bottom of bucket though becouse when it heats up the water comes out of the stone and runs out, if water cant get away to will prob rust out bottom, i think you can use wood ashes instead of pumice stone. easy to make, this is a 20L bucket with a 150mm pipe, a 10L bucket with a 100mm pipe would be just as good if not more efficent. search grover rocketstove, would like one of these but dont think any are in nz. but mine cost very little and was fun to make. And yes it was boiling well, took about 10 min to really heat up and delt to 6 chicken drumsticks no worrys, you could just keep up the fuel and the food, it would cook a lot if you got keen.
Thanks Colin, I just realized when you said garden supply its Perlite here in the US and I have a 25 pound bag of it Thanks for the instruction. I will give it a go. Another way to play with fire.
All good john, here is how i marked out and cut the pipe so i could fold it up at 90degrees and weld it, you make a cardboard ovel template hold it on the pipe mark around it, move it over and mark around it again, then cut it out with a cut off wheel but leave the bottom 40mm or so, bend it up 90degrees and weld. easy as. http://weldingweb.com/showthread.php?t=35026
That good boil is cooking oil not water. I didnt realise till the next pic. Im not sure if pearlite is the same stuff even though you should have no trouble getting real pumice in Hawaii . Pumice is a very light volcanic rock that insulates well. Scoria etc also work but much heavier.
Its canola oil, the first time i tryed it the camp oven pot was sitting on top without the skirt and it took a lot longer and didnt boil as hard, this is round 2 with a skirt which is cut off the bottom of another paint buctet and it made a massive difference, it boiled fast and hard, cooked very well. I also had a peice of sheet metal cut from the spare bucket with tabs bent on it to cover half the inlet hole, this draws more air from under the steel plate lying in the bottom to keep it drawing air onto the embers which keeps it rocking along.
