How to Make a Simple Hobo Stove

It's name may not be politically correct, but "thrifty" scouts will appreciate the hobo stove for its economy.  It is made entirely from cast-off materials with simple tools and requires very little fuel to cook simple meals.  It's a time-honored cooking technique used by the homeless, hobos, backpackers and in survival situations.

Hobo stoves can be quite elaborate.  My simple hobo stove can be made by young scouts as a project a scout meeting. 

Materials & Tools

The tools and materials needed are simple:

• A puncture-type can opener (see photo)
• A hammer
• A spike or large nail
• An aluminum 3# coffee can or #10 aluminum can.
• A small scrap of wire mesh or chicken wire
• A vise and a 15-18" 2x4 are helpful as well

 

 Step 1: Create vents at the top and bottom of the hobo stove.

Using the can opener, create several openings around both the closed end and the open end of the can.  These will provide both the necessary oxygen supply at the bottom and a "chimney" at the top to allow smoke to escape.  More openings are better, so take your time.

Making vent holes in the base of the hobo stove.

Step 2: Create vents along the side walls of the hobo stove.

Put your length of 2x4 in the vise with most of the extra length sticking out on one side.  This will be used as a support for your can.  Then using the hammer and nail, create extra vent holes in whatever design you like along the sides of the can.  These provide some additional airflow as well as an opportunity to decorate your stove. 

Using a hammer and nail, punch additional vent holes in the sidewalls
of your hobo stove.

Step 3: Use your wire mesh to create a "grille" for the hobo stove.

Since your cookware will most likely entirely cover the mouth of the can, the grille may not seem as though it is a necessity.  On the other hand, it does provide some separation between the can and cookware and an additional route for smoke to escape.

For a grille, fold your wire mesh, chicken wire, or even an old wire coat hanger into a square-ish shape a little larger than the top of the can.  This simply rests on the top of the can under the cookware.

This photo shows finished stove, grille, and cookware.

Step 4: Fueling the hobo stove.

The fuel for the hobo stove would make scant kindling for your typical cook-fire.  Small twigs, small pieces and/or very small pieces of scrap lumber are all that is needed.  This small pile was more than enough to cook a simple meal, and I ended up burning off the rest just to clean up the mess.

Fuel for the hobo stove consists of small scraps and twigs.

Step 5: Final preparation.

If you've never cooked over an open fire before, fair warning! Your cookware gets very black and the soot can be very hard to remove.  Applying a little dish detergent to the outside of your cooking pan beforehand and spreading it over the entire surface with your fingers will make a huge difference at  clean-up time.

Applying dish detergent to the outside of cookware helps keep soot from
permanently ruining cookware. 

 

Time to cook on your hobo stove!

Kindle a small fire in the can. (I used a single sheet of newspaper as tinder and lit it through one of the vent holes.) 

Once the fire is burning well, it's time to cook!

You can cook almost any simple meal on your hobo stove.  In this example, I'm frying hot dogs and onions in a little margarine.  I've also done baked beans and hot dogs on the hobo stove as well as making boxed rice dishes (such as Rice-a-Roni or Zataran's).  You may need to add fuel from time to time.  Be careful to handle your grille with a mitt or stick.  It can get quite hot!

Hot dogs and onions cooking on a hobo stove.

This is one of those easy and fun projects, like the cardboard box oven, which fascinates scouts for its simplicity and highlights how cooking can be accomplished without fancy, expensive, heavy cooking equipment. 

Pie Iron Pizzas are a Fun Way to Get Kids Involved in Outdoor Cooking

An important component of getting children involved in the outdoor cooking process is making it fun. We learned this one at Cub Scout Day Camp a few years back, and we've found it to be a really fun and easy before dinner snack around the campfire even now that the boys are older.

What You'll Need

The ingredients and tools for this one are simple:

• A pie iron (or one for each kid if you can)
• A tube of ready-made biscuit dough (the smaller variety, not "Grands")
• Ragu Pizza Quick or similar pizza sauce
• Shredded mozzarella
• Your favorite toppings
• A spoon
• Cooking spray

You'll want to have a good fire going for a while before you start, so that you have a decent bed of coals to cook on.  If you can't have a campfire where you are, this works on charcoal briquettes as well.

Step 1. Spray the inside of your pie iron with cooking spray. Open your tube of biscuit dough and flatten 1 of the biscuits, then put it in the pie iron and close.

Step 2. Place your pie iron in the fire on the hot coals. Let cook just a couple of minutes, then turn your pizza crust over to cook the other side.  It's usually best to check for donness frequently, because temps on a wood fire can be pretty hot.  You'll also find that the first pizza takes longer than later ones, so be careful not to burn your second helping.

Step 3.  Add sauce, cheese, and toppings and you're done. Enjoy!

 

Hiking and Rock-Hounding in Western Maine

Harvard, Tamminen, and Waisanen Quarries

Western Maine is a mineral rich area with rich deposits of amethyst and tourmaline as well as a variety of useful minerals such as mica, feldspar, and quartz.  As a result, the area has a number of interesting sites you can visit if you are interested in geology, history, or just a good hike.

One such group or quarries, owned by the Perham family, are in the area in and around Greenwood and West Paris.  At one time, the family owned a jewelry store at the corner of routes 26 and 219 in West Paris where you could pick up quarry maps and learn about the area's geology in addition to making a few purchases, but sadly the store has since closed.  You can download a pdf copy of the Perhams of West Paris Quarry Map.

We've visited Harvard Quarry, Tamminen Quarry, and Waisanen Quarry several times while camping at Littlefield Beaches Campground.  They are relatively easy to find, if a bit off the beaten track.  We've tried a few times to locate the Nubble Quarry as well, but have had no success finding the trail head. The Whispering Pines Quarry, while closer to the main road than the others, was further from our base camp, and we've never tried to visit it.

Visiting these quarries is a load of fun for young boys.  We've done it as a family outing and later brought Cub Scouts on a day trip here.  Bring a bucket, hammer, and safety classes, and perhaps a small shovel, and let them pick through the waste piles.  The boys bang away at the rocks and find "treasures" of their own. 

Below is a brief description of the three quarries we've visited as well as a few photos.  For more information on the quarries and directions on how to find them, download the Perham family quarry map.

Harvard Quarry

This quarry is my favorite of the three that we've visited for the scenic views available at the site and the short hike to get there - a twenty minute climb.

The trail to Harvard Quarry

View from Harvard Quarry

First developed in 1870, and mined by Harvard University in 1917, Harvard Quarry is known for its deposits of purple apatite, green tourmaline and black tourmaline, garnet, beryl, quartz and cookeite.  After visiting the quarry a couple of times with our boys we visited the Harvard Museum of Natural History in Cambridge, Massachusetts and seen samples  collected at the site.  It was nice for the kids to see the connection.

Waisanen Quarry

This quarry is just off the road, just two or three minutes walk on a gradual downhill.  It's usually filled with water, but the dump pile is fun for the kids to explore. 

Exploring the mine dump at Waisanen Quarry

This quarry was mined for mica and feldspar  starting in 1931.  Smoky quartz, purple apatite, bertrandite, gem quality tourmaline, and more have been found at the site by Frank Perham beginning in 1961. It lacks the great views available at the Harvard Quarry, but is great for its accessibility and the boys still enjoyed banging away at the rocks with their hammers looking for samples.

Tamminen Quarry

Just a tenth of a mile beyond the Waisanen Quarry, the Tamminen Quarry, this quarry is also very accessible. 

Tamminen Quarry was mined commercially for Feldspar beginning in 1930, and is named for the late Nestor Tamminen.  It features some really interesting quartz crystals as well as several other minerals.

Make a Cardboard Box Reflector Oven

There's no surer way to impress Cub Scouts with outdoor cooking than to tell them you're going to bake their favorite treat in a cardboard box.

As outdoor cooking methods go this is more stunt than practical, but it does pique the interest of young Webelos and their parents and is actually quite easy to pull off. We usually make the oven in a den meeting, and cook in it the next week as part of our Outdoorsman activity badge.   Here's how you can make one:

Cardboard Box Oven Tools and Supplies

• One cardboard box - approximately 22" x 15" x 11" 
• Aluminum foil - Have a full roll on hand, although you may not need it all
• A few heavy wire coat hangers
• 1/4" light-duty staples (for a staple gun) separated from each other
• Duct tape
• 2 disposable aluminum pie plates
• A utility knife or heavy scissors (for cutting cardboard)
• A pair of heavy wire cutters or lineman's pliers

Making the Oven
1.       Start by cutting one of the short flaps on the open end of the box down to 2-3 inches.  This will be the top edge of your reflector oven.

The short flap will hold your doors closed.

2.       Cover the inside of the box with layers of foil as follows:

A.     Bend a short piece around the four corners of the side walls, a small amount should also overlap the back wall of the oven.  Secure by pushing staples through the foil by hand at an angle.

B.     Stretch long pieces from the outside of the short (top) flap to the outside of the opposite flap, carefully tucking the foil into the corners so that the entire top, back, and bottom of the oven are covered and about 3" of foil are wrapped around to the outside of the oven.  Be sure to overlap all pieces and leave no cardboard exposed.  Inside, attach by pushing staples though by hand.  Outside, secure the ends with duct tape.

C.      Stretch pieces from the outside of one long flap to the other long flap (side to side) being sure to overlap your pieces.  Tuck carefully into corners and secure with staples inside and duct tape outside.  The entire  inside of the box should now be covered in foil.

There should be no exposed cardboard inside the oven.

3.      Create a baking shelf about 1/3 of the way down from the top by straightening and cutting wire coat hangers into straight pieces and pushing them through the box from left to right.  Use a ruler to ensure that the shelf is the same distance from the top corner on each side and your baking pan is level.   Bend the ends of the wires to hold them in place.

4.      If the wires sag, you can strengthen the shelf by weaving a couple of additional wires from front to back of the oven through the wires installed in step 3.

The baking rack in the carboard box oven is
made with coat hangers.

5.  Place one pie plate upside down at the base of the oven, and the second one right-side up on top of it.  This will hold the charcoal briquettes that are used as a heat source.

The lower pan keeps the extreme heat from the briquettes
away from the flammable cardboard box oven floor.

6.  Close your long side flaps first, and use the shortened top flap to hold them closed.

Exterior of the completed oven.

You have a completed Cardboard Box Reflector Oven!

Baking in the  Cardboard Box Oven

In theory, you should be able to bake just about anything in this oven, with the only constraint being the oven's small size and lightweight construction, which will by no means support a heavy load.  I usually opt for simple items that are easy for the scouts to make, like brownies or cornbread from a pre-packaged mix. 

You may need to experiment with the heat, but usually I find that 4-6 briquettes preheated until they are mostly white are about right for 350 degrees on a New England summer day. Preheat these outside the oven and then place these in the top pie plate and your baked goods on the rack in a disposable foil pan. A small shovel can be used to transfer preheated coals into the oven.

One of My Favorite Webelos Den Meetings

Not surprisingly, my favorite Webelos activity pin to teach is Outdoorsman.  I try to work on this one in warm weather meetings, and have now done it once in May/June and now, this year, in September. 



Outdoorsman Activity Pin

Although Outdoorsman is all about camping and camping skills, it is possible to complete the pin without actually camping out.  Even though several of the boys in our den attend camping trips, I try to make a point of completing the pin in the context of weekly meetings for those who don't.  It takes three or four meetings to do the Outdoorsman right.

One of those meetings is a double-length meeting we hold in the back yard.  Each boy makes their own tin foil dinner, and we cook them on charcoal briquettes in our back yard fire pit.  In order to expose the boys to some other interesting outdoor cooking methods, I also prepare something in the Dutch oven (Rolls This Year) and in a Cardboard Box Reflector Oven (Brownies this year.)  We make the Cardboard box oven at an earlier meeting, which is a fun activity. Parents and other family members come and cook their own meals as well. When I did this for my oldest, we also used hobo stoves, but I skipped that this year because honestly they are a bit tippy and dangerous.

While dinner is cooking, the boys worked with their den chief to pitch a tent using the required taut line hitch and two half hitches knots, and planned a skit to perform at a campfire.   I quickly set a log cabin fire lay, and we sat down to eat.  I'm happy to say everything came out very well and most everyone enjoyed their meal.   You could certainly tell who preferred not to have their meat and veggies touch each other, though!

When dinner is done, we have a few minutes by the campfire to watch the boys skit which, being boy devised and led with only a few minutes planning, turned out to be one of the more chaotic moments of the evening.  I wound up the meeting by talking about what we had done and learned by the fire with the boys, while signing off on three requirements we've completed that night in their books.

All this takes about two hours.  More than our usual meetings, but the time goes by pretty quickly and everyone enjoys themselves.  Me included.

Funpack Weekend is a Great Way to Get Cub Scouts Outdoors

This past weekend I took my youngest to Funpack Weekend - a Cub Scout overnight program that is usually the highlight of the Summer program.  In spite of a lower than usual participation level from our own Pack, this year's program did not disappoint.  This was my seventh time attending a Funpack weekend and my fifth as leader of our pack's contingent, and I have to say that the staff ran the best program I've seen so far.

For those of you who haven't participated in a Funpack Weekend, it is a very fun event for the boys.  Our pack's contingent, along with several other packs from around the our council journey to Camp Hinds, or council's main boy scout summer camp, where we spend all day Saturday, Saturday Night, and Sunday Morning participating in a busy schedule of activities.  Saturday morning is mostly consumed with getting scheduled, the check in process, and camp orientation, but immediately after lunch the fun begins with the scheduled activities.  We spend 50 minutes each on the BB Range, Archery Range, Swimming, Craft Lodge, Nature Area and in Sports activities, with four of the activities taking place on Saturday afternoon and three on Sunday morning.  In each case, there is great emphasis on safety and responsibility while we are doing activities, especially in BB, Archery, and swimming. 

Saturday Evening begins with each pack preparing its own dinner in its campsite.  Time is a bit short for doing anything too involved, since we only have from 5 - 6:15 for prep, eating and cleanup.  Since we had a small group this year we decided to take a chance and try some Dutch Oven Cooking -  we prepared "Two Potatoes" and "Chocolate Lava Cake" - two of my favorite recipes that I'm planning to share in some upcoming posts.  We sped the process up a bit by doing most of the prep at home, and I left the afternoon's final activity, sports, early so that I could start fires and gather equipment.  Overall it went well, but we did leave for our free time activities a bit late.

Free time is next, from 6:15 to 7:15.  Nearly all of the activity areas are open for the kids to revisit during this time, but for most, it's back to BB, Archery, or Swimming.  Many also use this time to hit the trading post and spend their money on sweets, souvenirs, knives, and so on.  Saturday was quite hot and humid, so most in our Pack chose to hit the beach.  When free time is over, we have to rush back to our site to get our uniforms on for the evening's main event.

Once we have our uniforms on, we gather on the main waterfront for evening festivities.  It starts with flag retreat, which is led by older scouts, but always includes a couple of younger boys from each year.  Then we have "vespers" a "scouts own" interfaith service in which we reflect on the day's activities and  scouting's ideals and offer a prayer or two.  This year's vespers featured our campfire coordinator in Native American regalia talking to the boys by torchlight.  It was something to see such a large group of 7-10 year old boys participating, quiet, and attentive for 30 minutes about very serious stuff. 

When vespers adjourns, we move on to campfire, which is in many ways the antithesis of the earlier event.  It is boisterous, silly, and fun.  It's always been a highlight of the weekend for me.   At this point I should probably mention that each year we have a theme for Cub Scout camps, and this year's was dinosaurs/fossils.   The theme is used in event patches and staff T-shirts, the nature and craft programs, and most importantly at campfire.  Each pack presents its own song, skit, or joke, most of which tie in to the event theme.  In addition, the staff provides a theme oriented backdrop to tie everything together.  This year was "Dino Labs."  The back story was they had found a dino egg, and were trying to hatch it.  To do so required bad jokes and laughter - which we had plenty of!  The program was a blast, and we enjoyed ourselves immensely for the better part of an hour and a half before returning to our site. 

The night winds up with a brief campfire in our site.  This is a chance for our boys to enjoy a few s'mores and some quiet time before bed (and for adults to finish dinnertime cleanup).  Unlike most camping trips I've been on, there is very little bedtime chatter at Funpack weekend.  Everyone crashes quite quickly.

On Sunday morning, we close out with our final three activities.  Unfortunately we drew the dreaded 8 AM swim rotation this year and the weather featured some "liquid sunshine" (rain), but it's always pleasing to see everyone put their happy faces on and make the best of it. Prior to closing, there is also a final silly moment as the adult leaders of boys who lost things over the weekend have to perform "I'm a Little Teapot" for the boys to reclaim their stuff, followed by flag retreat on the waterfront.  Then we load up our gear and head home.

Putting on such an event is an astounding amount of work for the all volunteer staff and I want to thank the Casco Bay District volunteers who put on this weekend's festivities.  They did a great job, and we had a blast.  Also, thank you to the boys and parents who came with me - it was a pleasure coordinating our pack's contingent this year.  If you're involved with Cub Scouts and have never been to a Funpack weekend, I encourage you to put it on the agenda for next summer as part of your effort to "keep the outing in scouting."