Wild Camping or Bug Out
Cooking Stove Review Bushbox XL
The perfect wood burning stove for wild camping or bug out
First of of a decent cooking stove is an essential part of your bug out kit and as such needs to meet a few specific requirements to be considered worth taking with you.
- Must be compact to carry, yet big enough to maintain a good amount of heat to cook and boil water.
- Uses basic fuels, namely wood.
- Easy to maintain a constant fire
- Easy to clean
- Reliable and solidly built
The cooking stove I chose to come with me on a few nights wild camp was the Bushbox XL (extra large), made by the Bushbox company based in Germany.
The Bushbox XL is the bigger brother of the Hobo Stove
Bushbox XL in action.
The XL version I am reviewing here has a radically new design which makes this stove very compact and extremely easy to set up, fold down and carry.
In fact, the XL is possibly one of the easiest to assemble survival stoves that I have ever known – it goes from folded down to being ready for use in seconds.
Folded down and inside its carrying case I measured the overall dimensions to be only:
210mm x 95mm x 20mm thick MAX. – Weighing only 800 grams.
This was an comfortably acceptable size and weight to carry considering the finished, usable size of the stove.
*The Standard XL comes as just the stove with the two trivet stands and is packed in a fitted cotton pouch.
The Bushbox XL that I have here has additional accessories that make up the Combination Kit, and these are a heavy duty outdoor carry bag and a Universal Grate.
This setup is very good and gives you the custom made carry bag to fit everything in to.
This kit is currently priced under £86 inc. VAT & delivery.
Furthermore I think it's well worth spending that extra bit more for the combination kit. As it gives you all the extras you need in a cooking stove.
The outdoor carry bag is very well made and fits the stove plus the universal grate perfectly.
The universal grate can be bought separately.
Another very good use I found for the universal grate was to use it with a Trangia Spirit Burner
The carry bag also has a sewn in ‘D’ ring which, again, is very well fitted and would need a lot of pulling about to work loose.
This is a good feature as it means everything can be easily attached to your rucksack leaving valuable space inside.
So all in all, I'm glad I have the combination kit as opposed to just the Bushbox on its own. For the sake of an extra £10 or so, I think it's well worth getting.
This is my video review and test of the Bushbox Xl Outdoor Survival Stove
As you can see in my video, the Bushbox XL had a good field test and certainly worked 100% on a rather cold and chilly day ( the water in the cup was certainly well below 10 deg C ) but there was absolutely no problem starting and maintaining a good amount of heat - the opening where you can feed the twigs into makes everything so easy and maintaining the fire was simple.
One point to note:
Keep the ash pan ( bottom tray ) clear of any debri or fallen ash, I just used a longer twig to brush it out.
If it builds up you loose air flow through to the fire grate ( I had to clear the ash a couple of times ) by keeping it clear there was none of this huffing and puffing at the fire that you normally get with some wood fires..!
So, a final verdict on the BushBoxXL - can't be anything other than excellent.
The design is very good, it's compact and easy to store, works exactly like it's supposed to do, kept a nice tidy fire going for as long as I wanted and folded away simply and easily at the end of the day.
I would definitely advise any hiker, camper or Prepper to get one of these as a serious addition to your survival kit.
What wasn't included in the video was the fact that once the water boiled I removed the cup and stocked up the stove with some more larger twigs.
... and made myself a lovely camp fire which burned for ages and gave off some nice heat - just to finish off the day nicely.....
Happy Prepping Folks,
Steve
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