Producing wood chips for a MIDGE stove

The beauty of a MIDGE stove is the ease of fuelling as well as the ease of operation. What could be easier than picking up dead twigs, burning them and making a meal?

Although a MIDGE stove will run on broken twigs you can pack more wood (and hence heat) into a MIDGE stove by chipping the wood beforehand.

To that end a garden shredder is used. Simply feed dead branches and twigs into the shredder and bag the chips until they are needed. Do not bag chipped green wood as this will rot. Green chips can be left out in the sun under a plastic sheet to bake in the sun. Leave a gap under the sheet for moisture to evaporate.

Making charcoal

Wartime automotive gasifiers used charcoal as fuel more often than wood. This permitted a cleaner fuel to be made as charcoal is about 85-98% carbon with few volatiles.

In tandem with a charcoal fuelled gasifier, a steam injector was used to produce a gas that was virtually 100% carbon monoxide and hydrogen and little else. A wood fuelled gasifier contains its own water in the wood itself.

For small applications charcoal fuel may be more preferable than wood as charcoal is lighter and packs more energy for a given mass than wood. For a wood gas driven motorbike, a small gasifier is required and for that charcoal is the better fuel.

Making Charcoal - instructions

Generator gas

This Swedish book details the use of wood gas generators in cars during the 1940s.

Whilst it is a review copy and not 100% complete, it can be seen on Google Books and provides a wealth of knowledge.

The book can still be purchased in print form, from various sellers.

Google Books - Generator gas — the Swedish experience from 1939–45