Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

FURNITURE FOR FIXED CAMPS 63Personalh^ I never use a camp stove, preferring tocook in the open.As for a heating stove in a tent, my experiencetalhes with that of Dr. Breck: "Either it bakesyou with a temperature of ninety degrees, or it takesthe first opportunity to go aiit directly ^-ou clo^e)'our eyes, and you awake trembh'ng with cold, thethermometer registering somewhere 'round zer'o."Someone else has called the tent stove ." a portable vhell." But there are those who like it/ for, cold- ^*weather camping; and I admit that- if the tent is not "less than 10x14, and the stove's fire-box is bi^^enough to take in a thick billet two feet lone, so"^*that it will keep a smouldering all-night fire withoutyour everlastingly pottering around it, there are'iimes and places where a stove in the tent may be agood thing.-If you do set up a stove, be sure to fix a spark--arrester over the top of the pipe. This need not beanything more costly than a piece of wire netting.If the stove must be set rather close to the tenlAvail, take along a sheet of asbestos as a shield.Oneof the pads used for dining-tables will do very well.Such things can be bought at department stores, 01of mail-order houses.When starting a fire in an " air-tight," use littlefuel at first, or you will smother the flame in its ownsmoke. If the stove has no legs, make a boardframe like the sides of a low box, or a crib of notchedlogs, and fill in with gravel.Camp Grates and Fire Irons.— A stove ismerely a convenience and an economizer of fuel.Quite as good meals can be cooked over an openfire. Even when it rains, a bonfire can be built toone side and hard coals shoveled from it to a spotsheltered by canvas where the cooking is done. Butit pays to take along either a folding grate or a pairof fire irons to hold the frying-pan, etc., level andclose over the coals. Then you will need no longstick attached to the frving-oan handle, nor must