Donut Wood Stove grilling sizzling steak. Just add a handful of wood pellets, some fire starter then light on top. Burns for 30 minutes with blue flame and no smoke. Could be used for boiling, frying, baking and grilling. Not suitable for space heating due to the carbon monoxide.
See video link on how to make it.
The three cut-outs on the top rim are for my rice cooker pot skirt/pot stand. For car camping or picnics, I recommend purchasing a small rice cooker (e.g. Black and Decker 6 cup model) then remove all electronics and plastic parts. Just keep the glass lid, the cooking pot, the pot skirt (ie. the outer shell), and the steaming tray. First burn will have lots of smoke from the paint on the pot skirt, but no smell after that.
Health Warning: If you are cooking indoors, it must be done under an exhast fan that vents air to OUTSIDE. This stove produces a large amount of CO which will cause health problem or worse.
Once I finished cooking, I dumped the remaining pellets and char into a pot of water so that I can enjoy my steak. If left alone, it will generate a large amount of smoke once the fire is out.
How It's Made - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4E_wQOx910
- Get a 1.36 litre juice can (106mm diameter)
- Cut a 37mm secondary air hole in the centre
- draw a 77mm circle and punch 11 primary air holes (5mm diameter) on that circle
- Use can opener to remove lid. Keep lid and discard can. Make 4mm long cuts every 3mm along the rim of this disk. Bend the little tabs slightly to reduce diameter of the disk.
- Make an aluminum sheet 92mmX205mm from a soda can and roll to a tube 30mm diameter. Make cuts along tube bottom - 10mm deep, 10mm apart. Fold 4 tabs out at 90 degrees. Insert remaining tabs into disk opening. Fold inserted tabs 90 degrees out to keep tube in place.
- Remove top from a 1.2l juice can. Height=170mm, Diameter=102mm
- Cut air holes on the bottom of one side of this can
- Insert disk/tube and push to bottom. I used another can to help push down the disk and to make sure it is level when inserted.
- Make 3 burns to burn off all paint before using this to cook.
- Fire starter - 15 tissue paper balls tightly rolled from toilet paper into 7mm diameter balls then add 7ml methyl alcohol.
- I now prefer pellets which were previously expanded with water then dried to the tissue paper balls. Still need the 7ml alcohol.
My thoughts:
* this stove is built upon the idea of inner/outer can, except that it is topographically reversed with the secondary air flowing radially outwards instead of inwards. This has the advantage of completing the combustion of a large quantity of smoke within the body of a shorter stove. The other advantage which make it useful for grilling is that the heat spreads outwards instead of concentrated towards a center.
* the key difference between this stove and most inner/outer tin-can wood gas stoves is that this take advantage of laminar air flow to maximize combustion instead of turbulent flow from opposing streams of secondary air. I started to work on the donut wood stove after finding that when I put 4 nozzles on my pipe stove, I have tremendous turbulence, but the amount of smoke was more than when I had just one or two nozzles. My assumption based on observation is that the turbulence from the natural draft of 4 nozzles is not sufficient to prevent smoke from escaping through the turbulent unburned.
* One of my objectives is for an easy-to-build clean and strong burning natural draft T-LUD stove which does not blacken the bottom of pots. Further refinement on the idea of complete combustion combined with the idea of fresh air hitting the centre of the pot bottom pushing residual smoke away from the pot should achieve that.
Hint for stove builders: When the pyrolysis layer reaches the bottom, you will see a few puffs of smoke from this stove every few seconds. Matching the number of puffs with the number of primary air holes, I conjecture that this is due to the pellet at the air hole opening catching fire. If you see that condition, try adding a layer of charred pellets (two pellet thick) before adding the fuel wood pellets.
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