My expensive, and now unused, Evernew Appalachian cook set can be used as a wood stove. It's basically a TI cylinder with holes for airflow and big hole at the bottom so you can feed the fire with twigs. The big issues with wood burning stoves are the soot and the rate that they burn the small twigs that they use as fuel. IMHO they are not much of an improvement over simply getting a few stones together to hold your pot over a fire that you build underneath. Most organized or state campsite will have a firepit and I've never had any trouble finding enough wood on the ground to build a fire. I then wait for it to go down a bit and put my TI mug on the embers to boil water.
I agree, the soots gets on everything and there will always be creosote build-up. Hot wood smoke hits metal container filled with cold water and you get creosote, just can't stand the smell of creosote, just horrible in my opinion. Couple rocks and some scooped coals from the campfire and away you go.