Hobo Stoves

How to make one

By The Bimbler

There are three elements to this Hobo kit… a folding tripod, cooking pot and fire drum. Let’s begin with the fire drum which started life as a cutlery drainer. I cut off the collar on this one so it nests inside my cooking pot. I then repurposed a coach bolt by sawing off the head and sharpened the bar to a point. It slots into the central hole on the base of the cutlery drainer and is held on by hex nuts.

For the tripod I used scrapped aluminium tent poles with elastic cord inside. I found the best method was to use two sections for each leg and shorten them and the elastic cord to get the right tension. One end of each pole has a solid section. Drill a hole in three of these, wide enough to feed a keyring through.

Cut three more short sections of tent pole and mitre the ends so they can also feed onto the same keyring. Now it’s time to thread the solid connectors and mitred sections alternately onto your keyring, the easiest way to explain how it works is with another picture…

Find another coach bolt, cut it to approximately 2”and drop it down into the top of the tripod arrangement you’ve just made. Drill a hole through the other end of the bolt for another keyring to feed onto, stopping the bolt falling through and an attachment point for the chain. The chain I used was from a bath with the plug hook modified into a pot hook.

I found that a Zebra Stainless Billy Can was the perfect match for my fire drum but I did replace the chunky bale handle with some steel cable. With the tripod set at the right height and the fire drum spike driven into the ground this combination is versatile, infinitely adjustable and has the competitive advantage of being suitable for use on steep slopes.

I made my Hobo kit many moons ago but since I discovered Titanium it doesn’t get much of a look in these days. Having said that it’ll outlast all the other cooking kit and requires no bought in fuel to work.

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