- Joined
- May 3, 2006
- Messages
- 1,819
I teased this yesterday in my Bottle Pimping thread, and promised to pay it off in a seperate thread.
I like the idea of carrying a stainless steel water bottle so I can use it to purify drinking water by boiling in it. I have added bails to my bottles to enable me to hang them over a campfire to accomplish this task. But what if I just wanted to heat up some water for coffee while on a hike? A fire might be prohibited, or might require more time than I want to devote to a coffee break. The challenge, then, was to come up with a lightweight, packable stove that would work well with the narrow base of a stainless steel bottle.
I have a White Box stove, made from aluminum beer bottle, but it is a “side burner” which works better with wider pots. Some type of windscreen and pot stand would be necessary as well. I considered a hobo type stove but decided they were too bulky and would be rather unstable with a tall bottle on top of it.
I then considered the Caldera Cone, which is sold by Trail Designs. It is a popular stove/pot stand made out a single sheet of metal. To use it you coil the flat sheet into a cone and place your pot inside the opening at the top. The whole thing is then placed over an alcohol burner or other heat source. The idea of a cone focusing the heat of my stove right onto my bottle sounded good and I found this YouTube video showing a MYOG (“Make Your Own Gear”
version.
One major drawback remained. The large single sheet of metal that makes up this stove can be a challenge to pack. It occurred to me that perhaps I could use two pieces of metal, making the stove much easier to find a place for it in my fanny pack. I decided it was time to start prototyping. A ten inch by ten foot roll of aluminum flashing cost me $12.95 at Lowes. I also bought a metal folding tool for $9.99 and a pair of tin snips for $3.95.
For this project I am using a Klean Kanteen 18 oz Classic bottle, but you could just as easily make a stove for a 38 oz Guyot bottle or any pot you wanted to.
Using the guidelines in the YouTube video, I made a pattern out of a manila folder. After I had a template for the cone I divided it in half and added flanges on each side to be folded over to mate the pieces together. I also decided how deep I wanted the bottle to sit within the cone and then punched holes for the pot supports. This first version was destined to be a 2-piece alcohol or Esbit model, so I cut the holes accordingly.
The result is very stable and the decision to make from two-pieces makes it much easier to pack. When disassembled, it measures 6.5” by 11” and weighs a whopping 1.5 ounces.
I tested it with my homemade Gram Kracker Esbit stove and two Esbit tabs.
Two cups (16 oz) of cold tap water took approximately 14 minutes to achieve a rolling boil. (I was timing it but went inside to get some coffee to brew!) Air temperature was 50 degrees F and there was almost no wind. The Esbit fuel continued to burn for another nine minutes. I’m not sure if I could get a boil from a single tab, but I certainly could get water hot enough for tea or coffee.
I'm still looking for a good Pepsi can or Cat can type alcohol burner to use with this setup.
Next, I wanted to try a three-piece version. I decided this one would be designed as a wood burner so I made it a bit higher. Instead of the three lower air holes, I made a large opening in the front to provide plenty of air for the fire and to allow me to feed fuel as necessary.
Here is a comparison between the components of the two-piece Esbit/Alcohol and the three-piece wood burner:
]Here you can see that Version 2.0 is narrower and taller that the first one. Nevertheless, it is still quite stable.
This one weighs 1.7 ounces and will fit inside a one quart zip lock bag. Although this one is supposedly a woodburner, that is really just a matter of how the holes are cut. A thriee-piece alcohol burner would be made just the same.
Imagine trying to pack it if it was one continuous piece of metal!
Once I test it, I'll post boil time and such. Thanks for enduring my puttering.
Packable Caldera Clone Stove/Pot Stand
I like the idea of carrying a stainless steel water bottle so I can use it to purify drinking water by boiling in it. I have added bails to my bottles to enable me to hang them over a campfire to accomplish this task. But what if I just wanted to heat up some water for coffee while on a hike? A fire might be prohibited, or might require more time than I want to devote to a coffee break. The challenge, then, was to come up with a lightweight, packable stove that would work well with the narrow base of a stainless steel bottle.
I have a White Box stove, made from aluminum beer bottle, but it is a “side burner” which works better with wider pots. Some type of windscreen and pot stand would be necessary as well. I considered a hobo type stove but decided they were too bulky and would be rather unstable with a tall bottle on top of it.
I then considered the Caldera Cone, which is sold by Trail Designs. It is a popular stove/pot stand made out a single sheet of metal. To use it you coil the flat sheet into a cone and place your pot inside the opening at the top. The whole thing is then placed over an alcohol burner or other heat source. The idea of a cone focusing the heat of my stove right onto my bottle sounded good and I found this YouTube video showing a MYOG (“Make Your Own Gear”
version. One major drawback remained. The large single sheet of metal that makes up this stove can be a challenge to pack. It occurred to me that perhaps I could use two pieces of metal, making the stove much easier to find a place for it in my fanny pack. I decided it was time to start prototyping. A ten inch by ten foot roll of aluminum flashing cost me $12.95 at Lowes. I also bought a metal folding tool for $9.99 and a pair of tin snips for $3.95.
For this project I am using a Klean Kanteen 18 oz Classic bottle, but you could just as easily make a stove for a 38 oz Guyot bottle or any pot you wanted to.
Using the guidelines in the YouTube video, I made a pattern out of a manila folder. After I had a template for the cone I divided it in half and added flanges on each side to be folded over to mate the pieces together. I also decided how deep I wanted the bottle to sit within the cone and then punched holes for the pot supports. This first version was destined to be a 2-piece alcohol or Esbit model, so I cut the holes accordingly.
The result is very stable and the decision to make from two-pieces makes it much easier to pack. When disassembled, it measures 6.5” by 11” and weighs a whopping 1.5 ounces.
I tested it with my homemade Gram Kracker Esbit stove and two Esbit tabs.
Two cups (16 oz) of cold tap water took approximately 14 minutes to achieve a rolling boil. (I was timing it but went inside to get some coffee to brew!) Air temperature was 50 degrees F and there was almost no wind. The Esbit fuel continued to burn for another nine minutes. I’m not sure if I could get a boil from a single tab, but I certainly could get water hot enough for tea or coffee.
I'm still looking for a good Pepsi can or Cat can type alcohol burner to use with this setup.
Clone 2.0
Next, I wanted to try a three-piece version. I decided this one would be designed as a wood burner so I made it a bit higher. Instead of the three lower air holes, I made a large opening in the front to provide plenty of air for the fire and to allow me to feed fuel as necessary.
Here is a comparison between the components of the two-piece Esbit/Alcohol and the three-piece wood burner:
]Here you can see that Version 2.0 is narrower and taller that the first one. Nevertheless, it is still quite stable.
This one weighs 1.7 ounces and will fit inside a one quart zip lock bag. Although this one is supposedly a woodburner, that is really just a matter of how the holes are cut. A thriee-piece alcohol burner would be made just the same.
Imagine trying to pack it if it was one continuous piece of metal!
Once I test it, I'll post boil time and such. Thanks for enduring my puttering.
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