While building an alcohol jet pocket stove a couple of years ago, I came across the plans on Zen Stoves for a small, collapsible wood-burning camp stove that can burn anything. I knew right away that I had to make one. And then I forgot about it. Until a couple of weeks ago, when I found the .pdf of the plans hiding away in a dark corner on a long abandoned thumb drive. I decided to give it a go.
The Little Dandy Wood Stove was designed and built by Nimblewill Nomad, a retired long-distance hiker who has chronicled his travels on the Web. The first Nimblewill Nomad stove was apparently made out of scraps, and then used for a 9-month, 4400-mile trip up the Eastern Continental Trail from Florida to Main (He even wrote a book about the trip).
To build the stove, I printed out the .pdf plans from the Nimblewill Nomad Web site, and traced them with a Sharpie onto (you will never in a million years guess the material that I used…) the top and bottom case plates of old surplussed CD drives. I then used tin snips to cut out the pieces, smoothed out any rough edges on the grinder, and sanded the whole thing smooth. Then we tested it out in the back yard using wood scraps to turn some of the newly-fallen snow into boiling water. The result? Boiled water. And very quickly.
Here are some more pictures:
