TOAKS Titanium Wood-Gas Stove Review

First off, you need to know that I love wood-gas stoves and have been making and using them personally and professionally for the last 20 years. I love that by not carrying fuel with me, my pack is lighter. I also love that, unlike traditional stoves, I’m not limited by how much fuel I’ve chosen to bring. If I want a couple extra hot drinks one day, then I just need to collect a couple more handfuls of twigs. If my planed water source doesn’t pan out and I need to melt snow for drinking water, no problem! I just gather up some more twigs and get to work. All that to say, I’ve been excited to try the TOAKS titanium wood stove, because, well... its Titanium! And Titanium is awesome. Julie at TOAKS was great and got one sent out to me quickly.

The stove arrived and it was pretty much exactly what we were looking for! It was super light and simple enough to assemble. Really appreciated how conveniently the stove disassembled and nested within itself as well. It also left room to fit other stove related items within it (matches, lighter, fire starter, etc). We burn tested it at home and it worked just like advertised. But you can’t really get to know a stove until you use it in the field in real world conditions.

Thankfully we had a multi day backpacking trip in a remote and seldom used piece of BLM land on our callendar. We had a good amount of time to fully test it out in a variety of conditions. TOAKS suggested vertically stacking/filling the stove with small sticks but from our experience, we noticed it was a lot more effective to just break down little sticks and drop them in. It was easier to light, produced less smoke and burned longer. We also read some online reviews that some people had luck lighting the stove from the bottom. DON’T DO THIS! This did not work for us. At all... It ended up just creating a very smokey mess. It was definitely better to light from the top like TOAKS recommends.

The stove performed just as well as we had hoped. It ended up being a decent amount faster at boiling water than any other wood-gas stove that we've used before. Not only did it burn much hotter than other wood gas stoves, I’ve used, but the stove was very efficient as well. We could easily bring a liter of water to boil without needing to reload. This was quite nice. I do strongly recommend using a fairly wide pot with this stove! A normal 750ml cup/pot does not work well. While the stove produced relatively low smoke, I still appreciated the handy little bag that the stove comes in. It prevented any of the soot from spreading to my other gear. Overall, I’m very pleased with the TOAKS Titanium Backpacking Wood Burning Stove. It’s the only wood gas stove I use now and since it’s made of titanium it will be my go to stove for a very long time!

Kristopher Palmer

PS- Stay tuned for my review of the TOAKS alcohol stove!

Notes from Admin: Kristopher was using the large version of the wood stove. We need to use the TOAKS Titanium Wood Stove Cross Bars (BAR-02) if we want to use the TOAKS 750ml pot over this stove.