How to Make an Emergency Stove from Common Materials

The next installment in our Heat and Light series is Making a simple Emergency Stove from Household Materials. This stove is capable of boiling water in less than 10 minutes and is very easy to use and re-use. The materials required to make it can commonly be found in the home and should be stored in your preps. Required are: Paraffin Wax, cardboard and a couple tin cans. Just like the Fire Starters we built in the previous posts on this series, once this stove is fully ignited it can withstand a pretty good wind. In order to cook with this stove we need to build a grill for it that we can place our container on. In this case, I’m using a large fruit can with several holes punched in it. In comparison to other stoves, this one doesn’t quite shine or stand out - but for simple, cheap, reusable materials - this one is a star! To build it, follow these instructions:

1. Get a tuna or other shallow can with the bottom in it but without a lid
2. Cut a piece of cardboard into strips just less than the height of the tuna can
3. Roll the strips and insert them into the tuna can until it is completely full with cardboard
4. Melt paraffin wax in a double boiler and then pour the wax over the tuna can, filling it as full as you can
5. Allow the wax to settle and top it off again - do this until there is no more settling
6. Once the stove has set up you can ignite it.

To build the grill, do the following:

1. Using a can that doesn’t have a top and will easily fit over the tuna can, punch several holes in the sides of the can on the top and on the bottom
2. Place the can over the lit stove and place your dish on top of it.

That’s pretty much it, this one is very simple and very effective. This video demonstrates everything you need to do to build this project: