Super Size Hobo Stove 

I couldn't believe you found all those accessories that fit inside perfectly. Glad to hear you say this is not a boil speed test. If I am going to take the time to go out into the woods to enjoy my day, The longer it takes to boil, the longer I'm enjoying my trip. Another great video.

Mark, I admire your creativity and inventiveness with this DIY stove. The heavy black pot stand (dollar store purchase) that you Didn't use in your demonstration would have been the one i would have used due to its robust construction and its ability to be used upright or inversed when inserted into the top of the strainer pot. Also it has large-ish openings to allow periodic feeding of fuel, as i think you mentioned. Super idea overall. Necessity truly is the mother of invention!!

The big brother to this is the washing machine tub stove/fire pit. You see a lot of these with car campers. You definitely came up with a creative solution to the problem.

Looks like it was a success for the intended purpose. I personally would like a means of being able to refuel without pot removal so I think I would either use a pot support that would allow refueling beside the pot such as your dutch oven trivet or the two rods inserted through drilled holes which are both methods you mentioned, or I would cut about a 3 - 3.5 inch diameter hole in one side of the stove near the top. Great stove for large groups.

I guess you can't have your cake rack and heat it to

Hi Mark, made this super size stove, used it as a portable fire pit/stove on a recent camping trip here in Western BC, I used a grill from an old discarded Coleman camp stove on top ,worked great!! Thanks for the video

Another inspiring video! Amayzing that the conduit feet held up to the heat. The bent cake stand looks very designer-style fruit bowl!

I love DIY videos, and this one was no exception. It stimulates one's creativity for making emergency equipment, even if you don't go hiking in the woods. It's good to know for yard use if you don't have a grill. You can make a firepit with a galvanized tub, filled with wood or charcoal. An oven rack would probably suffice as a cooking top.

Good on you Mark! I really appreciate your care and willingness to share your intelligent design.

I wanted a refresher on building a Hobo stove and came across this. I then built my version using a 11in. stainless pasta colander. Since it's main use is for ice fishing, it's handles slide over and set on two 3ft. rebar stakes, for a grille, 4 stainless skewers simply slide through the top row of holes. Hammer the stakes into the ice(ground), slide colander on and it's set for an elevated fire pit. No bending down, no melt in. Total investment; $9.75cdn. it's light compact and set up is quick and easy. Packs into my sled nicely. Thanks for the inspiration and video.

Absolutely brilliant stuff Mark 👍👍. Thanks for sharing and be well.

Hello Mr. Young , Saturday night and a very good video just what I needed, loved it ! Well , if you have problems with the legs getting lose, adjust the nuts you have on there now to were you can tuck the legs away and add a nut on top of the other nut and tighten it down , it will stay tight , it locks down , they won’t loosen. I think you might be able to roast a Turkey on that thing 😁 . The handle on the lid, make one out of a 1/2 inch dial Rod in a T shape , that would work too , but over all , that is the best hobo stove I have ever seen , a portable charcoal grill that would last for ever . Your the best MR. Young , love to watch your videos. You have been a blessing, thank you so much. Have a very good day! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Us folks down in Sunny Arizona marvel at the frozen tundra of the north. Greetings from Tonto Basin Arizona kemosabe. Value Village sounds like my kind of place. Thanks for this excellent video.

22:30 Those strainers typically come with a matching pot. You can put those legs on the pot, drill some holes in the side about 1-2 inches up; don't necessarily need to be big or many holes, just enough to feed air to the fire. You want to keep the holes up from the bottom, so the pot catches those ashes and embers. The pot will also reduce the amount of heat lost to radiation, forcing the heat up towards your cooking, rather than out towards your knees.

I really liked the group fire ideas. Most of these types of drives are for single people so with a family it's nice to have some of these creative ideas! Great video

this would also be good for use at home during a power outage when you couldn't cook inside but didn't have a standard grill

Excellent video. Now I plan to keep the 2 old barbeque grates I salvaged from someone's garbage.

You look like you have recovered very well from your cancer treatment Hope you stay well

Wow, you just made a Solostove Bonfire for a fraction of the price! I'm going to make one.

Nice thoughts! More cerebellum, less back or wallet! Inverted trivet may focus heat more to pot, less wasted around edges. Flat Cat gear has done a lot of work containing heat to cook pot and I have used these concepts to minimize fuel and time. I have built a $2 for stove, pot, and 16 candles in tent cook set that uses 1 tea candle for Ramen in @ 20 minutes, muffin baked in full burn of single tea candle. Cheers

Love that stainless idea.... longevity!

Hey Mark, if you ever need a super, super size Hobo stove do what we do in the UK and rip the drum out of a scrap washing machine, they burn wood with great intensity and once you've got a good bed of hot embers you can BBQ over it and then sit around it and keep toasty warm.

Many cut two pieces of 1/2” x 1/2” aluminum angle as pot support instead due to weigh of water…great videos! Keep up the good work….

Mark, thanks for sharing, this was a great idea, I really like the conduit clamp feet . Its great to look at things and come up with other uses . Great video !

I would be happy to use this in the back yard on an appropriate evening for a campfire. .. Brilliant Mr. Young..Also that was super that you volunteered to take out the people for the tour..

Hello Mark, greetings from Northern California, USA. Great DIY stoves my friend. I built two DIY stoves using the same style utensil holder which I purchased at my local Walmart store. I used the one inch conduit clamps at the base. Keep those great ideas flowing. Take care out there. 🤗

I'm here because Lonnie of Far North Bushcraft & Survival recommend you. If he likes you, that's good enough for me! Good video, good thoughts 😁👍✝️🇱🇷

Thanks for this Vid. I've been toying with the idea of building something similar. I'm glad you showed the cooling rack failing because that's what I was going to use on mine.

I had the same idea with a stainless steel colander. Your good work helps me greatly with my thoughts. I was thinking of it for extending my emergency kitchen capabilities.

Great Video! I will be making one like this! Great to take along in my RV also ! Thank you Mark !

love you vids.......you seem to answer our questions, and come up with some before we even ask. As a fellow Canadian, I shop at Value Village, and my favourite store......DOLLARAMA.

Hi Mark, Derek Croft here from Bridgewater on South Shore, excellent great use for a strainer. I recently got a Ikea Colander & testing out with wood pellets & it worked excellent. My next test will be with Charcoal & I will THEN be grilling over it. Here in Bridgewater were getting our OWN Value Village & it be opening in February, I CAN'T WAIT to get inside & pick up some supplies like you suggest & use !! 👍😎🤝

A pro tip I use... Amazon sells a 12" air bake pizza pan with great holes to act as a "lid" for using wood fire stoves. Keep your food from getting charred but is big enough for two people.

Another excellent video Mark, great content and so versatile. Loving the different combinations you have with this system. Thanks for sharing, atb, Paul.

Geez and I thought I was the only one that collected all that stuff up at the thrift store to save to use in building hobo stoves😂😂😂😵‍💫😩🥴😉

As usual Mark, you always seem to come up with the best items at your thrift shops for making things with. This stove is great for a large stove. I would recommend cutting out the side a bit for fueling the fire as you did with the smaller IKEA stove that you built before, that way you wouldn’t have to remove the pot for it to be efficient. I would also like to recommend finding a smaller kettle or coffee pot that would fit inside the compost pot so you will have something with a spout for pouring the water from into a cup. It could also be used separate if you chose to cook a large meal in the compost pot. Great job and as usual thanks again for the great ideas.

Thanks Mark, that was a great DYI walk through. Love your curious nature and excellent narative.

Made one 2 yrs ago, works perfect with cast iron Dutch oven with heat beads or wood, easy to use on my friends 3rd floor balcany

Great DIY fire pit Mark! I have the same cake stand, I'm going to try to use it atop my Trangia 27 stove, so that I can use different sized pots. Happy St Paddy's, Cheers!

Sounds like a good idea. Cheers thanks.👍🇨🇦

Fantastic job. Good insight. Thought process is outstanding. Ability to clearly speak is far above the norm. BZ.

Mark, great vid. Suggest dremel out a rectangle window on the side to feed the fire.

Hi, Mark. You are a great teacher making first class, informative videos. I've found some great things to use for hiking and camping at thrift shops or to convert into just the right thing and I LOVE your super size stove. Thank you for showing the fails and for taking the time to make your videos to help others. You saved some people wasted time and mishaps. You also helped a lot of people.

If it's any point of reference, you can run a gas fireplace in a a previous wood fireplace chimney, but not vice versa. Wood burns EXTREMELEY hot compared to most fuels.

Mark what an idea, you did all the leg work. This would be great when car camping/back yard sitting around a camp fire. Take care bud..

If you snoop around the recycling station for metal people frequently throw away their bbq's. You could recover a small fire grate from the bottom of a Weber. A small weber might have the lift grate style and suit your needs.

Thanks for this video. You asked for some ideas for improvements. Here they are. As we learned in school in physics every body needs three points to rest on. Well, that is true but also false. In the real world a chair with three legs will not rest stable. Hence, every office chair has fife legs to prevent it from flipping over. That is why I support me hobo stoves with fife legs too. Even with an oversized pan or pot (about two times the diametre of my hobo stove) the whole device stood stable on the ground and I could stirr the food during cookoing. May be, this is the reason why your wise vendor placed fife supports in the package. ;-))) How to arrange fife supports: a full circle has 360°. So one only needs to place a bore every 72°. Overheating of the ground by thermal radiation. Well this a well known problem. Your idea to place some metal beneath the stove is the first step to solve the problem. But you will face the same problem. After usage of the hobo stove you will find roasted gras, leaves etc. unter the metal plate. Abetter solution is to take some kind of metal soucer like for flower pots or cover lids for hot plates of electric stoves. This device should be wide enough to place the whole hobo stove into it and should have a rim of about 30 mm in hight (1.2 inches). Whilst running the hobo stove just fill the soucer with water. The water will absorb all the heat any excess heat will be eliminated simply by evaporization of water. I use both improvements with my small hobo stoves for a couple of years now without any problems.

Well thought out system brother. Keep thinking out of the box. Value Village sounds like a great place. Cheers from South Carolina, USA.

great video. I will try it out on my next camping trip. I like your ideas and your builds. great videos. from warm California.

Seems that would be great for a canoe trip where you just pull up to shore and walk 20-40', its light and a much better choice than cast iron cookware.

That was fun. Thanks for sharing Mark. 👍☺

Great project! Some very nifty ideas here, conduit clamp feet, cook pot handle bail support and the flower pot stand/rack is really nifty. Pretty nice that everything fit so good... good thinking...

You have 4 conduit clamps on the bottom of your pot for legs, take one clamp off and only have three on the bottom, three legs are stable, four will always wobble. That's why old-time camp stools, farmers milking stools ect always had only three legs. You have some great ideas about camp stoves, I like your set-up.

Just found that strainer At goodwill. After finding you in the past. 12-5- 21. Thanks mark CROWMAN

Great video, Mark--love your creativity!

this is ingenius. Id be tempted to make a door on the side as a place to add fuel and using slightly longer bolts and spacers for the feet Id add an ash catcher below the pot just to help keep hot embers off the ground. Might act as a heat deflector as wellGreat video :)

I enjoy this kind of stuff; making do with what you have or can scavenge. Wish I lived closer to that thrift shop where you get the great deals.

Great system...great firepit ...great great great! X

If you want to take this to the next level, check out the rocket stove concept. Just add another container (pot) that will sit within the strainer. Drill some holes in it, and use that as your burning container. This, within your strainer will burn the unturned gases, contain your ashes, and keeps the fire elevated off the ground.

Another good video Mark, I like the conduit clamp idea for my hobo stove. The small bolts I was using weren't very stable! Cheers!

Mark I love your new Hobo Stove ....just Awesome.....Thanks for sharing your idea...Cheers

Great idea- love the way you show the faults :)

Your appearance, the sound of your voice, the rhythm and enunciation of your speech... were you ever in an episode of "Perry Mason?" No, I know you weren't but you could have been.

A simple idea but on a bigger scale - great idea, mate, We call these strainers "COLINDERS" in the catering world.

Terrific and economical stove/campfire!

Wonderful so nice to hear you thank you sir love your show !!!

Good set up Mark I love DIY hobo stoves and billy cans.I have used A10 food tins before with tent pegs..

Hi, nice video. I made a hobo stove from a huge sized coffee can and its really nice. The only issue with the strainer that you have there is that when there is a heavy pot on top you cannot easily add more wood. You would have to lift off the pot and the grate. That's a bother to have to do. On my stove I have an opening cut in the side to allow me to add wood as necessary. With the proper tools you could safely cut an opening perhaps as well. Take care and best wishes

Wow now that's a stove ! and perfect for what it is intended to do, well done

try using shortened scewers thru holes near the top, or use existing holes to hold the pot. you can use the scewers to cook hot dogs or whatever. nice stuff,thanks.

I suggest reducing the feet from 4 to 3. If you don’t have perfectly level ground the 4 feet will wobble like a table at a cheap restaurant. If you have 3 equally spaced feet the resulting tripod will adapt to most ground conditions.

Mark Young: 18:02 .... You Canadians..... Just below freezing, so it's not cold. I don't go camping until it stays in the 50's at night. (+10 c ). Other than that.. Great ideas. I'm a lone camper and don't need all the big stuff offered for camping. So I want to make my own single person cook stove. I would of used that black grill thing you showed for the top grill. The one with the legs. Other than that, I would fashen longer legs on the bottom of the burner. Altho, your innovation is a good one. I just have a bad back and don't like things down low. I'm going to keep my eyes open at the "Dollar Store" and "Walmart" for parts. Greetings from Northern Idaho. Happy camping.

Your vediod are perfect for eomen tjat have no tools but pleanty of hardware stuff lsying around great practical information

Put two pieces of 1/4" stainless steel all thread in the upper holes, one on the left side, and one on the other, to support your pots over the fire. Use four 1/4" stainless steel wingnuts to bolt it in, and you can raise or lower the pot as desired. You will have room to add fuel as well. Also have someone cut you a 1/4 " stainless steel circle to go inside the bottom of the pot to keep the heat away from the ground and to slow the fuel burning process to conserve fuel. Silicone pads also work well to set the pot on the ground after heating. Good work, enjoyed the video, keep thinking outside the box!

It'd be perfect for car camping but I'd never pack that into the bush. Think I'll make one for when I go hunting this fall though.

Hello Mark, thank you for sharing this fine video. You are a wealth of DIY information, very clever. All the best to you and your family. 🤗

Love your channel, you've got a great personality, and give us great ideas and tips.

That's a pretty cool hobo stove for a big group Mark and that was a very respectable boil time for 6l of water. A few heavy bars laid across the top of the stove would support the pot and allow room to feed the fire. Well done! Wade

Thanks for your excellent test of easily procured thrift items. If I were to drill the stove for straight cross bars, I would be inclined to use at least 3/16" diameter rods to be able to take the heat. 1/4" may be even better. I would not want to pack this rig very far. Like you said, it would be more for car camping.

Great idea, and likely more durable than a large veggie tin can with holes poked in it. The conduit clamps are genius. I wouldn't use it in a tent unless it was a dirt floor and the ventilation was good. It would likely heat said tent very nicely if it were 10'x10' or smaller. If I had my 'druthers, I'd put it in a drag sled, but if none were being used, ya gotta pack it in with your gear lol I think the cast iron trivet would be a great option: durable and fits two ways for options. The heavier grate would be good for grilling, as I think the weight of the pot on it is what made it bend with the level of heat generated. BTW the smaller stove you made is a killer idea as well. I do like how both systems you've "cooked up" are compact and the components nest nicely in one another. Also, never be self-conscious about how you make things work and how they look, because in the end (I'm quoting Murphy's Rules Of Combat): if it looks stupid but it works, it isn't stupid. Kudos, sir. Keep up the good work.

Really enjoyed this one thanks for sharing

Thank you I was looking for something bigger than the smaller wood stoves. Something to put a big enough water on and pot to cook on. The others are too small for two or more people!

Genius. Thanks for sharing.

I seem to have a strange fascination for your Camp Stove vids. Thanks for your research and demonstration. Great work mate.

Great vid. Straight forward and real.

Use the over size rack you can find a silicone counter top saver, cut a strip off attach to the rack on each side of the rack you will have ready made way to remove the rack. The rack can be used to stage ingredients. Hook spoons on.

Hi Lee If you had a piece of welder's blanket, you place the stove on it to prevent the downward heat😀

Great video, thanks for taking the time.

Great ideas...I'll have to try this!

Really neat idea! Something like this would be great to roast marshmallows after cooking dinner! Really great idea. Thanks for sharing

Just love your engenuity !

Very cool idea Mark! Maybe you could use some aluminum bars across the top in an X shape as a pot support? If extra stability is needed then add a bar across each of the legs of the X.

mark for the bottom protection/heat problem maybe some kind of grating to protect the bottom and add a flapper style feed door for ease of use for those larger groups we all know how impatient people are lol lol awesome thunking my friend im gonna make one of these for me and my kido's out in the woods thanks for passing the knowledge forward my friend

Happy new year to you and your family from germany! Great idea, but you should use an upside-down fire - very easy, much less toxic smoke. Fill the combustion chamber with upright sticks cut to exact size, then put on twice as much kindling as usual and your tinder/fire starter on top. As soon as the kindling catches fire you can put your pot on and start heating it - no need to burn that much wood while you are feeding in more sticks. Much less toxic smoke, because only the top layer of wood is dried out at the time (the evaporating water cools down the fire and hampers the wood gases to ignite in a pyramid-type fire). At the bottom of your strainer I could see flames - seems like the bottom holes should be a little wider for a better airflow. A windscreen is an improvement to every hobo-stove - just cut a piece of aluminium BBQ-dish with "ears" sticking up through the Strainer handles. When not in use you can roll it up and stow it betwen the pot and the strainer.

Good job. I have been using an Ikea colander for the same thing, plus as a portable fire pit for 2 seasons now. Everybody teased me when I pulled it out, but most of my friends bought and use one now! We have grilled on them, and used pots and pans. They throw a lot of heat. I think of it as a mini wash machine tub fire pit.

Nicely done-very thorough. The only two suggestions I have: 1) if you have the extra conduit clamp I'd use all 5 instead of just 4. Any extra support with the weight of the water may come in handy. If one should fail for any reason during use the remaining four would be more stable than three. 2) I would prefer the smaller black trivet inverted inside the strainer. I'd worry that even with the oxidation and build-up which would provide friction the water pot may want to slide and could result in a nasty burn. Stainless steel is slippery and that lip may be enough to hold it in place if the slip/shift is minor.

Excellent. . 👏🌺👏🌺👏. Thank you. 🌺👏🌺👏

Late to the idea but i would consider 3 stainless rods in drilled holes to make top pot more stable and allow more variation in top pot size. Great idea by the way. Would also be a great bug-in stove. Thanks

Mark, Greetings from Cleveland, I did something similar with an old paint can just for fun and used it so much I burned it out. Gonna try this next, thanks.. love the Robert Frost at the end👌

Awesome stove! As requested here are my suggestions: add a flame concentrator/chimney which can serve as a pot stand. (Think of the small wood gasifiers). There’s strainers with flat bottoms that would work but it’d be tough finding it in person, but if you can order it online it would be ideal. A mesh trash bin might be a good wood stove, unless it melts the mesh. No need for a pot stand because you could likely put the pots right on the rim. Maybe the biggest size of cans from canned food is still a good option, just need a church key to poke a few holes in it.