Building little alcohol and hobo stoves is great fun, they are often made from beer/soda cans or larger food tins. We have done several previous posts on both (us the K.W.N search facility and check them out).

The problem with the small alcohol soda can stoves is that whilst they are lightweight, they can get crushed and broken easily.  They are also not strong enough to put a decent sized pot on to cook.  You pretty much have the opposite problem with the larger food can hobo stoves – they are just too big and bulky for camping, hiking and bug-out-bags etc.

The pocket sized stove in the tutorial below has the best of both worlds, it is still light and pocket sized, but it is way more durable than a soda can stove and it can take larger pots.I think it is the best pocket sized camp/SHTF stove I have come across! Check out the very detailed tutorial below.

How To Build The Best Pocket Sized Camp Stove

(Photo from: Javin007 via Instructables)

I highly recommend that everyone carries some hand warmers with them when going out into the wilderness. Just try lighting a fire, tying a knot or pulling a trigger with numb hands.  A hand warmer can literally save your life. People have died with dry tinder, wood and matches, just because they couldn’t strike the match because their hands were so cold and numb.

I know what you are probably thinking – the hand warmers you can buy are pretty cheap and they work well, but thing is we focus on prepping and self-sufficiency, store brought hand warmers might not always be available, and hey – it’s fun to make stuff anyway!

There are quite a few recipes for DIY hand warmers but they usually require iron powder or iron fillings and both of these can be expensive and difficult to acquire, which then makes it not really worthwhile doing.  However I have been doing some experimenting and I have found that you can substitute the iron fillings/powder for wire wool, which is cheap and easy to acquire! The hand warmers don’t heat up quite as much as when using iron etc, but they still do the job.

How To Make Your DIY Hand Warmers

You will need

• 25g wire wool
• 1 gram sodium chloride (table salt)
• 1 teaspoon  powdered charcoal
• Small self-sealing hand warmer sized bag/Ziploc bag

Firstly it is vital to keep everything dry as it is moisture which activates the hand warmers.

You need to cut up the wire wool as small as possible, we are literally talking powder is best here. I pulled it apart and cut it up a bit and then used an old blender to make it very fine. You also want the salt to be as fine as possible so grind it or pulverise it as small as possible. Basically the smaller/finer you can get both the wire wool and the salt the better.

Now mix the salt and wire wool and then add the charcoal and mix again and store in your resealable bag until required. Be sure to store in a dry place!

To activate, add 1 teaspoon (give or take) of water, seal the bag and then shake and squeeze to mix.

Be sure to trial/check one of your DIY hand warmers before taking them out into the wild. If they do not generate much heat it is likely you have not made the wire wool and salt fine enough. You can also experiment by slightly altering the amounts of wire wool and salt.

Now go and make some with your kids!