Recycled PC Tent Stove

Some of my winter projects this year were to build a canvas hot tent, a compact packable wood burning stove and a HDPE toboggan, hopefully we’ll get a decent winter and I actually get to use them. Working with a friend we've recycled a used BCT canvas A-frame tent, made in Bradford, and have modded it with a decent snow sodcloth, vents, extra side tie outs, new poles and eventually a stove jack, I’ll show all that later.

The whole hot tenting idea came from watching some videos on Youtube and suffering a hole in my lavvu on recent trip. I figured I do a lot of my camping in areas with mostly coniferous trees, softwood tends to throw sparks a lot and I didn’t want to ruin my lavvu any more. The canvas tent looked like a great solution and if I could find one at a good price it should be easy enough to adapt. Luckily for me Ian had both a suitable donor tent and the sewing skills to carry out all the mods I had in mind. So that was that sorted but I still wanted a stove which was more compact than my Helsport lavvu stove, the Helsport is a fantastic bit of kit but it’s tall and quite a weight at around 10kg, I think. The idea is to load the canvas tent and wood stove onto a 10ft HDPE toboggan, the Helsport is too tall and too heavy to be practical on a sled, no bother in the canoe though.  I’d seen the Snowtrekker stoves but after enquiring about shipping from the US it was going to be more than I could afford, I watched some DIY stove vids on Youtube and thought about trying the large ammo box types. I looked at the dimensions on all those I could find on ebay and the surplus sites but none of them really worked, I had something in mind around 20” long by 10” high and wide. I’m not sure why, maybe I’d read it somewhere before, but I saw an old PC in the spare room one day and straight away saw it’s new potential.

I’ll share some pics of how it went, just in case anyone fancies putting an old dusty PC to use.

Sorry Dad if you see this, the PC has been kaput for years, the PSU and motherboard went so it was destined for a skip one day. I’ve still got your hard drive and peripherals if you ever want them J

Oh yeah, I don't have any welding gear so it's all drilled and stainless rivets throughout ..

Take one very old and poorly PC

Rip all the guts out of it ..

Leaving you with this ..

Wait two days for it to stop raining then take it outside let loose with the angle grinder (you might want to look away now Dad)

Back..

Front (it looks like it should be the other way round but I have a plan) ..

I managed to source some 5" stainless flue pipe through a friend of a friend, so I hacked a big hole in the top of the PC/stove and adapted a stainless can lid for a jack ..

A touch of fire cement around the seal for good measure ..

Front opened up for the door hatch, the rivets on the side are for resting an internal baffle on so the flames and heat don't shoot straight up the flue ..

Back plate on ..

Front top plate fixed, dry run with door, latch and damper plate ..

Choosing hinges ..

They'll do nicely ..

Front damper cut ..

Closed ..

Door baffle .. 

Door on ..

View of internal baffle through flue exit ..

Almost ready for the Nitromors and then stove paint

Just on with the legs and then I should be testing

Ready to burn ..

Front legs set lower than back to encourage draw and avoid a tent full of smoke ..

Smoking paint and a gap showing, I'll fix that with some angle iron at some point ..

Chugging away ..

This one came out kind of monochrome for some reason ..

Hardwood burning nicely ..

Smoke drawing well ..

Flue damper ..

In the tent I'll configure the flue differently with the adjustable elbow much lower down, the flue will exit a side wall rather than the top like a lavvu, the pipe will be supported by two crossed sticks and a wrap of wire. We'll see how the stove fits in the tent and take the measurements for the jack piece. I'm still undecided about where to put the stove in the tent, whether to put it by the door on one side like the Snowtrekkers, or to tuck it away back centre.

Bolts from the inside, locking washer and nut on the outside ..

Legs slip onto bolts ..

Wing nuts on next and then tighten ..

I've done away with the bolts lower down and replaced with a full length 5mm steel rod, this lets the stove sit much better and more stable, propped up for photo ..

Legs off ready to be packed ..

After the first burn test on Friday night I noticed the original PC paint was now coming off the case, Nitromors didn't touch it before so I just left it. Ten minutes with a 80 grit flap wheel in the drill and I was back to bare metal, I filled in a couple of cracks with high temp silicone and then gave it another spray. It'll get another burn test then it's getting packed for a cold camp this weekend :)

Oh yeah, I took an inch off the upright tent poles too, managing to snap one of the shockcords inside somehow, try as I might I can't get a new one tied in, ho hum.

I'm not sure how many hours I put into this but it was done within a week, I pottered around for a couple of hours each night I guess. 

First outing to follow ..

Any comments always welcome

Chilling Out at Comrie Croft

Mrs Shewie and I managed to get away for a few days last week whilst she’s off for half-term, we headed north to Comrie Croft for a bit of lavvu action. It was the first time out with the new tent, stove and cot beds so it was a good learning experience.

In hindsight I think the cot beds might have been one luxury too far, they were comfy come bed time and made great benches during the day but they were a bit of a hindrance. With the added 40cm elevation it kind of negated the lower wall section of the Bergans, it meant it brought us too close to the tent fabric and caused us to rub the sleeping bag and pillows against the soggy fabric, which brings me on to the second point.

With the extremes of temperature it was inevitable that there was going to be some condensation issues with the single skin lavvu. I forgot to check with the thermometer but I reckon it was a good 30*c in the tent and hovering around 0*c outside at night. The condensation only formed in the lower third of the tent but it was enough to be annoying with the cots. Next time I think we’ll just use the Fat Airics on the floor, that’ll give us twice as much floor space too I reckon. I found a microfibre cloth worked well to give the inside a wipe now and then.

Next up is the stove, what a beast it is too. I’d ferried up three bags of hardwood logs I sourced locally and they worked a treat for the four days we were there. I probably split them a bit too small at home before we went, no biggy but it just meant we threw two logs in at a time instead of just one, lesson learned though for next time.

Another issue with the cot beds meant we were probably too close to the stove come bed time. We were never going to burn ourselves but there was always a chance you might roll a bit too close in the sleeping bag and melt it. In fairness the semi sunken lay in the cots meant the chances of that happening were pretty slim, it was on our minds though when we switched the lights off for the night. With the mats on the floor it would be noticeably cooler, the heat didn’t really sink much lower than the height of the stove, standing up was like putting your head in the oven at home.

We had no issues with the lavvu whatsoever, it went up first time, gave a great taught pitch and laughed at the heavy downpours. On the first night I didn’t quite align the stove flue properly as it exited the cap, that meant we got a few drips coming through onto the stove during the night, the second day I wombled some wire from a broken fishing net I found in a car park next to a river, a couple of twists here and there and the flue was anchored to the centre pole and sat much better. I was the able to wrap the cap fabric round the flue much better and kept out the drips. Even though we had the stove glowing on occasions we had no problems with the lavvu fabric getting hot, the collar on the Helsport flue did a grand job.

Enough waffle, some pics ...

Lavvu, stove and beds setup, wife's legs and wellies

Like a complete div I lit the stove with some pine kindling, the result was a hole in the tent after just five minutes Note the piece of waterproof plaster :(

Friday morning, I love this shot, I think it's going on the wall

We went for a nice steady walk around the Glen Lednock Circular, stunning scenery in the autumn colours, the Melville Monument

Snowcapped Ben Chonzie

Rowan growing from a huge Oak stump

We stopped at the Shakey Bridge for a brew, I found a perfect round hole in the roots to seat the F1 in.

On through the woods

The colours were amazing, my point and shoot doesn't do it justice

Wee Cauldron

Furry trees

One incident worth mentioning, on my way out of the tent one morning I accidentally knocked my down gillet off the bed and it fell against the stove, it was only in contact for a nano second but it was enough to make a mess.

Helsport 1 - 0 Alpkit

I sent off an email to Alpkit this morning to see if they could recommend a repairer, they said just stick some sellotape over the hole, get it in a bag and send it back to us and we'll repair it F.O.C. What a result, it's packed and going tomorrow :)

Helsport 1 - 1 Alpkit

A great time was had, I got to say farewell to a good friend too which otherwise would have been unlikely, I've come home thoroughly relaxed and looking forward to the next one.