Depending on if you are out camping or stuck in an emergency with no power or natural gas, dealing with a disaster can be a drag without having an oven to cook your food. Even Freeze-Dried Food needs water heated up so you might be scrambling around trying to find a way to cook your meal.

We’ll show you a simple way to turn your average run of the meal #10 can into you’re own Ready Stove. Most commonly known as a “Hobo Stove”, it is an improvised heating product that you can use for cooking your meal.  You could use any tin can to make an improvised cooking devise, but when you have 126 #10 cans in your ULTIMATE Year Supply of Freeze Dried Food you have  a large amount of #10 cans to use to help ease the emergency situation. You might not know how to make your own Ready Stove but its very simple & inexpensive.  You just need to follow these simple steps in order to assemble you’re own Ready Stove.

Items you will need:

1 Empty #10 Can 1 Can Opener with a V shaped opener

1 Pair of Gloves 1 Scissor or Tin Shears

Step 1.  Punch 5-6 equally spaced, 1″ diameter holes around both the top and the bottom of the can.
Step 2. Cut a large square in the side of the can, giving you access to the area where you put your fuel source.
Step 3. Find your fuel source. Simple pencil sized sticks will do the job.
Step 4. Light the fire & enjoy your warm meal.

What makes the Ready Stove work so great? Having the holes on the top & bottom of the can will cause a convection.  The air will draw from the bottom and the smoke will come out of the top holes and will help fuel the fire with oxygen.

(Note: For improved heating it is best to lace the bottom holes to face the wind)

Some people prefer to remove the top & the bottom of the can to help promote the convection, but it can cause a carbon deposit on your pot/pan and can be quite bothersome to clean off.

I personally like to use the flat surface of the #10 can to hold my tin cup of water  for my Mountain House Pouch. You also should look up other designs that people have come up with, like adding a dampener for the oxygen supply so you can control the air flow and that can control the temperature of the stove.

If you have the time & the supplies to add to your stove you can take a simple wire coat hanger & turn that into a handle on your stove or you can take another #10 can and attach the handles to that.  You can use that additional can to boil your water so you don’t dirty your cook ware. Many other people online have used their Swiss army knife and have turned a large cooking pot into their own stove or a beer keg into a massive cooking unit, (not very practical but amazing to see.)

Making your own Ready Stove is not hard and its very inexpensive to build. In a world where recycling is the wave of the future, you will find a lot of people wanting to find the green thing to do with their left over #10 cans. I personally remember building one in Boy Scouts and cooking my hot dog on top of the #10 can.  The only fire source I had was a simple candle to heat up my stove.

If you want to try something fun with the kids, make your own and email a picture to me.  I will post it on this blog so you can show your ingenuity skills.  Email marc@readystore.com