Making char cloth

So I finally had some cooperative weather today and was able to get some dry wood so I could take a stab at making some char cloth from some cut up old jeans. I started by splitting some wood with my ESEE 5 and then used my Mora Companion to shave and also do a hasty and ugly feathering of one piece to get some kindling since everything is still sopping wet that I could use around the yard.

While this isn't the best attempt at kindling for getting a fire started, I'm not trying to practice starting fires so I cheated with a little Vaseline and cotton to catch my spark.

Alright so we have everything ready to get the fire going, Let's go ahead and move the Lixada stove over to a better place and get some fire going!

I forgot to take photos of cutting the pant leg of an old pair of jeans up and placing it in the can but with a little imagination I think you can get the idea of taking scissors, and cutting jeans ha! While a lot of people prefer to use Altoid tins all I had handy was this can that a brush for my beard came in, since it does seal very well (I actually had a hell of a time getting it open after making the char cloth) I went ahead and punched a hole in the lid with a screw.

The can I was using was rather big and I put quite a bit of denim into it. This was my first time making char cloth and I did go a bit overboard, I had to feed wood into the Lixada for more than 45 minutes until smoke stopped coming out of the char cloth can. Next time I'll use a smaller can and do less material at once.

As I said above I just used too large of a can and put too much material in, several pieces were still far from being done, especially where seams were stitched together down the side of the pant leg. Learned a few lessons and will apply them to my next attempt. I grabbed one of the pieces that felt the driest/most charred and put it in a little stainless steel sauce cup, the FIRST spark off of my ferrocerium rod got the char cloth going, VICTORY IS MINE! I'd ask you to forgive the poor photo as it's hard to hold a phone, shield the screen from direct sunlight, blow on the char cloth to keep it bright enough for the image sensor to see in the bright light, keep your long beard out of the way of everything and take the photo haha. As you can see, part of this piece still had denim that was far from being ready attached to it.

Testing the Lixada Stainless Steel Wood Stove

I saw the Lixada Portable Stainless Steel Lightweight Wood Stove recently and given the price (18.99$ at time of writing this) I decided to take a chance on it and picked one up

At a little less than 14 ounces this thing is fantastic for tossing in your pack, but does it work? Oh yes it does, it works quite well. First the stove comes apart and nests inside itself, it comes with a stowing bag to help keep everything together.

While the stove comes with no instructions I correctly assembled it within 10 seconds, it seemed pretty intuitive and the only thing that threw me off was the ash/ember catcher which I figured out easily enough. At first I had it sitting under the stove but looked at it and decided it probably inserted during one stage, it does.

So, we've had some terribly wet weather the past few weeks and any wood I had was absolutely water logged (pardon the pun) so I looked around for a bit and decided to just use one of my tomato stakes for testing the stove. Got out my handy dandy ESEE 5 knife and set to work batonning some the stake into smaller pieces.

I am very happy with this stove and look forward to using it when I don't want to cook on a camp fire. It will fit in one of the side pockets of my pack and adds negligible weight. With a decent fire starter I was even able to get quite wet wood to ignite and burn! This Lixada wood gas stove is definitely worth checking out!

After I got some, still quite wet, wood into small enough pieces I went Jenga on them inside the stove and stuffed a Vaseline cotton ball down the center. One quick spark and we were going!

As the wood was still pretty wet I thought the fire was going to die as soon as the cotton ball had exhausted itself but I was pleasantly surprised. Eventually the wood got going and I knew the stove was working when I could HEAR the jets hissing. The jets did not photograph well but they were very much there and the stove was performing as it should.

Sadly this was not a good wood for actual use and within 5 minutes it had exhausted itself. I plan to test the stove again with better wood soon when I use the stove to make some char cloth!

The stove disassembled in its stow bag