Month: June 2009

Baking with the titanium Bushcooker Lt1

On By Tom JamrogIn Backpacking, Camping1 Comment

Baking with this stove is best accomplished using charcoal. In this experiment, I used three commercial charcoal briquettes. I felt it would be easier and more standardized to use them here. In the Northeast, there is ample charcoal left in the numerous fire rings that are omnipresent on backpacking trails. Those lumps of fuel are real charcoal, and can serve as an excellent alternative fuel source if they are primed with alcohol, as noted below.It is difficult to control a burn with alcohol, which is either 100 % full on or nothing.

Several items are needed to allow for convection baking.

Grease pot, muffin tin, cozy
Grease pot, muffin tin, cozy

My MSR .8 liter pot is not wide enough to be an effective baker. I found a Walmart grease pan in my camping bin that looked like it would work. I rummaged around the house and shaped a thin aluminum container ( muffin tin) to fit into the grease pan.   Taking a tip from Tinny, of Minibull Designs, I put a few small rocks on the bottom of the pan, which raised the bottom of the “muffin tin” from direct heat, setting up the convection situation. I lined the tin with parchment paper, which makes cleanup nonexistent, spooned in the add-water-only muffin mix, and put the lid on.

The next step requires wrapping a cozy around the pot. I was out at my camp for the baking, so my gear options were limited.   I found a “cozy” made out of double faced bubble wrap that wasn’t a perfect fit, but passed for adequate with the addition of a short piece of electrical wire to tie it shut and a block of firewood wood to seal the folded top down.

Next, I fired up the small Bushcooker Lt1, filling a shoe polish tin cover with 1 oz. of alcohol , igniting it, and then placing the BK1 (with 3 charcoal briquettes inside) on top of the tin. This step is necessary to preheat , ignite and glow the charcoal briquettes.

Why waste the heat?  I put a pot of water on the stove to boil up a cup of tea, while I was waiting the 10 minutes for the charcoal to ignite.

Improvised insulating cover on top of Lt1
Improvised insulating cover on top of Lt1

When the flame died down and the charcoal was starting to glow, I put the assembled baker on top of the stove, and after I waited a half hour or so, my giant muffin was cooked to perfection.

Finished product
Finished product

It must have been good, because it was all gone after some of my friends came over to visit.

More tests later.

New titanium Backpacking Wood Stoves!

On By Tom JamrogIn Backpacking, Camping, hiking, Outdoors1 Comment

I got a UPS package from Don Kevilus at Four Dog Stoves at 6 PM last night, just as I was ready to go out for pizza with Marcia.  The box had two brand new ultralight backpacking titanium wood stoves that were sent for me to test.   Here is a photo of the brand new Bushcooker Light I .

Stove fits into the Snow Peak 700 cc mug on left
Stove fits into the Snow Peak 700 cc mug on left

The stove is tiny, only 3.5 inches wide and 4 inches high.  It weighs 2.5 OZ.  I was so worked up about the stove that  I was out there last night at 9PM and actually burned up just 1.2 ounces of wood to successfully boil up 2 cups of water in my MSR titanium pot.  The stove can also burn alcohol, solid fuel tablets, charcoal, even dried dung!
I was so worked up about the stoves that after I came home, I went outside and started a fire in the tiny cooker.  I actually did not think the stove was capable of carrying out the task, as the firebox appeared to be too small to even hold enough wood to boil 2 cups of water.  Wrong, hit a rolling boil.  Weighing the stove indicated that I consumed only 1.2 OZ. of wood!   Unbelievable!  I can’t wait to work with the stoves on my canoe trip this upcoming week.  The stove is really something!  Full review later.

For those of you who need to know more about this stove, I’m posting the new page to Don’s catalog, which does not even appear to be on his website yet, but should be up around the 4th of July.

Bushcookerlt1The page was sent to me as a scan, so it is fuzzy, but here is a better picture of the new lineup.

New Light series of the all-titanium Bushbookers
New Light series of the all-titanium Bushbookers

Rain

On By Tom JamrogIn Maine, Outdoors2 Comments
Where is it?
Where is it?

Our current favorite spot for dining in Midcoast Maine is the Elm Street Grill, on Route 1 in Camden, where All That Jazz, featuring Hank Lunn on vocals, is the resident Friday night jazz band, playing from 6-8 PM.  They have a brick oven there and the Spanakopita pizza is the best, and we get it with the salad bar.  I do wish they had Andrew’s Beer on tap, though.

I am trying to keep my camera with me, and was really pleased that even though it was 8:10 PM, there was enough natural light to get this.  Sort of sums up what I have been whining about.  I couldn’t even turn around in the parking lot, the water was approaching the road.

Anyone recognize the place?

Trail Bashing, Inc…. blame another “ruined” life on the Appalachain Trail !

On By Tom JamrogIn Appalachian Trail, Imported Posts3 Comments

Hypocritical GOP must stop ‘hiking the Appalachian Trail‘
The Daily Dispatch, NC
Staffers had claimed he was hiking the Appalachian Trail — which becomes an absolutely hilarious new euphemism — but it turns out he’d sneaked off to Argentina to see a woman he’s known for years and has been cheating with for months. …

Canoe camping with a new woodburing backpacking stove

On By Tom JamrogIn Backpacking, Camping, canoeing, Outdoors3 Comments

I was supposed to be up to Lobster Lake today, starting a three day canoe trip, but it got postponed. We’ve moved it to next week. We could not deal with this record rain, it has not stopped. Should be a good trip, food and coffee will be featured, plus I hope to be testing a new titanium wood backpacking stove, the Bushcooker Lite, which was just released by Don Kivilus, of Four Dog Stoves, out of Minnesota.   Here is a shot of the stove:

Bushcooker Light 2
Bushcooker Light 2.

This stove is only 4 inches in diameter and 5 inches high and weighs 3.5 ounces.  Don has engineered it so that it burns alcohol, solid fuel tabs, charcoal, wood, or any available biomass. I’ll have videos and a full report after next week.

The Thoreau You Don’t Know

On By Tom JamrogIn Camping, hiking, Maine, OutdoorsLeave a comment

51JRNTSsjoL._SX106_The Thoreau You Don’t Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant
by Robert Sullivan

Not only does this book illuminate the myth of Thoreau, but it unearthed to me another interesting writer, Sullivan himself. Consider this sentence alone, “Walden is the light on at night for the person on the back road, for the tired traveler wondering how much farther they have to go and then realizing that the path is what matters”.
I feel privileged to have camped a month ago on Pillsbury Island, furthest northern point of Thoreau’s expeditions to Maine. Pencils, canoes, and firewood continue to be viable tools here in this northeast corner of the US, and to have any connection at all to this original thinker and his books gives me hope.

View all my reviews.