Happy Campers rest their Legs in Nests
Who doesn’t love the exceptional flavor and appetizing color of a meal prepared over a wood fire? Isn’t it amazing that one of the oldest cooking methods remains the most delectable. When camping, I do all my cooking over an open wood fire. My preferred cooking apparatus is a tripod campfire grill. I love their simplistic charm and how easy the grate height can be adjusted. I also love that the grate is self leveling and that the grate can be gently spun to ensure uniform cooking.
Tripods are known for their exceptional stability. This stability happens only if the 3 legs have adequate spread and remain stationary. A few years back, campgrounds started to upgrade their traditional single-wall steel firepit rings to double-wall concrete filled rings. Unfortunately, these newer rings have made it difficult to achieve a stable tripod setup. Because double-wall rings have a much larger outside diameter, the legs on most tripods are now too short to reach the ground when asked to straddle the entire ring.
Here’s what typically happens when tripod users are confronted with this problem. First, they consider placing the legs inside the inner ring. This is normally not a good idea. Doing so exposes the legs to intense heat that may damage them. The legs are also at risk of being struck by firewood which may cause the items on the grate to fall into the fire. Desperate for a solution, tripod users next consider placing the tripod legs directly on top of the fire pit ring. This is another bad idea. Resting the legs directly on this narrow surface puts the tripod in a very perilous position. If any part of the tripod is inadvertently bumped, one or more legs may fall off the edge of the fire pit ring causing the entire grill to collapse.
Double-wall Concrete Filled Firepit Rings are used at most of Michigan's 13,750 State Park campsites. They are also used at many State Forest and County Park campsites.
Leg Nests work with most tripod campfire grills and provide a simple, robust, and portable solution to this problem. To use Leg Nests, simply position the three included nests on the top surface of the fire pit ring and then place the ends of the tripod legs into the recess of the nests. Non-slip feet on the underside of the nests keep the nests firmly planted on the fire pit ring while the recess in the topside of the nests cradle the ends of the legs to restrict their movement.
Some users also find that the grate height is too high when the tripod sits atop a double-wall firepit ring. Depending on the height of the ring, the grill’s height adjustment may not be sufficient. If the tripod legs are segmented, removing a segment from each leg may do the trick. However, if the leg segments are held together with shock cords the user is faced with one more dilemma. What to do with the dangling unused tethered leg segments? Of course, you could simply cut the shock cords, but Leg Nests offers a more elegant solution. Use the three included leg retainers to tidily secure the unwieldly leg segments out of harm’s way.
