Firebox Ultralite Nano Stove - All about it - Audio show

Description

Ben and I tell about the new upcoming Firebox Nano Stove, why we like it, what we were looking for in a stove when we went to Firebox to ask about a small stove, also we discuss a little about stoves in general. Have a listen...See the stove on our website http://wildernessinnovation.com/stoves/nano-ultralight-stove-by-firebox/

Tags: Firebox,folding stove,Nano stove,camping,survival,cooking,ultralite,pocket stove,alcohol,twig stove,trangia spirit burner

Video Transcription

welcome to wilderness innovation today I'm perry peacock and I'm here with my partner ban hey guys and we just wanted to sit down here and have a little talk about this nano stove from firebox and a little bit of how we became involved in it why we're interested in what we think about it and so we're going to take you through that whole thing today and so so basically the stove itself is just it's five point six ounces made out of stainless steel it's basically when it's folded up flat it folds just like if you're familiar with a firebox though folds up the same way and it's about a lot of quarter-inch thick when it's folded up so really nice small profile stove nice lately so so that's the introduction of snow but we kind of want to give you a little background into stoves and stuff like that so absolutely so let's get started with a little bit of philosophy on why someone would choose to use a wood burning stove like this as to as opposed to maybe you know an open campfire when they're out on the trail yeah and I know I probably use a campfire more than I use anything else for cooking on but there are times you know like you member been when we we went and we snapped our to Pancho's together and turn that into a shelter at super shelter yep and what did we cook on so we have a waiting little bit we had the we have we have the Trangia and we're using the west of the Westlands toast and play up I remember that s how worried we type we snapped two of our Poncho's together to make a five by ten shelter and then we put a clear plastic on the front of it as a window to have a kind of a super shelter in more scans to style

babe was inside there and cooking away on the little a little alcohol stove spirit burner yep which were your mother's no we cooked meals and I used to fight pad on that yeah that's what we came up with our snow melter yeah like that I can't can't wait till it snows again flow on it I'm like I want to use that thing beautifully on that was a cool and a burden yeah discovery later yeah but you know would have been practical for us to burn a a regular fire inside of my shelter no sir absolutely remember it was kind of rainy and it's snow and rain and snow and it wasn't the best letter to try to be outside with it no so yeah it's something also is a place for a stove especially when you need to be indoors or even if we had just a open lean-to you can still pull that up underneath out of the weather and be a lot more convenient with trying to do a fire so uh yeah there's a place and on that then that video I did a couple years ago at the firebox folding so the full-size one where I cooked that trout out there I just brush the snow off the log and set the stove there and cook them I mean you couldn't identify yourself now there are definitely some good points and good places one of the biggest things for me that I've come to find people using these types of scope for our boiling water so you know whether they have a you know a mountain house mail or some other backpacking mill or some dehydrated foods of their own this little stove I mean it shines for that because you might be on the trail it might be lunchtime and you want to just sit down and you know spend half an hour and click the mill as opposed to you know gathering your firewood and getting an open fire doing so a situation like that is definitely a plus to have a scope of wood stove like these yeah well you know the other thing I like it you know we've got we've got every kind of some of every type of stove where is for sure and you know the butane stove the big cartridges

stuff like that I don't really go for that that much you know and we've got that one two three stove but a little gay there which is nice though really noisy and rub it heavy / but the thing I like is you know we were talking earlier is you know what's the two most abundant things for fuel yeah I mean wood is just about anywhere right absolutely you know what else is almost everywhere no oh so whether it's the stuff you drink or denature development love bird when I get at the hardware store at the liquor store yes so I mean I think I think you use a stove where it's appropriate you know if you got a group of 10 people you're not going to cook for 10 people in this narrow so right no absolutely not I mean probably what would you think from one or two people one or two people probably max hello I don't I don't think you got to do more than two people no I mean you could but the practical yeah so that's yes that's cool but like you said they with the stove like this especially the Nano being so small and even with the bigger brother of the firebox the 5-inch firebox they still have their limitations I mean it's not practical to you know throw a Dutch oven on top of it you know I'm even though I've seen pictures even though I've seen pick yourself at people stacking five couch opens on top of the fireball yes which it will handle the way no doubt about it but it's just not practical so for this application with these types of wood stoves we're basically catering you know they're catering to people that you know boiling water for their dinners mmhmm yeah and now and and that comes back probably to burn times and stuff like that which short you know we all follow Hiram cook or whoever different and we do our own testing and all that sort of thing and you know these are a value of the burn time babe yes I think so as I like me to talked about earlier as a reference point to maybe see how a stove performs but maybe in the practical sense not necessarily as we're talking about before also you know you're not always going to be in a position where you need to boil a cup of water in five minutes or less right so yeah I mean if you have camping I mean you are you waiting for a bus I'm definitely not well I mean personally I like to get away from the clock but I'm not damn you can I don't want to see what unifor there yeah so it's definitely a nice standard to kind of gauge what stoves will do from stoked of stove but maybe in a practical sense it's it's not as yeah as big of a deal and I think you're right a reference point is really all it is and the fact you know we ran into a couple years ago mess around with some of the existing stoves where regardless how they're powered a lot of stones nowadays won't throttle down enough where you can scramble an egg I mean it's it's designed just to either be on or off pretty much it won't go well enough to actually cook anything yeah and that's something you know you and I we like to actually be able to cook something when we're out not just always boil water and dump some micronian there's absolutely so that's another nice thing about this is what the Trangia if you want to use the Trangia burner inside the stove we just drops right in there the stove just fits it perfectly you know you can use the simmering to turn down the heat level so you can cook something at a nice pace and actually actually do some real cooking you know at home you don't turn your burner on your stove to high all the time you know I mean you it's rotted down whatever you need the same thing applies here and even you know we found even testing the stove but you know you can vary your heat output when cooking with wood by how how you feed the fuel there so you know so it is adjustable that's a good we like to cook and kind along those same lines talk about the fuel consumption when you're using a transie a full full bore pedal to the metal you know without the same ring as opposed to maybe dialing it back maybe taking a few more minutes to get your oil under water but also saving right considerable amounts of fuel yeah yeah you recall last year when we're really diving into these out kostos and we put what was that 13 2 or 3 quart pot I think that's either putt yep and what we did we turn we put that call stove in the west wind snow stand put the pot on their fired it up full board till he started to get a boil and then we put the simmering on neck down to just barely a flame and we actually able to keep just the tiny bit of simmer for two and a half hours a night and a half an hour's so I mean the stove will run a long time if you if you run the simmering down and that goes to now if you run it wide open you got anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes and you're out of fuel so you're going to go through a lot of fuel if you just run the thing full bore you know it's like you drive around town pedal to metal all day in your cart versus just kind of taking it easy now you're going to use a lot more fuel and and on my last Trek your way to that solo desert trek here on the part 2 video I show where I cook my breakfast and cereal and stuff and I started I never even normally i would get everything boiling and n throw at them in that case I put everything on cold I started out throttled down with the with the with the Trangia inside the Nano stove and then I went around starting to pack up the camp and stuff like that while that thing's cook and it still came up to a boil it's still cooked rice cereal just fine which is a whole grain a cracker in Syria so it takes some time to soften up and we're playing and I used all my life I use almost no fuel so you don't have to you don't have to even start out high high high volume you can just take your time relax I think that's a very important point if people are willing to allow an extra five or ten minutes to get their water to temperature they can save themselves seventy-five percent of their fuel they're just allow themselves you know that except for themselves that extra time in the very beginning start from a simmer and and your water will still get up to temperature it will still get hot enough to drink and a shorter matter of time right but they won't burn through all that fuel so it's less feel you gotta carry the other thing too is if you cook at a lower heat you have less chance of burning things you know so that's another factor and you don't have to get really cooking on a high heat yeah I always got to keep watching you know where when I did the other last weekend on that Trek deal and I had it on a pretty low heat I even walked away from camp running some errands and stuff and came back I didn't have to worry about it i'm running on a low enough heat i'm not gonna burn ely so i guess i guess really is just just talking about the Nano I guess I probably I kind of mentioned a little bit of the dimensions and stuff like that I mean it will fit in your shirt pocket the fold that thing up it will fit in your shirt pocket you won't even know you got there are well and if you have the the wilderness innovation fire starting kit this snow will just about fit in the big pocket of that kit to give you a reference point if you have that that FSK in fact we're going to make it better we're going to make a deal just slightly larger so I will fit because that's what we do here we customize them and one of the nice things about this snow that does have the you can actually do the pot holder part on top where you set your cap or pan it's basically l shaped metal if you see look at the look at a picture on our side or whatever and if if their turn to the inside I've actually put an eight ounce cup on there so I mean you can actually cook with some pretty smile on this though in and the in the pot holder part on the top corresponds to the leg on the bottom it's a L shape on the bottom as well so if you have a fry pan or a bigger pot you're going to turn those things out for better pot support and at the same time what it does it turns the legs out on the bottom as well so now you have more support on the bottom two and so that's a nice little feature of the stove how it's how it's designed what kind of fuels could the stove use I know we all have to describe two stoves we'd like to use alcohol if we can get away with it and then next you know our twigs and stuff I mean is it is there a limit to what you can use inside stove like this well I mean literally you could do anything that will burn it does have some 58 holes in the bottom which is for bottom draft holes and stuff you could even put probably a granular fuel in there if you put some tin foil and they're probably a little miss screen or something yeah yeah I mean yeah if you want to do that I'm you could flip we're a mess around your best round earlier you could even a little fold up great on the bottom put a paperclip or anything like that and they could actually sit some is a bit tablets or something on there and burn the stove upside down and put your pot on top of there so I mean that's another possibility so there are those you can I don't see why you can throw a charcoal briquette or two in there if you wanted to do that sure I mean I think load on via to berk it's okay 93 if you're well we'll have to try it but we haven't mostly we just do stuff you know wherever you're outside so we we're mostly just carrying out call with us using sticks but but yeah I mean really you could use a bunch of other things to get creative it's got plenty of airflow in it which is good to think about anything will work fine one of the best features of the Ember are the firebox stove as opposed to maybe then deliver some of the other steps that we've you know hadn't messed around with is that it's it's hinged it's a fully hinged construction you don't have to put any parts together pieces together explain kind of why that's important especially maybe in the winter months when it's colder and just in general why that's important in a small stove like this especially where it's so small well one one thing that you find is especially we like to do a lot of snow camping and stuff and get out there you drop something in the snow especially the powder smell like we have around here you lose something in a heartbeat you'll never find it to spring I mean it's amazing how easy to lose a pocket knife or something so yeah you don't want a bunch of pieces that you have to keep track of especially you get to a snow smile like this the pieces are small so that means you know you get smaller things that are easier to lose this the construction of the stove everything is hinged together everything is pinned together so the parts the parts are always there and you just done with you just to two steps to unfold the stove and you're ready to go so so yeah that's a that's a nice thing and nothing so much against the other stoves in a way they have their place but just something to think about you know the possibility of losing something you lose a side panel or something you know how to spell anymore yeah so and also when it's when it gets cold I mean when we went snowshoeing and we we had to cook our meal and it was at zero or close below at times you lose you're feeling and your fingers the second you take him out of your gloves so I mean if you have a panelled stove that you have to try to put together the stove rolls and your fingers are frozen you have no dexterity with your fingers and that could be a problem yeah yeah and that's this stove is so nice because literally it does just fold twice it's folded in half so done do it you just unfold halfway fold it out so it makes a square and the bottom panel basically just following my gravity that locks it into its cute kind of shake and then you just adjust for what size pot you got and you're done very simple I think you could you could do all that with a pair of mittens on I think yep I think so too and the nice thing if you're using natural materials to burn this stoves a little unique usually there's a single feed port in a in a stove this one actually has two and one is slightly elevated on one panel to the other so that your stoves can crisscross what are your thoughts on that you think that's a good feature or other stoves earth yeah no that's a that's a unique concept from steve at firebox anything about that a long time before this stove trying to try some different ideas he had stopped by the shop here and and we had talked some and I I told them some of the pluses and minuses of some of the twig stoves or stick burning stoves and that sort of thing the feed ports and kind of what I saw is problems and stuff so you try to address some of that so what we have is we have perpendicular feed ports and so when you shove the sticks in there you know they're coming in at a 90 degree angle each other and they overlap sort of in the middle of the stove and has been said one of the feed ports is lower than the other which makes it so you naturally one stick coming in one way naturally lays on top of the other coming in on 90 degrees from the other way so when you got a flame going ones below the other and that all helps to helps to make everything burn really nicely

talk about that the air holes on this stove did they seem adequate do you see any improvements that can be made or does it look like it work just wait is over all over all I like it I like it really really well the way it is you get as we mentioned that the bottom grade of the stove that folds down it has five five eighths inch holes in it which allows good airflow from the bottom it also allows your ash to fall out so we don't get some stones we find that you rapidly get special if you're burning softer wood you're going to accumulate ash really quickly and start plugging everything up so these let everything fall through pretty well and your feed ports where your fuel goes in also allow air flow into there and then opposite the feed ports on the other wall of the stove there is a series of eight eight holes that allow air flow directly in so that's right near where your sticks are crossing but this nano stove is providing an extra burst of air oxygen right there to assist in the combustion it makes it really easy to keep a fire going there's no problem at all with that plenty of air flow nice now you had mentioned that you had collaborated with Steve on the ideas for the firebox nano and maybe some of the wood stoves that here in mind we're going to segue into our took hits but I want you to kind of go over some of the history of the Nano how it came about the collaboration with Steve and the design ideas that that we needed to fit our bill for a stove that would go into our cook kids yeah Ben and I had started working a year and a half ago or some 30 year ago your knife ago I don't know you got on trying to come up with some cook set ideas to kind of put our own little take on what we thought would be a nice cook set and we had decided to come with a cook set that literally included everything you need to cook with so we're talking about storage for food we're talking about containers to cook in utensils to use the one we use all the way down to the salt shaker and this is the 3m scrubbed out yet even the little dropper bottle for the dish soap yeah so I mean we literally put together kit had everything you needed and at the time we just had the Trangia skirt burner stove and we wanted to incorporate the option of being able to use sticks so it could be a wood burner and an alcohol burner at the same time so so one of the probably ran into is finding a binding a stove particular are one person kit fits in the same cook set fits in the same bag as our as our regular size tartness so that's like about a four little over four inch diameter cylindrical bag and most the styles are trying they were too big to fit in there with everything else they were too wide we even tried the m berlett mini right yep and it was it would fit in there with everything but really push the sides that not even yeah there's a little hey wait and you know we like that stove all right too but that one of the other things was is titanium so what do you get with titanium one out of cost yes so now now also you're talking about adding an eighty dollar stove to your could set it's like we don't really want to be particularly selling the stove it's a cook set this goes part of it honda still be hopefully well we could we've come to the conclusion over the years that like we talked about earlier that with these stoves were basically boiling water we're going to be cooking water for boiling water for our drinks you know hot chocolate coffee hot other huh drinks tease maybe ramen noodles some macaroni based meals backpacking meals and those bigger stoves they're just too big for that philosophy I mean it doesn't make sense to have you know the bigger fire box a two-pound stove to boil two cups of water for your mom and noodles exactly so yeah and so this thing here for you know two people or one person is ideal size whatever cook I cook where you're going to use yeah we use that 24 ounce cup it comes with the kit or you can put the 40 on some clean can team that comes with a kid on there and put fill that with water if you need to boil it to purify it or something you let so so that works really nice and then and I you know sled so that does you pretty well for cooking it was sticks or alcohol either whatever works the best for you and if we have other food you know if we have figured you know fry pans or other things then then we'll switch to an open fire but this is a purpose-built stove intended for these kids and and to hydrate you know things such as you know dehydrated beans or rice or maybe your ramen noodles or your drinks this isn't necessarily you know a camp chef this isn't your your wolf brand still be at house yeah is it that's a purpose-driven and there's a reason why we we helped you know design this stove to the specifications that it's at yeah one of the other things here is as we went through the process like I said we we try to remember different stoves and things one of the ones that we like the best was the pockets filled out of the UK's Lego a UK right and that was a nice little stove stainless steel nice polished finish basically comes in an Altoids tin you have it bigger little yeah but is literally a pocket still yes and we rid of that kind of intrigued just a little bit because that one did have the ability it was designed specifically for the Trangia snowed to fit in there and it also had a large feed port on one side where you could put sticks in there and you could cook with the sticks and twigs so we really read like that idea we ordered one hand we tried it out hit our kit just really nicely we were all we're really geared up to hey this is going to be the deal and in the end the people that make that stove they sell on the Internet primarily or through Ray Mears mostly and they had no interest whatsoever in working some kind of deal to let us put that in our kit and everything I was kind of a that's kind of a downer to me because I thought I thought this is the deal right here remember yeah yeah when we got that still ban it was it was a good day yeah and it is a nice little do and I guess the frustration of that kind of it reminds brought back to my mind I remembered that you know Steve at firebox have been testing a couple years ago a few small stoves and she is trying to figure out how smiley could make a stove and have it work right and be worthwhile and so I thought well I'm going to drop over to Steve talk to him and tell them what this is what we need for our cook sets and and so so I stopped over there and talked to Steve and Spencer room and brought our cook sent one person cooks it with us and showed them and show them what we needed to have and we took the pocket stove over there showed a map and basically in the end basically just said look if you took your folding firebox stove your regular one miniaturize that went down to about three by five inches that would fit our deal just perfectly and then I was a caveat I mean they don't want to just make that for us obviously but I do but you know I I said you know look here the stones two pounds it's big you know it filled fits a certain has been said it fits a certain spectrum of people that you know that's that's what they need for their for their needs it works good but for our purpose need some small and light and so saying you know if you hinge all that together if you can do that and make it fold up just like the big stove we already know it'll be lighter because it'd be considerably smaller and it will be the size rights of drops right into our kit bag and so I guess I was at two weeks later so likely yeah wasn't long at all and it seemed like forever because we wanted the next day yeah a little impatient but when Steve had the first prototype ready you brought it I looked at it's like oh yeah that is the ticket right there a lot of people are going to want this though it's it's a nice nice nice girl really liked it and so I mean basically that's kind of our involvement and I know Steve was already working on something I think we we have to put a bug in his ears do it right now hurry of it I think you know just because we can demonstrate the need for us and thought other people probably have the same the same means you're not there and originally luck you mentioned earlier we were doing just the Trangia burner with the west wind or the Mojo pot stand you know one of those two options which are great but it limits you to only being able to use the Trangia burner or alcohol stove of choice whereas this stove gives you the dual purpose I mean you can use natural materials your woods quick twigs pinecones whatever but you can also use the transi burner like we had used before so this just gives more function to the kit exactly yeah we we love it in our kit we're going to we're going to love it independently as well and uh like you go snowshoeing or something and you want to stop along the trail somewhere and have a cup of hot chocolate or or hot Tang I like that let's be perfect for a teapot yeah our snow melting system oh yeah well definitely give some videos on that so much watch for that after the snow flies but but anyway so that's that's a little bit on the Nano we're super excited to be able to be involved and introducing the stove in and get the word out on what it's all about we've a part two of our of the trek video I'm going to show a little more using it with the alcohol already shot some stuff using what sticks

cooking some some eggs and sausage and stuff like that different things like that we'll be putting out some more information so you know stay tuned to our blogs and videos and podcasts and all that sort of thing as we will definitely have some more information at scope would probably did Steve give any indication where clubs still month or so away still about a month months to two months yeah so we're still alone farther out than we'd like to be but getting stuff rolling takes a little time so but in the meanwhile we're going to take this so we've got here and give you a little more information ideas and stuff like that so whatever it comes around it will be ready and this is august 2013 here and so we got about another month or so we're six weeks for it comes out but anybody that wants to preorder the stove it's on our website already we're putting together probably two to three or four packages where for the same price as the regular cost of the stove we're going to throw in some extra goodies for you to to sleep in the pot for you for pre-ordering if you want you can be probably I would imagine the way it looks fucking to Steve and what we're getting for pre-orders that say two stoves come off the light everything is going to be sold so probably if you want a chance of getting it for this file or something like that geese hunting or file camping or something I fire you I probably go ahead and get on the pre order list so we can get you something because probably the first couple runs will be sold they'll be so before they come off the line yeah there's a lot of demand on this thing already so I think that takes care of it thanks for listening and we'll catch you on the next one alright very good once again it's parian band wilderness innovation talking today about the firebox nano stove and it's been good talking to you if we got you some good information today and just like I say just watch us for more information coming along the way be sure pre or if you really want one of these things so you get in line get it before thanksgiving or halloween hopefully for christmas i come let's go anyway everybody take care enjoy your time outdoors and wilderness innovation for simplifying survival