True Rocket Stoves from Turkey

Turkish Rocket Stoves – At Star & Bullock Hardware

I have explained in the past that while many people are storing a few dozen gallons of water and a month’s or two’s worth of food, few have figured out how they are going to cook. Believe it or not, it is difficult to even get the people who interview me to talk about it. (though Dunagun Kaiser at Liberty & Finance finally agreed in a series we filmed recently, posted below). Everyone ignorantly believes that food storage means canned food,. and that the food they foolishly bought from Patriot Supply needs to be cooked somehow escapes them.

I know I’m whining, but I just wish everyone would wake up. Things are getting ugly, and we have long passed the no turning back phase of this operation. The sickening world controllers are not taking their foot off the gas.

This stove I have been reticent to cover, because unlike the Chinese made African Relief Stove I found, these stoves were made for direct sale to villagers in Turkey. There is no middle man or an organization that would require a product to look professionally made. They are rough.

That isn’t to say that they have quality control issues from one to another. These stoves are a commercial product in Turkey that is sold in stores and that has a printed product box, for all three sizes.

Manufacturing is very small scale. They are made one at a time by hand, using metal rollers and bender machines, then hand welded together. I have actually seen a video of how they are made. There is no powder coating, and the edges of the metal parts are not bent over, so if you are careless, they could cut you.

Functionally, I have not seen a “rocket” type stove that is more effective than these stoves. That isn’t to say that other rocket stoves are not effective. They are. Even the Ebay welded tubular steel stoves work just fine, and will allow you to utilize a small amount of fuel to cook your food. Leaves, sticks, and even palm fronds burn great, and produce plenty of BTUs to cook.

For this video I chose to use the pallet wood that these stoves came packed in. And I did that to remind everyone to think hard about what they have around them for potential fuel. As many of you know, going back to the old Prepping 101 days, I have theorized about fuel a lot. I think there will be a lot of gasoline and diesel available in a post collapse world. But these are all just theories.

What if there is no collapse? What if their plan is just a slow dissolution of quality of life in the West? What if the power never goes off entirely, but there ends up being large windows of no power because of local transformer failures? Or rolling blackouts because the “green power” that was never actually green doesn’t produce, or fails altogether? Nearly all of the “biomass” plants are attempting to burn green wood, and they require old tires and other acceleratants to keep the fire going.

At that point, there is no guarantee that you’ll be able to get propane, gasoline or diesel, and there is certainly no guarantee that you’ll be able to afford it, or even be able to travel to get it. As I’ve explained many times, diesel is probably the most practical fuel to store other than coal, but if you live in an urban environment, even storing a quantity of that may not be possible.

Wood is everywhere, always. And you can also add old tires and plastic to your cooking for extra BTUs. You’ll be burning outside, so the fumes are not going to be a factor. And the wood is going to turn your pots black anyway. You can see the creosote dripping off of the stove in the video.

If you want to understand the Rocket Stove concept and the history of how it came to be a known term in the West evolved, you can watch this video or read other articles I have done. At this point, most of you have heard the term.

If there is a “true” rocket stove, I think this is it. Nobody else has really come up with the idea to force the fire into a more concentrated jet using a cone system. It is simple, and genius. The upward heat this thing generates tripped the thermal shutdown on my phone sitting five feet away. As I explained in the video, I have seen a video of this thing at night, glowing bright red. But don’t worry. Steel melts at over 2,000 degrees. No liquid or solid fuel in open air will melt it or even soften it cough cough. Nuff said there for the censors.

Inside these stoves there is an inner wall. It has a door cut the same size as the outside can. So it can be turned to limit airflow to the fuel if you wish, or left open for feeding. This is particularly useful because even the small one of these stoves will generate more heat than you can effectively use. To fry eggs or something, you can fill it with whatever fuel you have and light it, and leave the door closed and the hole in the jacket reversed to the other side so that it burns colder and slower.

There is an airflow level on all of these stoves that controls airflow from the bottom as well. If you want ripsnorthing you open it, and if you want to preserve your fuel you close it. Most cooking will be somewhere in between. If this sounds confusing just watch the video.

In Turkey, they have never had the luxury to learn the Rocket Stove marketing stories when it comes to cooking off grid. In the villages, there is no grid for most people. So for Americans, these Turkish products are a genuine wealth. But shipping from Turkey of late has gotten really expensive. This is probably all there will be of these stoves.

The only weakness I can think of for this design is that it does not come with a support for the front to hold up longer pieces of wood. You will have to use a cement block or some other method, which I did not do in the video. One of the key values to a rocket stove design is that you can constantly feed fuel into the doorway, so the pot does not have to be removed as the existing fuel is exhausted.

Just beware that once you burn these stoves once, they will not look the same. The welds are not painted or coated, so they will instantly rust. The metal barrel of the stoves will turn blue and black, and as you can see, creosote will drip out of the sides.

I should also note, because I have covered Rocket Stoves for so long, that I would not squander resources on this stove if you already have a prior purchase, or you built your own out of cement blocks or metal or something. The cones on the top are pretty cool, but not really required. A regular old Rocket Stove of just about any configuration will give you as much heat as you need, and will conserve your fuel. Just get something. Everyone has some wood available somewhere, and cooking on an open fire is a complete waste.