“Mole” Stove

[Nathan Donald]

I had a moment of inspiration in the mexican food isle at Wal-Mart. The stove reminds me of an alcohol powered sterno. The alcohol is stored inside. I will be doing a boil test soon. More to follow.

The Mole Stove <—- Click Me!

[Nathan Donald]

Using 2 cups of room temperature water I obtained a rolling boil in almost exactly 8 minutes.

The Mole Stove Test <—- Click Me!

[Denis Hazlewood]

Nice job! Well done! You might be able to get boil times down a bit by using a wind screen.

[JJ Mathes]

nice stove…but you need to feed your cat :D

[Nathan Donald]

Haha, yeah kitten was hungry.

I'm going to be making a windscreen for it soon. The one I have seems a bit short. Thanks for the compliments! :D

[Nathan Donald]

Got some stuff done…It looks like the stove holds 4 1/4 fluid ounces when really full. 4 ounces if you don't want it leaking inside the lid. I filled it up completely and set it upside down with the lid on. (I made another stove using the reverse side…much better seal) It will let some alcohol seep by at a pretty slow rate. When it's not full to the point of alcohol leaking out of the fiberglass insulation material (4 ounces) the lid should do it's job perfectly.

I did a "realistic" burn longevity test where I filled it with 4 1/4 ounces of alcohol and lit it, boiled 2 cups of water, hit the lap button, paused the timer, then blew it out. After that I cooled the pot, pot stand, windscreen, and stove by dipping them in cool water. I then repeated the process without refilling the stove. I did this until I could no longer boil the water. Here are the results:

First boil: 6min 51s
Second boil: 5min 52s
Third boil: 7min 21s
Fourth boil: 9min 02s

Total effective burn time: 29m 08s

For some reason the second boil was very fast, then it slowly tapered off. I assume these correlate to the amount of fuel left inside the stove.

I also made a windscreen today and tested it out…quite a bit haha.

Windscreen Tests <—- Click Me!

[Jason Klass]

Nathan,
Well done, great design! I wonder if you could make the pot stand fit rest on the inner lip of the can so you don't have to carry such a large stand. I'm thinking it could be slightly smaller than the circumference of the can and just rest inside the lip. Then, remove it so you can put the cap back on. Just an idea.

[Nathan Donald]

Great idea! I will definitely be doing some more pot stand / windscreen tweaking in the near future. I did like that the pot stand fit snugly around the stove for convenient storage inside my pot. I suppose the bandanna would keep the smaller pot stand from rolling around…and now I'm thinking out loud haha.

[Frank Deland]

http://www.woodgaz-stove.com/starlyte.php

[Nathan Donald]

Again with this link lol…Mine isn't as fuel efficient and stores 4 times the fuel inside the stove. I have no idea why people keep comparing the two lol.

[Nathan Donald]

Thanks for the idea Jason. This works perfectly and is what I use now. :)

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