Who makes the best collapsible/take-apart titanium wood stoves? Something that can heat up a nice medium tent with 2 people in it. What are you guys running?
Collapsible Titanium Wood Stoves?
Who makes the best collapsible/take-apart titanium wood stoves? Something that can heat up a nice medium tent with 2 people in it. What are you guys running?
I use a nice sleeping bag myself instead of hot tenting but I can see the appeal and cost savings of not doing that.
That's kind of hard to do when it gets to -20 degrees where I live.
Is it, because one of my bags is good to -45f, so I don't have this problem.
That's fine if all you're going to do is stay in the bag, but that's not what I do.
That’s a quilt, and definitely not -40* rated lol
I don't spend all day sitting in my tent though myself so why hot tent when I can just get a really nice sleeping bag.
On the contrary I don't see how you could camp in -20F or colder without a properly rated sleep system and insulation. You can't keep yourself glued to the stove feeding it all day and night.
A hot tent seems more like it's something to do to keep you occupied and comfortable. When you go hot tenting, most of your time is probably spent hot tenting (gathering and processing fuel and tending the fire).
You can, the point is I'm not going to wear my sleep system with me just to do stuff. It's nice to come back in and warm up for a bit then go back out and to dry your clothes.
Don't you have winter clothes?
Why would you ever say that wearing a sleep system is the alternative to hot tenting...unless you're just being a disingenuous homosexual and surely you aren't that?
Duh, it's a lot simpler to just bring a stove/heater. I can dry stuff and cook stuff, and warm up after being out for a bit and not have to bring a gas warmer and a gas stove.
A nice canvas tent with a stove is less about survival and more about hanging out. You can sit around and read or play cards with friends and not have to be completely bundled up. It's the best setup for when you're on a fishing or hunting trip. Don't get me wrong, a lightweight kit is nice when you're hiking and want to cover ground, but canvas and a wood stove can't be beat for comfort.
I just bought a LiteOutdoors 12" for my SO Silex. Haven't tested it though.
If I'll ever move to some polar region I'll get the UP2 tent by Russian Bear.
I've been using a Seekoutside one for a few years, it's nice but the stovepipe has burned in slightly narrower than the rings which are supposed to keep it closed, so they tend to slide down. I may either replace the pipe or try to flatten it out and re-burn it. The stove body is still in great shape. Hot tent camping is quite nice.
I have been wanting to get into it, but I figure the stoves are so tiny that they go out so quickly. You are waking up in a freezing tent either way. during the day I am up and walking around anyway. I guess its to have a fire without going outside?
It's for drying wet clothes and gear out, or for cooking and heating the tent before you get out of your bag in the morning. I'd set my socks under the firebox to warm up before I got dressed in the morning. The fire does go out somewhat quickly, you have to feed them often, with small splits of wood.
lasts about 40min without feeding. you still carry a good sleeping bag, run the stove before bed to dry your clothes out and cook then get in the bag while still warm to trap the heat for the night
Hot tent is the camping industries equivalent of gravel bike, it's a marketing gimmick aimed at morons who already have a decent tent but might be convinced that it needs replacing.
Ok but Aron Snyder from kifaru international says they are awesome for winter elk hunts and many other hunters swear by them.
>Something that can heat up a nice medium tent with 2 people in it. What are you guys running?
That seems very bulky and heavy. Titanium panels weigh less.
Weighs a hell of a lot less then pic related, nor do you need a special tent compatible with a wood burning stove.
There is no need for a special tent. You can buy many tents with a stove jack sewn in, or if you already have a tent you can it a jack and sew it in yourself.
And unlike a buddy heater you don’t have to carry the fuel with you. It turns out, and this will surprise only you, that the forest is made out of stove fuel.
You can get fuel on location.
Plus you can use the stove for cooking, which I like a lot. And the fire is nice and comfy to look at.
This solution actually sucks, I am looking at moving away from a buddy heater when doing multiday ice camping trips this winter because of the condensation from unvented propane. by day 2 the walls on the tent freeze and condensation literally drips from the ceiling.
I am not going to do titanium stove though because I drive right to my spot on the ice so I will probably do a steel one, I am working on getting the stovejack put in my thermal icehouse right now.
picrel: ice camping on Upper Red Lake from 2021
Is that a 4WD Fiesta?
just fwd with snow tires, I have a GX for ice fishing now, but it was a lot of fun on ice roads.
the luxe 3w stove kinda sucks, it's really hard to put together
cozy. What's so hard about putting it together?
the titanium warps and you have to align steel bolt rods thru the body and screw wing nuts down like 10 inch of rod. Takes forever
So the Seek stoves have a similar design, where it's like 14 inch long machine bolts run through the body, secured by wing nuts. But in the Seek, for the bottom "leg" portion of the bolt you can just leave the nut in place (in fact I put a tiny bit of thread locker on it) and you only have to screw down the top wing nut, which only has to travel like maybe 1/4 inch.
But yea, there doesn't appear to be a single one of these packable wood stoves that isn't a PITA to setup. They all warp and get more fricked up over time. If you accidentally crush a panel or the stovepipe, you're fricked. If you lose a nut or bolt, your fricked. My titanium wood stove is easily my most sensitive piece of kit. I've heard the "cylinder" designs are the worst though, so I'd avoid those.
But the cozy vibes cannot be beat.
Just heat them up and bend them back. Put some hot bricks on top of the panels.
I have a Seek Outside CImarron and their "Large Regular" Titanium stove. I got the large because it's only 10% heavier than the "Medium" but fits wood 40% longer, which reduces wood processing time and increases burn time. I can get a bit over an hour out of a box if I load it up with thicker stuff and set the damper low.
I haven't tried other stoves so I can't speak to them. They all seem to have drawbacks, but I did a lot of research before settling on Seek. I got it because I could bundle it with one of their hot tent setups at a small discount, and because it seems to be a middle point in weight vs hassle factor among titanium stove manufacturers. Putting any titanium stove together is a little fiddly. The Seek isn't the best, but isn't the worst. I'd recommend you buy some spare wing-nuts and other small parts for the Seek on back-up.
Hot tenting seems to be more popular with the hunter / bushcrafter / survivalist scene; you don't see it much with the pure backpacker / hiker types. I don't know why, I think it's mostly marketing. Sure there's a lot of additional weight involved to actually go hot tenting, but after almost 20 years of using traditional aluminum pole backpacking tents, I've found a lightweight floorless teepee with a half-tent bug mesh insert is about the same overall weight as my previous setup if I leave the stove at home, but considerably (like 2x) more living space and with numerous other quality of life improvements I wasn't expecting. I always thought floorless shelters had a "bug", but turns out it's a "feature". Like having half your tent as a giant vestibule you can actually hang-out in with your boots on. Or being able to pitch in the rain and keep everything dry because the "fly" is the first part up. And surprisingly, pitching a teepee is a lot easier - harder to get right the first few times - but it's one of those things where once you practice it, you pitch faster than the regular aluminum pole tent guys.
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But yea, to actually go hot tenting, besides the tent and stove there are a lot of additional weight costs you need to think about: heavy leather / fire gloves - to move the stove or stove pipe if things get fricky due to wind or someone bumping into it, - a folding bow saw to process wood, and a hatchet. Those extras are probably going to cost about 4-5lbs on top of the 4lbs for the stove. This is coming from a backpacker's perspective - I know a lot of the survivalist / bushcrafter types are already trucking that shit around everywhere anyways - but for me, "hot tenting" involves about 9lbs of extra shit I wouldn't otherwise bring.
It is comfy, though. Especially in the winter when it gets dark at around 3-4pm and there's not much to do for 6 hours before you actually want to fall asleep. Having a cozy fire to stoke for hours and a warm place to hang out is pretty clutch.
Some afterthoughts based on other comments ITT
>no need for a special tent
You need a floorless shelter of some type and it needs have enough room for basically one person more than you're actually going with, because the stove is going to take up about the same space as a person. If you try to sew a stovejack into the vestibule awning of a pup tent, you're gonna have a bad time.
Regarding all the other comments about temperature ratings of bags, etc, I hate to say it but you're kinda missing the point of hot tenting. Don't think of hot tenting as a way to cheat on your sleep system when the temperatures drop (honestly, for the price of most of these stoves, you can get a decent 4 season bag anyways). You still need a bag rated for the temperatures you're planning to go out in, you can get away with a little, but not much. I have a bag rated at 15F (but I sleep warm and wear thermals and us a bag liner), and I'm okay down to about 0F. A good burn on most of these little stoves will last about an hour. So if you're relying on the stove to keep you warm through the night, you're going to have an hourly wake up. I have heard of some people doing this, but for most, as others ITT mentioned, it's just a way to warm up your tent before crawling in or getting up in the morning, or create a cozy space to hang out in.
Mostly you should think of hot tenting as a quality of life improvement. Just another "trail weight vs camp comfort" trade off.
The greatest benefit from hot tenting for me has been mostly psychological. I have a massively increased willingness to go out in the shoulder seasons - it's not even about snow camping or low temperatures. I get excited to go out in shitty, rainy, weather, with short days. Because instead of sulking in a damp, cold, dark, tent, I'm going to be cozy and warm.
>I get excited to go out in shitty, rainy, weather, with short days. Because instead of sulking in a damp, cold, dark, tent, I'm going to be cozy and warm.
did they invent a word for this? that satisfaction when it's cold as shit and you slip under the blankets with a hot water bottle
>for me, "hot tenting" involves about 9lbs of extra shit I wouldn't otherwise bring
I don't know where you're getting +9lbs, the Seek Large Titanium stove is like 3lbs, including 6 feet of stove pipe, but yea - my wood processing kit is an additional 2.5 lbs.
I have a Hults Bruk Jonaker hand-hatchet which is about 24oz and 21 inch folding buck saw which is about 14oz, so all-in it's like 2.5lbs. To me, that extra weight somehow seems to defeat the purpose of an "ultralight" titanium stove. But being able to process wood of a respectable diameter efficiently seems really important in winter hot tenting - collecting "little sticks" and small diameter branches that I can cut with a Bahco Laplander just doesn't seem to result in good burn times and also feels "riskier" from a availability perspective - the UL backpacker types seem to snap up all the easy / small stuff in the more popular areas.
I'm wondering what other anons wood processing kit looks like while hot tenting?
>best you can get out of a stove is 1 hour
Yeahhh I dont see the point. I should build a shitshack up in the national forest somewhere and drag an iron stove there
A lot of people here keep saying they're getting less than an hour of heat and I don't know why you've got it so short. My winter camps with my stove tend to run
>Stock stove full
>get in -20 bag on some kind of raised system so face is in the warmth
>pass out for three hours
>wake up because I can't sleep in freezing temps when my face is cold.
>Slap more wood in
>repeat till morning
How lightly and with what are you packing your stoves with that they don't burn for longer than an hour?
Maybe burn some pine knots, they're nice and full of resin and have long burn times.
Why titanium and not stainless steel?
Are you fricking moronic? Weight, obviously.
Titanium stove setups for hot tenting weigh like 4-6lsbs, while stainless steel ones run 10-15lbs. The latter is like half the base weight of most non-"ultra-light" backpacker bag dumps.
I want to try out a hot tent this winter for a backpacking trip, but I'm not a richgay. What kind of setups have you guys had luck with on the poorer end?
Dakota fire hole, fire side covered by a metal bowl that has a high heat rating
The LiteOutdoors cylinder stove is probably the cheapest you can go, I think you can pick one up for like $230 in the most basic config. Like some ITT have mentioned, cylinder designs are kinda the most fiddly to setup, but they do pack a bit smaller, so it's a zero-sum trade IMO.
Pretty much all these stoves are just sheet titanium, bolts, nuts, and wire in various configurations, so this is one piece of kit I might actually be willing to risk picking up from China on Alibaba. It's not some technical thing that requires a lot of precise engineering and manufacturing. As one poster mentioned
, just fricking bend shit back if it's out-of-wack.