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Reviews > Cook Gear > Stoves > WildWood 1 Stove > Becki Stacy > Initial Report
Age: 33 Gender: Female Height: 5' 3" (1.6 m) Weight: 150 lb (70 kg) Email address: becki_s19 at yahoo dot com Location: Royal Oak, Michigan, USA Background: I got bitten by the backpacking bug in 1994 when I was a volunteer at the Grand Canyon. My first backpacking trip was the same week I arrived, with gear borrowed from trail crew supplies. My husband and I enjoy car camping and backpacking (we use a double-wall tent), mostly in Michigan. We've pared down our pack weight a little, and we are continually re-working our gear list to cut weight without giving up the luxury items we enjoy (such as food that involves more than boiling water). Cooking Style: I am the designated camp cook. I won't let my husband touch the stove- he has reign over the grill at home, and I have to claim my territory somewhere! We have been dubbed `gourmet backpackers' by others on the trail. For shorter hikes we enjoy bringing fresh vegetables to add to meals. After a 12-night trip, we've sworn off any food that requires only boiling water that's not a drink, oatmeal, soup, mashed potatoes, or dessert. Lipton side dishes and various angel-hair pasta dishes make up the bulk of our dinners. I frequently cook up pancakes and fry bread (a bread that is cooked similar to pancakes), and heat up pre-cooked bacon on the stove. I typically cook or at least boil water for all of our dinners, and about 90% of our breakfasts and lunches. With a few exceptions, the only time I won't break out the stove is if it's pouring rain at breakfast or lunchtime.
Website: http://makairametal.com/ Product: WildWood I Backpack Stove MSRP: $30.00 Year Manufactured: 2006 Listed weight: 17 oz (482 g) Weight as delivered: Stove: 16.75 oz (475 g) Stuff Sack: 0.38 oz (10.8 g) Size, collapsed for storage: Thickness: 3/8" (1 cm) Base Plate: 5-1/4" (13.3 cm) in diameter Side Panels: 4-15/16" x 3-1/8" (12.5 cm x 7.9 cm) with a 5-9/16" (14.1 cm) diagonal. Size, assembled: 4-15/16" (12.5 cm) tall, with the walls forming a hexagon that is approximately 5-1/2" (14 cm) across at the widest point. Panels that are parallel to each other are approximately 4-1/2" (11.4 cm) apart.
 The WildWood I is a collapsible stove, designed to burn wood or other scavenged material. Charcoal briquettes or lump charcoal are other fuels mentioned as useable by the manufacturer. The stove consists of a stuff sack, five side panels, a fire door panel, and a fire grate. The panels and fire grate are made from plate steel. All the edges of the metal pieces have been sanded down so there are no sharp edges to cut my hands when assembling the stove. The stuff sack appears to be made from cotton or similar material (I can't tell whether it's organic or synthetic), and is a fairly stiff fabric. The panels interlock to create the stove, and the instructions call to assemble the five normal panels before inserting the fire grate and the fire door panel. The five normal panels wrap around the fire grate, which has "tabs" on five of it's six sides that rest in the slots of the side panels to form the "floor" of the stove, with the fire panel inserted last to secure the stove. Though the setup is fairly intuitive (my husband just *had* to be the first to try to assemble it, sans instructions, and managed to get it *mostly* figured out) I do have to make sure the stove is "right side up" (the "hooks" on the fire door panel face downward) and that the side of the fire grate without a "tab" is inserted so that the fire grate can slip on. As the instructions state, this stove can be picked up and moved by any panel except the fire door without collapsing. When collapsed and in the stuffsack, the WildWood I fits nicely my GSI HAE 1 quart (0.95 L) pot. Because it is so compact, I could fit it almost anywhere in my pack.
When I opened the package the stove came in (a bubble mailer), I felt the heft of the stove in my hand and thought "Boy, this feels heavy!" I know that the two 440 g (15.5 oz) fuel canisters we lugged around on our Isle Royale trip weighed over a pound (0.45 kg) each, but volume plays a big part of perception of weight. Overall, with my style of cooking, this stove is about equal to or less than the starting weight of my current canister stove setup (depending on the number and size of the canisters I bring on any given trip). On overall storage volume of a stove system, this is the most compact I've come across. I was excited to see this product come out, since I had tinkered around with making a "backup" wood burning stove for our Isle Royale trip a while back. We arrived via seaplane, fuel canisters weren't allowed on board, and I didn't want to rely on the camp store at Windego to have compatible fuel for my canister stove since I had read online that sometimes selection can be spotty. I like the idea of a stove I can take with me on an airplane, and use either foraged fuels (if allowed at that particular destination) or solid fuels purchased at the destination, such as charcoal or Esbit tabs. After watching my husband try to figure out how to put the stove together, I read the instructions and discovered the few "tricks" mentioned above in the Product Description section. The panels all slide together nicely, and the finished product is a fairly stable stove. Because of the method of construction, there is a little "give", but nothing that comes close to being unstable.
 Before I put my trust in a stove to do what I need it to do (I don't like the thought of cold oatmeal for breakfast), I want to make sure that it will at least perform the basic task of heating up a pot of water. Makaira Metalworks recommends to trying out the stove a few times before taking it on a trip, so I decided to fire it up with an Esbit tab, a charcoal briquette, and some twigs/small branches. For all three trials, I used 2 cups (0.24 L) of water about 70 F (21 C). The Esbit tab burned about 14 minutes, heating the water up to a near-boil. The very last bit of the Esbit tab fell through one of the holes in the fire grate and fell onto the patio.  For the charcoal, I tried a single briquette of no-lighter-fluid-required charcoal. After 20 minutes the water was warm, but not as close to a boil as the water heated by Esbit. After 20 minutes I came to the conclusion that I need either more briquettes or a burning surface closer to the pot to be effective at boiling water. When I put my hand over the stove after 20 minutes with the charcoal, it felt warm enough to heat up precooked bacon, and possibly warm enough for pancakes.  Wood is what this thing is really designed for, and produced the best results of the day. After about 5 minutes of burning, the water was near-boil, and after 13 minutes the water was at a full rolling boil. I probably could've coaxed the water into a full boil sooner, but I had failed to bring over enough twigs to keep the fire fully stoked, and had to scavenge some more fuel for the fire once it was underway. Once the fire died down after I had brought the water to a boil, I was left with some nice coals from the thicker sticks. The water ceased to boil once the flames were gone, so I think that I need to keep active flames going in order to boil water. The twig coals (in the picture above) were really nice and hot though, and by putting my hand over the stove I'm almost certain that they were warm enough to cook pancakes over. The twigs did produce quite a bit of ash, as you can see in the photo below. 
I plan to take the WildWood I Backpack Stove on at least two and hopefully three overnighters in southern Michigan (possibly the Jordan River, Manistee River Trail, and Nordhouse Dunes), in addition to packing it along and using it during daytrips and extensive testing at home. By `extensive', I would cook every type of food (except freeze-dried, which I have already sworn off as mostly inedible) that I have prepared when on a backpacking trip. This would range from sautéing fresh vegetables to cooking Lipton side dishes, preparing regular rice, pancakes and fry bread, heating up precooked bacon, rehydrating dehydrated taco meat, and boiling water for oatmeal/hot drinks. I would be cooking with my trusty GSI HAE cookset, which consists of 1 quart (0.95 L) and 1.5 quart (1.42L) pots and frypan lids. I plan to test the WildWood I in regards to: Storage and Set-Up: 1. How stable is the stove? How will it fare on slightly uneven ground? On sand? 2. My cookset has rings engraved on the bottom to allow for better `gripping' on conventional backpacking stoves. Will this feature still prove advantageous with the WildWood I? I would also test out some regular kitchen (non-grooved) pots to see how well they stay on the stove. Durability: 1. How well will the Wildwood I stand up to repeated use? Will the metal weaken and eventually start to buckle under the weight of a full pot of water? 2. How well does the stove take to being stored and hauled around in the backpack in a location other than nestled in one of my pots? Can I safely stuff it in a fairly protected area without worry, or will I have to really protect it from being smushed? Actual Use:The stove does not have a device to catch ashes for proper disposal, so during testing I will bring along and use a piece of heavy duty aluminum foil for this purpose. 1. How well is the stove ventilated? Will enough air be allowed in to get a fire going fairly quickly, and keep it going? 2. How easy will it be for me to add more wood while I cook? Can I keep my pot on the stove, or would it just be easier for me to take it off while I add more sticks? 3. Will the holes on the bottom of the stove allow most of my tinder to fall through? 4. Since the primary fuel source for this stove is prone to weather conditions, I would bring Esbit tabs as a backup fuel source. In my trial run it didn't do the best job of boiling water, but can I get the WildWood to work with those tabs? 5. Can I learn to use this stove to evenly heat things like pancakes and fry bread? The normal highs and lows (monthly average of the average daily highs and lows) and rain/snowfall for the months I would be testing the stove are: September: October: November: December:
1. I can take this stove on an airplane. 2. The WildWood is very compact, and I can put it almost anywhere in my pack. 3. Overall, this stove is approximately the same weight as my current set-up, and might even save weight for longer trips.
1. This stove does not come with a device to catch ash. 2. The fire grate sits too low to efficiently boil water using a single Esbit tab or charcoal briquette. I would like to thank Makaira Metalworks and BackpackGearTest for the opportunity to test the WildWood I Backpack Stove. Read more reviews of Makaira Metalworks gear Read more gear reviews by Rebecca Stacy Reviews > Cook Gear > Stoves > WildWood 1 Stove > Becki Stacy > Initial Report | ||||||||||