The Forest Tawi
The innovative Forest Tawi stove is a sustainable alternative to a traditional outdoor stove or barbecue as it turns a portion of its fuel wood into charcoal instead of carbon dioxide and ash. It burns any small dry sticks, which can be readily collected from gardens that have a few trees. The sort of stuff you would normally send to land fill or put on the bonfire. Once running it is clean burning, making this stove ideal for use where smoke would cause a nuisance.
This Tawi is great if you want to cook for a group of people. However it really comes into its own as an educational aid; it can be a valuable addition to any forest school. The Forest Tawi allows leaders to explore a wide range of topics across the curriculum:
Understanding Fire
The stove has been designed to show how fire can be controlled effectively and managed efficiently to enhance its usefulness. Leaders will be able to demonstrate a variety of aspects relating to fire, including what smoke actually is, why it is harmful and how to reduce it.
Making Charcoal
All our Tawi stoves are designed to make charcoal rather than ash. This feature will help students understand how charcoal is made and allow them to explore the fundamental role charcoal has played throughout our history. The Bronze and Iron Ages would not have happened without charcoal.
Unique to the Forest Tawi is its ability to make a form of charcoal that has many applications; from biochar, which was used historically by Native Amazonians to enrich their soils (terra preta), to porous charcoal used to remove odours and filter water. We will provide guidance on how to prepare the charcoal you make and then demonstrate each application through simple experiments. Also unique to the Forest Tawi is its ability to make charcoal crayons from sticks your students have prepared, thereby recreating one of our very first writing implements.
Learning about the Carbon Cycle
All organic life on earth is carbon based. The Forest Tawi has an adaptation which allows small organic objects to be heated in a way that leaves only the carbon element behind (see the pictures of the carbon pinecones below).
There are many other extended learning opportunities, such as charcoal’s relationship to the carbon cycle and how making it in large quantities is being promoted as a tool to combat climate change.
Cooking with your Forest Tawi
With three distinct cooking surfaces, this Tawi an extremely versatile outdoor stove. The gas burner operates at around 3000C making it ideal for frying in large pans or woks. At 3500C The front hotplate is excellent for boiling as well as deep frying. The grill is an unusual feature for an outdoor stove but considerably adds to this stove’s versatility; from plain toast to pizza and Welsh rarebit. In fact, with a little imagination, there isn’t much you can’t use the Forest Tawi to cook!
Using the Forest Tawi
Unlike or other Tawi models the Forest Tawi can easily be dismantled and packed away.
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