maximizing fuel usage when hiking with a stove

kage said:
Go with a titanium pot and make a cozy for it out of Reflectix or buy one from http://www.antigravitygear.com/products.php?cat=13. Cook you food most of the way, turn off your fuel to conserve it, and put the pot in the cozy and let it continue to cook. This saves a good amount of fuel. If you cook freeze dried meals you can add the water to the meal pouch and throw that in an envelope-style Reflectix cozy to continue cooking. These cozies way next to nothing (about 1oz.) and are well proven to save fuel.
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this i like! lightweight and spaceage :thumbup:
 
Most of my cookware is copper, it is heavily lined with tin. I’ve been told by my buddy who makes my historical copper ware that acidic stuff like tomato can cause problems in non-tin lined copperware.

I can collaborate the efficiency of copper, I have a hand made 8 quart pot that on the lowest heat on my smallest burner on my gas stove simmers beautifully while my 6 quart stainless with heavy aluminum bottom Revereware does not.

My buddy told me you can’t use tin lined copper for frying, at 400 degress the tin will start to run if the pot is not filled with food that is wet. I trust Larry’s knowledge on the subject, if I am mistaken it is my memory of our conversations not Larry’s understanding. Larry’s day job was designing and building the oxygen tanks for the Apollo space craft.

My corn boiler, also made by Larry, on the Swedish alcohol stove boils up great. Copper will kill most bacteria and viruses virtually on contact. It is very malleable, so is the tin any dents can easily be banged out with wood cauls.

I really like copper. My coffee pot looks like black iron it’s been hung over camp fires for more than 10 years now.
 
interesting about the copper killing bacteria and virus on contact.....me thinks a water filter could be built around that........any ideas?
 
Bushman5 said:
a few observations over the last few days, while cooking on my patio with my isopropane stove

- Using copper pots substantially decreases the boil times, due to coppers ability to transfer heat very rapidly. Boil times for 1 liter of water in a copper pot were half compared to using steel pots of the same size. Aluminum was faster than steel but nowhere near as fast as copper.
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Can you provide a link to the copper pots you used?
thanks
 
not sure about a link, but they are old thinwall (about 2.5 mm?) copper pots (100%) from Simpson Sears way back in the 80's.
 
Maybe this is already assumed and I'm late to the party, but did the OP boil water with a lid on the pots?
I know my wife loves to boil water without a lid and steam up the house. Putting a simple lid on the pot cuts time to boil way back.
 
Bushman,

I've read that one of the problems with the oligodynamic effect of copper on "germs" is that it can be slow when there is a volume of water involved---like 8 hours or more. Perhaps they use forms of silver in some water filters because it is faster? I don't know the answer to that.

DancesWithKnives
 
kage said:
Go with a titanium pot and make a cozy for it out of Reflectix or buy one from http://www.antigravitygear.com/products.php?cat=13. Cook you food most of the way, turn off your fuel to conserve it, and put the pot in the cozy and let it continue to cook. This saves a good amount of fuel. If you cook freeze dried meals you can add the water to the meal pouch and throw that in an envelope-style Reflectix cozy to continue cooking. These cozies way next to nothing (about 1oz.) and are well proven to save fuel.
Click to expand...

Kage, I do the same thing with a wool hat.:thumbup:
 
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Most of my trips involve cooking for several people, so I usually bring my MSR Windpro/Jetboil GCS pot combo, as stated above. But for solo use I have the Brunton IB set and a Snow Peak Giga stove. Very light and compact!
 
kage said:
Go with a titanium pot and make a cozy for it out of Reflectix or buy one from http://www.antigravitygear.com/products.php?cat=13. Cook you food most of the way, turn off your fuel to conserve it, and put the pot in the cozy and let it continue to cook. This saves a good amount of fuel. If you cook freeze dried meals you can add the water to the meal pouch and throw that in an envelope-style Reflectix cozy to continue cooking. These cozies way next to nothing (about 1oz.) and are well proven to save fuel.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what we do when we go climbing. I made a cozy out of an old sleeping pad and it works great. I also glued some of that sleeping pad mat to the lid of the pot.I used the said sleeping pad, some contact cement and scissors. That's all you need. I will try to snap a few pictures of mine as soon as I can (lives in my van, not at home).

We use it to make noodles, freeze dried meals and such, but instead of pouring the water into the pouch, I do it the other way around. I put one or two pouches of food into the cooking pot with the required water (cold) and I fire up the stove. As soon as it starts to boil, I stir it twice, shut off the stove and put the pot into the cozy. I made a cross shaped rubber band loop to secure the lid agains the pot so the seal is even better and... voilá! Food perfectly cooked in 15 minutes, no pots are scorched and the best thing is that you keep eating warm food until the last scoop. If you eat out of the pouches, you always end up eating cold...

Mikel
 
hushnel said:
Most of my cookware is copper, it is heavily lined with tin. I’ve been told by my buddy who makes my historical copper ware that acidic stuff like tomato can cause problems in non-tin lined copperware.

I can collaborate the efficiency of copper, I have a hand made 8 quart pot that on the lowest heat on my smallest burner on my gas stove simmers beautifully while my 6 quart stainless with heavy aluminum bottom Revereware does not.

My buddy told me you can’t use tin lined copper for frying, at 400 degress the tin will start to run if the pot is not filled with food that is wet. I trust Larry’s knowledge on the subject, if I am mistaken it is my memory of our conversations not Larry’s understanding. Larry’s day job was designing and building the oxygen tanks for the Apollo space craft.

My corn boiler, also made by Larry, on the Swedish alcohol stove boils up great. Copper will kill most bacteria and viruses virtually on contact. It is very malleable, so is the tin any dents can easily be banged out with wood cauls.

I really like copper. My coffee pot looks like black iron it’s been hung over camp fires for more than 10 years now.
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Tin is the traditional cladding for copper pots. But it’s delicate and needs to be renewed periodically. Modern copper cookware avoids the problem by lining the inside of the pot with stainless steel. You can fry in that just fine.
 
Tin is the traditional cladding for copper pots. But it’s delicate and needs to be renewed periodically. Modern copper cookware avoids the problem by lining the inside of the pot with stainless steel. You can fry in that just fine.
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I've got a bunch of that modern stuff too. Back in the 90s a guy I work with asked me if I wanted his complete set of copper cookware, he told me it was given to them as a wedding gift and that they never used it and both of them where tired of polishing it, it was going to the Salvation Army if I didn’t want it. I never polish it, we just use it, if you look at it closely you can still tell it's copper.

It is the solid copper lined with stainless steel made by Revere Ware with brass handles, we’ve been using it at the rendezvous but over the years I’ve been replacing it with more authentic copperware all made by Larry Shaw.
 
In response to the comments about the Reflectix cozies:

Reflectix is basically bubble wrap covered in thick mylar, so that should give you an idea of how light it is.

You can buy Reflectix in (I think) 3ft wide rolls and they cut it to length at the hardware stores and it's very inexpensive. I cut the shape to fit the pot, mug, meal pouch etc. closely and use foil tape to put it together. It's easy to make and lasts quite a few trips. (I actually made bottle cozies too for my newest baby and I was the envy of all the mom's) I used homemade cozies on a 2 month long climbing expedition I led where it was used 2-3 times a day and it lasted the trip with only minor duct tape repairs. The ones from the link I posted above are glued instead of just taped and last much much longer, but again it's basically bubble wrap and foil so treat it with care.

BushcraftBrainTrust: Good thinking on the hat! I used to use a wool hat/toque/tobaggan/watch cap/orwhatevertheycallitinyourregion also, and still do for warmer weather trips. I always have a wool hat when outdoors so it's no additional cost or weight. But the Reflectix cozies only weigh about an ounce and you get to stay warmer while waiting for your food to finish cooking. I was climbing in -30*F in Japan and stopped to melt snow and was using my hat as a cozy when I realized that the cozy I left behind to save weight was probably worth the weight especially when you've been climbing for 30+ hours straight and you're calorie deficient.

Mikel 24: If you can find Reflectix in Spain give it a try. I used to use old US Army sleeping pad foam as an insulator for my pots, but the Reflectix material weighs a fraction of the weight, packs down flat and can also be used as a signaling device or even a solar oven if it's a big enough piece. Keep the foam though for a sit pad when winter climbing, alpine or climbing at altitude and also for the stove if cooking on snow/ice or in a snow cave. Evazote is the best foam for this sort of thing...it's very lightweight, durable, more insulative than most foams, relatively compact and inexpensive. Gossamer Gear makes 2 different thicknesses of this foam and in different widths and the price is right http://www.gossamergear.com/cgi-bin/gossamergear/xdpy/s/Sleeping/index.html. You'll have to check to see if they ship overseas.
I also sometimes cook directly in the pot, but the big advantage of cooking in the pouches is that there is zero clean up afterwards, except your spork (and if you're in treeline areas you can just cut a couple of twigs to use as chopsticks and recycle them back to nature when you're done). By using a pouch cozy the food stays warm. I made a simple envelope cozy with a small velcro closure, but just tucking the flap of the envelope into the body of the envelope works even better to trap the heat.
 
hushnel said:
Copper will kill most bacteria and viruses virtually on contact.
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Does that mean we could use old Indian head pennies in canteens to purify water??
Or just swallow one to fight food poisoning??
Maybe keep one in cheek like dip to kill flu bugs??
Does the gov know about this??
Dude, I'm serious.
On my way to google right now.

The only time I used a coin in my mouth: by sticking "silver" dime under tongue, it will stop nose bleed.
When I was under thirty and worked outside I would get bad nose bleeds during summer. At home I would place ice on back of neck to stop them. Out in field, ice was hard to find. After a guy watched me almost bleed out he told me about the silver dime trick, I tried it. Worked every time.
 
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If you Google the oligodynamic effect that I mentioned above, you will get some research leads. What I have read in the past suggests that the "purifying" action of copper on a significant volume of water is pretty slow. I think you need a significant volume of copper and amount of time to kill those bacteria/viruses.

DancesWithKnives
 
"Copper will kill most bacteria and viruses virtually on contact."

Crock of S$%T.

Skam
 
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