Firing up the Bonfire fire pit by Solo Stove, an honest review

Last year I saw a Facebook ad for Solo Stove. Having bought a house last year and not wanting to dig a firepit until I’ve decided where all of the garden beds will go, I went ahead and bought the Bonfire model. Here’s my first impressions.

Video subtitles:

- Hey, YouTube. What's going on? Sorry I didn't do a video in a few days or a couple of weeks, actually. I did my fathers funeral, I think I put that up last Sunday. That was kind of neat. We found the cassette. My mom had it for the almost 23 years since my father passed. I think it's 23 years. Yeah. '98 to 2021. Yeah. 23 years. And we'd never played it or anything. So it broke when I was trying to digitize it. And that was fun. Before I even got to really hear any of it, I had to repair it, but I got that done and got it up. And that was neat. Four copyright strikes, four, for song hymns, because Sony has to make their buck off the video. But I don't care. It's my father's funeral. I was just trying to preserve it digitally. But today I have something called the Solo Stove Bonfire for you. Some of you may be familiar, I really should've gotten mine out as a prop, I'll show it to you in a little bit. There are these little camp stoves that are about this big and you put twigs and stuff in, and as the fire burns the wood, you get gas off the wood. So there's little jets that run around the perimeter of the cylinder and they funnel that gas, and then you get nice flames off of that too. This thing works the same way. I saw it on a Facebook advertisement and when I was scrolling, I normally don't go for stuff like that. I have a couple of things. There's some soap and stuff that I've bought that I've been pretty pleased with, but mainly the stove cried out to me because we had a fire pit when we moved into the property and I'll show you that, it's just stupid. It's right next to a utility pole. There's, there's one of the giant, not capacitors. You know what I mean, transformers, right up the pole next to the smokestack, maybe three feet off of the little smokestack. And it's adjacent to the power lines. So I took a hammer to it and when we first moved in so I wouldn't be tempted to use it. And I had been kind of trying to think out where I wanted to do a fire pit on the property. Well, we've got a lot of trees and stuff, and I'm not sure where we're going to be planting stuff because I still have to get a good idea of where the spring and summer sun comes in. So I didn't want to take a fire pit yet. And we have clay soil and that adds a little difficulty to it. Sorry, the neighbors looking at me like I'm insane. The joys of YouTubing, right? So we've got, no good place for a fire pit identified yet. So this thing just seemed cool. It's basically a much larger version of those. It gasifies the wood a little, you get the flames, it looks pretty, it's stainless steel. It's a little pricey. And my biggest complaint so far was their demand has been so high, I guess 'cause of stimulus money and stuff, that it did take 7, 8, 9 weeks to show up. I ordered it in November and it came in January. So not the most ideal situation but it's because they're selling a lot of them and I've actually ran into some people in some of the subreddits I frequent that have got the Bonfire specifically, too. And they've been happy with it. So yeah, let's get it out. I'll show you the box here in a second. And then we'll go out setting this up and doing the first fire together. All right, as I promised, here's the box. It's the Solo Stove Bonfire. Portable backyard fire-pit, easy to use, low smoke, 3 0 4 stainless steel, mesmerizing flame, lifetime warranty. I highly suspect the lifetime warranty because it automatically tells you not to store it outside, not to let it get wet because, even though it's stainless, it's still gonna rust to some extent and pit and stuff. But I imagine this thing has a decade of casual use in it, but eventually even the stainless steel is gonna get fatigued and stuff, but it comes in this giant box and it tells you over here this is how to do the perfect flame. So you don't have wood stacked up out of it. And I guess a common thing is, it's got a ring on top, that I'll show you. And it kind of directs those flames up. People put it on upside down and it's a common complaint. So they put that on the box. But yeah, it's just a boring box. It shipped well. It did have Styrofoam on top and bottom to keep it from bouncing around. So I didn't notice any dings or anything, which was nice. Some companies would have just thrown it in the cardboard box. So yeah, let's go and get this thing out and get a fire going. So like I said, here's the fire pit we already had and you can probably hear the hum from the transformer up there. So not really a good location. Oh, real quick, I said, I would show you the little junior version of this that I've had. This is Lagzada. There's a bunch of different Chinese-ium clones of this on Amazon and eBay. But same principle. You get your air coming in here, underneath this ring. It's just like this ring that I just removed. You have all these, and then you have a little tray, not unlike this, that you drop in and then it does it's thing in there. I'm not gonna light that one because, breaking sticks down that size is just gonna be a pain. Normally, you just use twigs when you're camping or whatever, but I am gonna go and get this thing going. And yeah, I'm probably only gonna burn this much wood today. Maybe not even that 'cause I'm just testing it and I have things to do, but I thought I'd show you guys. All right, so to get this going, I don't know how well you can see this and I'm sorry about the sound, there's a dump truck right over here on the road idling. I think he went inside his house real quick. So try to get in the sun here. I've just gotten a little bit of pine pitch on here. Like, just pine sap, straight pine resin. I'ma try these, to get this thing going. I've got some smaller ones down here. If not, I'll go inside and get something better. But I just want to try these and I figure I'd try them with you. You can't see it, but these took off good. So I'm going to get to this. So I'll show you real quick. See, you can't see it. Oh, I guess you can see it. We've got a nice little fire going. I love these things. I'ma make a bunch more of them. So I'm gonna get to this real quick and we'll jump forward to when I've got a good fire going. I don't think you can see this well on camera 'cause of the sun. Hopefully, I'm blocking it so you can see it a little. Obviously, I have it stacked out really high. Not ideal. And even just dropping that in, I singed some hairs 'cause that's pretty hot. The wood gasification is working. I can see it already. I got carried away with my initial burn, but yeah, I'm gonna give this thing a thumbs up. Like I said, I wish it was a little wider. I don't even know if I'm in the frame. Sorry if I'm not. Ooh, gettin' a little toasty, let's get back a little. But yeah, I'm happy with my purchase. I think I paid like $220, $250 for this and it did seem a little shocking at first, but it is stainless steel. I didn't have to dig a fire pit. I'm using two edging pavers. If you can't tell. I'm going to get away from this though. It's popping a lot. There's a lot of smoke on here even this was supposed to be smokeless, but it's 'cause I put a bunch of pine in there and now I see the camera's in the smoke cloud so this probably looks terrible. I'm gonna move the camera and we'll get some more footage of this. Okay. Yeah. Here, I'm behind it. And let me open my coat up. You can see the flames much better there. It'd be nicer if I did this in the evening and maybe I'll show you that eventually, but for the time being this is the Solo Stove. Yowza. Yeah, I'm pretty happy with it. I'm gonna let this burn out. I don't think I'm gonna put any of this on and that'll be the video for today. Links in the dudally-do. Patreon in the dudally-do. Give to me, don't, I don't care. I'm just doing this for fun. This is something I bought and I thought I'd show it. I'm about to get resined on here, I think, so I'm gonna get out of the way. But yeah, not sponsored, not promoted. Just, I paid the money for it. I thought I'd create some video content in case someone else was interested in buying it. Maybe my opinion will change over time with this. You can't leave it outside. That's why I'm doing this so early in the day. Yeah. I'm gonna let this burn out. Thanks for stopping by. Like, comment, subscribe, dislike. Tell me you hate my guts, whatever. See you guys.