Stoves and Stove Making

“I use fireworks as a stove. Usually a couple Nova Fountains and a Whistling Pete will boil a liter of water in about 2 minutes. If I boil noodles with my water I add an additional Pyro Pete and a Devil Dog followed by a Crysanthemum Garden. It's quite pretty. For hot chocolate a quick Typhoon Mama and a Green Glittering Flower usually is adequate, but if you're over 10,000' you gotta add Giant Myster Geyser and a couple Zombies, perhaps with a TNT Power Flash for kicks. You can use a Lava Cone in place of the Giant Myster Geyser if you're in a pinch. Stay away from the Mr. Turtles. Once your meal is ready to eat, trade your headlamp for a couple Crackling Tree Sparklers. It's much funner to eat by sparkler light than traditional headlamp, although you have to light a new one about every 6 bites, depending on how chewy your dinner is. A couple Super Screechers and Sonic Booms come in handy if you need to scare off a marauding bear, or you could always shoot bottle rockets at them with a couple Flying Pedros mixed in for good measure. Check your local regulations to make sure cooking via fireworks is legal in your area. Cooking dinners CAN be highlite of your backpacking trips if you do it right.”

“ROTFL!”

“HAHA!”

“techntrek: You WANT the air pressure. When you push the full can onto the cut-off bottom the air pressure pushes back at you and when you let go the can bottom pops off having been streteched slightly. If the air gets out the cut-off bottom gets stuck on the full can you are using as a tool.

Red Bull cans stretch out well like this as well as pop cans. It's actually tough cause that stuff is $2/bottle! So you need three to make a stove and you can't open one of them because you need it as a tool! But I keep a can in my closet as a tool and as I find the cans on the street I scoop them up and make a stove when I get two.

I have made a Red Bull stove from one can, and it works well.”

“A neighbor walked by while I was building and testing in my garage. (half a dozen units blazing) They asked my wife if I had joined some kind of survivalist cult. "No, he is just nuts".”

“not much of a difference ... ;)”

“

Tested a variation on this stove. I started by making a series of large pinholes on the side, like you would for a sideburner.

The stove needed to be primed to fire up. This may have been required with the first version.

It burned bright yellow out the top holes of the burner and then flames came out the side holes as well. That tells me the stove built up too much pressure inside. Anyway, it burned bright yellow. There were too many holes burning and the stove got so hot that the top burnt up and crumbled when I touched it after it went out. The stove is a total loss.

Oh well. It was just for fun.”

“Good thread ya'll...keep up the good work!”

“Bought this percolator for $1.50 the other day. This is just a photo of the same pot I found somewhere else. It has a 2c capacity so it's very small.



It works very well as a boiler and is lighter than my other pot, I think in part because the handle is plastic and the top is also plastic (not glass like my other one). It has the basket/tube innards for making coffee. The bottom is a bit wider so it fits the flame of most of my stoves better.
last edited: 8/22/05 10:10:16 AM”

“... no,I am not talking about making it out of Vanilla Coke cans.

I have made dozens and dozens of the classic open-top Pepsi stove sideburner stoves, and they work well.

I wanted to see if I could make one out of a single pop can rather than using two cans and hence use the raw materials more efficiently. A person selling stoves on eBay (which I don't do) would need 1/2 the number of cans and could claim very little wastage

I also wondered if I could use the bevel at the top of the pop can as a way to get the flame better positioned under the pot.

This is the result:



So you can see that the stove is the standard Pop-can double-walled design except that I used the top and bottom from the same can to make the top and bottom of the stove. Clearly I used the top of the pop can (with the drinking hole in it) as the top of the stove and cut away the center part of the top.

Other details: The can bottom is stretched over the bottom of a full pop can so that the two can halves slide together. Also, the inner space between the double walls is filled with a puff of fiberglass insulation. Finally, the central wall is cut from the side of the same can as the top and bottom were harvested from (I do use almost the entire can). That said, the piece is a rectangle (not a trapezoid as you would think it would need to be since the diameter of the top and bottom grooves are different for a pop can). I just made a rectangle and three traditional "fill holes" in the bottom of the inner wall (so the fuel can leak into and be soaked up by the fiberglass). These three notches in the wall give somewhat when you fit the can halves together making up for the difference in diameters from top to bottom. With a very small effort I could make a trapezoidal piece that would fit perfectly but I don't think there would be any benefit to this.

This stove works better for me than the standard Pepsi stove design. I think it’s because of the way I can make the burner. Since the top of the pop can turn inward, I can put the burner holes tilted up at an angle from the can side and also somewhat closer in from the edge of the pop can wall (rather than out of the sides of the can). My pots tend to have a smaller diameter and I think this keeps more flame under the bottom of the pot.

Anyway, if you build Pepsi stoves and have a little extra time this is a fun variant. I am sure it’s been done before.
last edited: 8/22/05 12:41:54 PM”

“I made one like that once. Worked the same.

It seems it was a little harder to poke the holes in that part of the can than into the bottom, but perhaps that was just my perception. I don't ever use a wick, but to each his own.

I guess if I really really cared I would make one like that every time, but I like the look of the stove when you use two can bottoms.”

“Reinventing the wheel, a bit. ;-)”

“Thanks for the time you've put into your web site StoveStomper. With information found on your pages, I built a Pepsi-G stove 1 year ago. It is working well, but my needs are changing as I build a cooking "system".

Speaking about reinventing the wheel...
This evening, I cut up one of those new fangled aluminum beer bottles. JB'd and taped, it looks rather interesting, but is about 3 times the weight of the Pepsi-G. First burn was done in the middle of the street in the case the damn thing decided to blow up. Twas a slightly breezy night and the contraption produced a long burning flame with little fuel. I'll test it more tomorrow if the wind dies down.”

“goat: a picture would be cool”

“oppps, no photographs, yet. I've cut up the first one so that I could use the parts for improvements.

The first design worked. I redesigned it today but it didn't work so well. Will probably re-redesign it again tomorrow.

As I came home this evening, I noticed that the neighbor was setting up a garage sale. (damn I hate these events) I strolled on over there in the dark, and asked one question.
"Do you have an aluminum pot that I could use for camping?"
His lady friend directed me to a table of crap where I found camping treasure... An aluminum percolator!! Stands about 6 inches high, with a 5 inch base. Will be a great pot in which to build a system around. Only fity cent, and it is lighter than the pot with which I'd been cooking meals on my whisperlite. The goat is dancing at this time, eh!
All I need to sustain live upon the trail is nearly within my grasp. Boiled water, Coffee, and Mother Jones (it'll keep you moving)!!!”

“Lighter than the pot you had been using? WTF????




At Cades Cove you were boiling water in an empty Miller Lite can.”

“Kewl Bean goat! I used an old alum perker for a while.”

“Actually, the can I used was a pepsi can. Wouldn't touch a Miller Light can cuz it don't taste great.

I use the pepsi can because I hadn't found a decent smaller pot to use. All that was needed was a bit of boiled water to rehydrate my freezer bag meal. (thanks sarbar) With this coffee pot, I should be able to boil water for the meal and make coffee which I just did that on the kitchen stove. Next, I'll try cooking up a loaf of bread. Mother Jones (it'll keep ya moving!) If Mother Jones on the stove works out, I'll build a wind screen and test the pot with the pepsi-g stove.

Still working with the aluminum bottle design.”

“I bought my daughter a capri sun drink in one of them thar aluminum bottles last night. My first thought when I saw the thing was "Is that aluminum?" I was pecking on the bottle ont eh way to the cash reg. My daughter just rolled her eyes.”

“LOL @ Roan

It's the parents job to embarrass their kids. ;-)”

“Yes, I was going to say, if it wasn't that, it would be something else.”

“she gets PLENTY of opportunity to roll her eyes at me - she's 11 after all.”

“The 3rd version of the aluminum bottle worked better than the second version. I got it to simmer for 90 minutes on about 1 oz of fuel. The flame was so small, it probably wouldn't keep warm water water warm, let alone heat it up. Gonna chop the center stack off today, and try again.”

“Hve ya'll experienced the new aluminum beer bottles? they are the diameter of a glass bottle and made with a heavier aluminum wall. They are strong enough that you can just barely dent them with your finger if you press as hard as you can.

that should maeka sturdy yet light weight stove”

“Hve ya'll experienced the new aluminum beer bottles? they are the diameter of a glass bottle and made with a heavier aluminum wall. They are strong enough that you can just barely dent them with your finger if you press as hard as you can.

that should maeka sturdy yet light weight stove

[img]http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/040824/040824_beer_hmed_3p.hmedium.jpg[img]”

“I looked for these bottles around WI today and couldn't find any. Only bottles (glass) and cans. Sigh. Prolly just not a lot of good stores out here.”

“The bottles I've seen are:
Iron City Beer, brewed in Pittsburg. Found the bottle at my local beer git'n store. 12 oz beer cost about $1.30. Not my flavor as it is a clear beer and I prefer Guinness. I just purchase it for the bottle and hold my nose while drinking. hehe
Bud products. Saw some of these bottles around when the Brickyard 400 was approaching. Also saw some near Red River Gorge a few weeks ago.
I doubt that you'll see Leinies packaged like this any time soon.
But of course, check the local quickie mart for some of those Capri Suns. If'n ya ain't got a kid to give it to, feed it to the humingbirds. hehe

I wonder what the thinking behind switching to aluminum bottles is. Perhaps it would be that aluminum is acceptable on beaches and other places where glass isn't. Cans use much less aluminum, so aluminum bottles aren't the most environmentally friendly packaging. But then compared to a bunch of broken glass all over the country side,..

why am I arguing with myself?
Must be Guinness time?”

“I know a lot of people say they prefer bottles to cans. Perhaps the marketing pukes think they can make it LOOK like a bottle.

I know that on the scale of value for recycling that aluminum is at the very top.

"Tossing away an aluminum can wastes as much energy as pouring out half of that can's volume of gasoline."

Glass can be recycled forever, but the colors of glass get mixed up.

Wonder if that has anything to do with it.

If beverage companies are doing this then it's because it makes them money, not because of recycling benefits.”

“I have stored alcohol in all sorts of things. My favorite was a 5 oz soda bottle my son got at Wal*Mart, 4 for a dollar. I currently use a "Lil Nipper" ($5 which I admit is dumb to pay for something you can get for free).

Anyway ...

The Ice Cream Truck came by today and my son came to provide me with the usual milking I get at this time of the day. They (all three kids) came running back with their treats... and no change.

They always find a way to spend EXACTLY what I give them.

My youngest had a slushy thing that looks like a Capri Sun bag except it has a screw-on cap. It was made from a very rugged plastic and the cap was quite substantial as were the threads. It was sort of a version of a Platy bag made to drink a lemon slush out of.

You stove nuts know that the minute we see anything that could fit into our little habit ... anything ... our immediate family that has to suffer our tinkering knows what has happened.

So now he is using it to store "water" and drinks from it, denying me my experiment. I KNOW he knows why I want it.

I wonder when that Ice Cream Truck is going to come again ...”

“Made a red bull can stove today, the first in a long time. I don't know ... it just doesn't seem to work as well as the pepsi can (slightly larger) version. I thought it would work better because it's smaller and would fit my pots better. It just didn't seem to work as well. Perhaps I am having a bad stove day.

I am doing some rather dangerous experiments with stove fuel I'll post in a few days after my eyebrows grow back.”

“hehe ive not tried the pepsi can stove yet ive been curious about it.”

“Part of it has to do with the curvature of the bottom of the can. Also, the larger diameter helps spread the heat out rather than concentrate it at one point like a red bull can would.”

“treebait: so are you saying what I am seeing is sort of expected in your experience?”

“I have seen some V-8 stoves that worked well.”

“I ruined my candle lantern on my last campout. Not a big deal since I made it from the Zen Stoves web site template. So I went off to make another one. Long story short I had a pile of Red Bull cans laying around. So I took the Zen Stoves template and used PowerPoint to scale the pop-can template to the red-bull can. It took some monkeying around but it looks really cute. It is sort of a UCO candle lantern in size. Anyway, it's worth a try for those that like to tinker.

I had to cut the chimney from a pop bottle and cut and roll/tape it to the proper size. I couldn't find a bottle small enough to fit nicely into the red bull can.”

“I made one of those stoves that Tinny has on his minibull web site. I made one once a few years ago and it blew up. This one didn't. Basically it's a sealed burner design and the screw goes down into the fuel while the other end of the screw points into the flame from the stove. The stove heats the screw and transfers the heat to the fuel and the thing really, REALLY goes. I decided at that time it wasn't good for backpacking because I don't recall it was very fuel efficent. It was cool as hell, however. Check out his web site for his design. He is selling them for 8 bucks. You can make your own but be careful. I think a fairly large pressure builds inside the stove hence the first one I made that exploded.”

“wheres the site?”

“http://www.minibulldesign.com/

Look at the "SST alcohol stove"

Look on his "message board" or whatever it is to see his other projects. He appears quite good at baking with a Wal*Mart grease pot and alcohol stoves. Also, there are photos of this "new" stove in action. Like I said, I made one like this about a year ago but it blew up. One I made recently didn't and I think it's because my construction methods have improved greatly.

http://www.minibulldesign.com/myadventure/”