- Joined
- Feb 28, 2007
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Not too much original thinking on my part here. For the last couple of weeks I've had a fascination with alcohol stoves. My first impulse was to just want to buy a trianga. Which I'll likely get around to, but I also decided to try a few of the build your own alcohol stoves out there just to get a feel for them and how they work. There have been a tonne of good threads on alcohol stoves, pop can stoves etc. I've made one or two of them and they work pretty good, but I don't like the delicacy of them so much. Then Guyon started talking about the 'super cat' stove. I checked this out and it is a great little set up.
Here is the thread from the original inventor of it: http://jwbasecamp.com/Articles/SuperCat/index.html
As described by the author, the genius of the super cat stove is that it is a functional pressurized stove that even a complete handicraft incompetent idiot can get right. In other words, something KGD can build and get it right the first time!
Basically the concept is simple. You buy the right kind of tin that has the appropriate volume. You punch holes in the upper part of the tin. Add denatured alchol fuel up to the holes. Light it and allow it to prime (heating up the tin). Once primed, you set your pot on the stove. The expansion of alcohol vapours from the heat after it is primed, in conjunction with the pot placed as a lid to the stove, forces the vapor out of the vent holes and acts as your stove.
The key as noted above is getting the right volume of container. Too much air volume and not enough pressure is built up to force vapour out of the vent holes with enough force to burn hot. Too little volume and your stove goes out. What works best, and the genius of the inventor for figuring it out, is the little tins of cat food, hence the name 'super cat' stove. I bought mine for $0.99 at the convenience store. The name brand was 'fancy feast'. I suggest you read the authors original article for a great description of the construction and theory behind the stove. The author also provides a bunch of alternative cat food brands and tin brands that you can use. Aluminum is better because it takes less time to prime than thicker tins.
So I have now replaced my crappy 'canned heat', sterno based stove system with the super cat. I've achieved about a 3 minute drop in boil times for a cup of water and with the fuel bottle weighs less than the sterno can. The whole set up nests nicely in my maxpedition water bottle holder along with my mini-solist Titantium pots and squishy cup. Here is the set up:
Here is the super cat stove. Pretty complicated eh?
I just used a punch to make my holes so they aren't nice and straight and perfectly round like the ones made with a hole punch. KGD can even screw up the easiest of things! Well it works, that's all I care about!
One of the short comings of alcohol stoves is their susceptibility to wind. You've seen the nice enclosed wind screens with the trianga. The problem is that they take up room and I wanted my set up to work with my maxpedition bottle holder. I decided to go the simple route after trying a more complicated solution which I will discuss at the end of the thread.
The simple route was to take some aluminum flashing and some tent pegs as my wind screen. I already had some flashing for my MSR whisper light so I just snagged that. I grabbed 3 tent pegs just to provide additional stability for the flashing under wind conditions. For today's demo, I didn't need the pegs because the snow stabilized the flashing well enough. However, I won't always have that luxury. Plus, having a couple of tent pegs in your gear bag is never a bad thing.
Flashing fits nicely in the front pocket of the bottle holder, along with my fuel bottle, ferro-rod/striker, emergency tinder (2 wet fire tabs & a coghlan fire stick) and starbucks coffee packs.
For a fuel bottle, I like the 60 mL (2 oz) hand sanitizer bottles. Just empty out the gook and fill with denatured alcohol (no the super cat stove doesn't work with hand sanitizer gel). This size is convenient. Two ounces will let me boil two individual cups separately or boil a two cup pot in one go. Obviously, on longer trips you will need to bring more fuel in a larger pack pocket. Another great thing about the hand sanitizer fuel bottle is the pop up lid that lets you squirt the fuel into your stove quite easily.
Also, I finally found a use for that dumb TI-cup that comes with the mini-soloist package and serves no apparent purpose but to burn your lip. It makes a nice little stove stand when inverted!
The system with the wind guard like this is easy enough to light with just a strike of the ferro rod.
More coming....
Here is the thread from the original inventor of it: http://jwbasecamp.com/Articles/SuperCat/index.html
As described by the author, the genius of the super cat stove is that it is a functional pressurized stove that even a complete handicraft incompetent idiot can get right. In other words, something KGD can build and get it right the first time!
Basically the concept is simple. You buy the right kind of tin that has the appropriate volume. You punch holes in the upper part of the tin. Add denatured alchol fuel up to the holes. Light it and allow it to prime (heating up the tin). Once primed, you set your pot on the stove. The expansion of alcohol vapours from the heat after it is primed, in conjunction with the pot placed as a lid to the stove, forces the vapor out of the vent holes and acts as your stove.
The key as noted above is getting the right volume of container. Too much air volume and not enough pressure is built up to force vapour out of the vent holes with enough force to burn hot. Too little volume and your stove goes out. What works best, and the genius of the inventor for figuring it out, is the little tins of cat food, hence the name 'super cat' stove. I bought mine for $0.99 at the convenience store. The name brand was 'fancy feast'. I suggest you read the authors original article for a great description of the construction and theory behind the stove. The author also provides a bunch of alternative cat food brands and tin brands that you can use. Aluminum is better because it takes less time to prime than thicker tins.
So I have now replaced my crappy 'canned heat', sterno based stove system with the super cat. I've achieved about a 3 minute drop in boil times for a cup of water and with the fuel bottle weighs less than the sterno can. The whole set up nests nicely in my maxpedition water bottle holder along with my mini-solist Titantium pots and squishy cup. Here is the set up:
Here is the super cat stove. Pretty complicated eh?
I just used a punch to make my holes so they aren't nice and straight and perfectly round like the ones made with a hole punch. KGD can even screw up the easiest of things! Well it works, that's all I care about!
One of the short comings of alcohol stoves is their susceptibility to wind. You've seen the nice enclosed wind screens with the trianga. The problem is that they take up room and I wanted my set up to work with my maxpedition bottle holder. I decided to go the simple route after trying a more complicated solution which I will discuss at the end of the thread.
The simple route was to take some aluminum flashing and some tent pegs as my wind screen. I already had some flashing for my MSR whisper light so I just snagged that. I grabbed 3 tent pegs just to provide additional stability for the flashing under wind conditions. For today's demo, I didn't need the pegs because the snow stabilized the flashing well enough. However, I won't always have that luxury. Plus, having a couple of tent pegs in your gear bag is never a bad thing.
Flashing fits nicely in the front pocket of the bottle holder, along with my fuel bottle, ferro-rod/striker, emergency tinder (2 wet fire tabs & a coghlan fire stick) and starbucks coffee packs.
For a fuel bottle, I like the 60 mL (2 oz) hand sanitizer bottles. Just empty out the gook and fill with denatured alcohol (no the super cat stove doesn't work with hand sanitizer gel). This size is convenient. Two ounces will let me boil two individual cups separately or boil a two cup pot in one go. Obviously, on longer trips you will need to bring more fuel in a larger pack pocket. Another great thing about the hand sanitizer fuel bottle is the pop up lid that lets you squirt the fuel into your stove quite easily.
Also, I finally found a use for that dumb TI-cup that comes with the mini-soloist package and serves no apparent purpose but to burn your lip. It makes a nice little stove stand when inverted!
The system with the wind guard like this is easy enough to light with just a strike of the ferro rod.
More coming....
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