Interesting that people have tried this and reported their results. I think I'd want to make sure that the woods used were free of additives or naturally-occuring poisons. I suppose your average tree is safe enough, though. If you can throw it on the fire to flavor food with the smoke, then I suppose you ought to be able to strain coffee through it. I get the impression that Stephen never expected anyone to actually try it. *heh* Still, cinnamon is just ground up tree bark so it's not that far-fetched. For the people who have tried this, did you actually build a filter as described in the book or did you simply boil the wood chips and eggshells in the water along with the coffee and then strain it out? On a semi-related note, I was curious about the relationship of eggshells to coffee so I did a search and the very first item on the results was this: http://homepage.interaccess.com/~june4/eggcoffee.html - June Meyer's Authentic Hungarian Egg Coffee The idea of mixing eggs in your coffee is, I suppose, not qualitatively different than mixing sawdust with it. *heh* I'm not sure if the egg changes the coffee in some way or if the eggshell is really the magic ingredient but I might try it for kicks one of these days.