Solid Fuel Stove Techniques

[Bob Gross]

"Do you just lay the foil packaging back over the tablets blister pack?"

Yes.

Just about every bag and package that I use around Esbit is disposable, because the residue gets over everything.

I would be afraid that the horseradish might dissolve the plastic jar and eat a hole in the titanium cook pot.

–B.G.–

[John Donewar]

Here is a different take or spin if you will on a solid fueled stove that can contain a partially used fuel tab.

A Bleuet solid fuel tablet will drop into a …

…1 oz size screw top tin.

The 1 oz size screw top tin weighs on my scale 16 grams including the screw top. The bottom portion measures 9/16" internal depth x 1 13/16" in diameter. The screw top lid measures 2 3/16" in diameter and 21/32" (just over 5/8") overall height.

OK so it weighs 14 grams more than my Esbit tray type clone stove, is made of tin not aluminum or titanium and it isn't MYOG. It is a secure way that allows a hiker to carry a partially burned tablet.

Because it will sit lower my windscreen needs to be a full 1/4" shorter to get the same pot to fuel tablet distance of 1 1/4". That may shave a couple of grams from the combo screen /stand. ;-?

The lid itself measures 5/16" and could be used to raise the "stove" up close to the proper height. The tin doesn't really nest well on top of the lid so stability is an issue if I choose to go that route.

As before I would use a reflective surface under the stove.

I sourced my tin from …

http://bepreparedtosurvive.com/Misc.Conatiners.htm

…for $2.80 plus shipping for a set of three. Scroll down on their web page about a fourth of the way to view them. The 1 oz by itself costs a dollar.

If you trim the corners of the sealed package just right you can screw the lid on as the top edge of the bottom of the tin supports the packaging and have a sealed tab inside ready to unwrap and cook or boil. Don't trim the corners back far enough to get the tablet to drop inside as this will break the factory seal.

I was just thinking outside the box again. This could be a dual fuel stove with the addition of a piece of carbon felt and some alcohol fuel.

Experimenting with stoves and fuels can be dangerous. Proceed at your own risk. Please be careful. I can only report my results but as always YMMV. Remember there are no guarantees!

Party On,

Newton

[Andrew Weldon]

Wow, I love that design. I've got a lot of rivets and a lot of titanium.

Do you think a 550ml pot would play nice on top of a similar design out of titanium? I think I'm going to give it a shot with some flashing first just to confirm how many holes I'll need. It'll be a little larger in diameter, and I imagine the same number of holes should still supply the same amount of air.

I love the combo of windscreen and pot stand, though. Really elegant and just as stable as a hardware cloth stand.

If I can keep it around 7-10 grams with a titanium version, I'll be losing some weight from my kit and taking two items and turning it into one. I love simplicity!

edit: and as an aside, I keep my half-burnt esbit tabs in a little tiny tyvek envelope. I don't know where I got it from, but it's just a 2x~3" bonded tyvek envelope with no closure on top. I just drop the tablet in, fold over the long top and it stuffs into my cook kit inside the plastic bag that contains my stove and pot stand. Works great!

[M B]

put the windscreen around the pot, leave 1/4" gap
put 15 1/4" holes around the bottom as low to ground as can make, evenly spaced.
put small holes at correct ht and slide tent stakes thru for pot support

you will have better wind protection
you will have better heat input area, and waste less heat

[John Donewar]

Andrew,

Glad you like it. ;-)

What seemed to work for me was a 2 : 1 ratio of holes 1/4" in diameter. As pictured the double row of holes is at the top and the single row at the bottom.

The bottom row of holes are "breathers" to allow combustion air in to the stove. The top two rows are "exhaust" holes. I tried twice as many holes (1 every half inch) in a single row on top and half as many holes (1 every inch) in a single row on the bottom. That version did not breath well at all and the tablet smothered and flamed out.

I had seen this before on one of my alcohol stoves. Lacking patience LOL and having plenty of flashing and eyelets I decided to double the number of top holes and do likewise to the bottom.

+1 for trying it out of flashing first. I see no reason why 550ml or 2.33 cup cook pot wouldn't "play nice" on a similarly designed Titanium combination stand and windscreen. The Ti handles more heat and is inherently stronger.

Thanks for the suggestion regarding the half-burnt fuel tablets. This is still a work in progress as you can see from the post regarding the screw top tin "stove" idea.

BTW the original idea for this combo winscreen / pot stand design came from…

http://zenstoves.net/PotStands-WindscreenStands.htm

…about 1/2 way down their web page. Look for the figure that looks like the one pictured below.

Party On,

Newton

[John Donewar]

M B,

Thank you for your input, I do appreciate it.

"put small holes at correct ht and slide tent stakes thru for pot support"

I am not a fan of using my tent stakes for this purpose for a couple of reasons.

1.) I don't want to carry extra tent stakes dedicated to my cook kit.

2.) I don't want to wait to finish setting up my shelter until after cooking.

"you will have better wind protection
you will have better heat input area, and waste less heat"

In my tests in my garage I had a 20" box fan on high speed blowing directly at my combo screen and stand. The flame did not suffer. My 1 cup solo cook pot is approximately 3 and 1/4" in diameter. My screen / stand is 2 7/8" in diameter. In the past I saw a lot of wasted heat go up the sides of my cook pot. With this design pretty much all of the heat from the Bleuet tablet is directed right at the bottom of my cook pot.

This is an ongoing experiment in minimalism, simplicity and efficiency.

Minimalism – Do more with less

Simplicity – Less pieces and parts

Efficiency – Short boil times with minimal use of fuel.

I am reminded of Gossamer Gear's warning about their SUL pack. It said in essence, if you think that this pack might not be for you than it isn't.

If you are happy with your current setup and it does exactly what you need it to do than I am happy for you.

I am simply exploring a different approach towards the same end.

Again I appreciate your input and experience. Thank you for offering it here on this thread.

Party On,

Newton

[M B]

Hey I agree with you.
You are far from the first to go down the road.

Enjoy.

[Greg Pehrson]

Sorry it took so long to respond to your questions, Newton. You asked,
"Do you have to re-apply the soap between "burns" or is it just a one time application per trip? How long does it last? Did you size the tyvek stuff sack so that it has a wide opening but closes tightly to avoid getting the soot on the higher edges of the cook pot and stuff sack?"

I don't reapply it after cooking. But I'm not out on extended trips either these days.
As to the tyvek envelope, I kept the mailer at its full size and just sewed a drawcord hem into the top (where the opening normally is). This opens up plenty wide to drop my pot into without making a mess on the outside, but there is some wasted space as it's not a snug fit. Tyvek mailers are recyclable too, if it gets too gross after a bunch of trips.

[John Donewar]

Greg,

Thank you very much for the detailed answers.

We all get very busy and or preoccupied sometimes. That's why we enjoy hiking in the wilderness so much. We get to fill up our eyes with the beauty of nature and rid ourselves of the "junk" that accumulates in our heads over time. It also gives us a reason and aids in keeping us physically fit.

It's a Win-Win all the way around. ;-)

At my age sometimes I just forget! ;-? L O L

Thanks again.

Party On,

Newton

[John Donewar]

OK so there is this thread on the Philosophy & Technique Forum right now that asks the question "Where do you compromise"? What the question is getting at is, where do you carry more weight for the sake of comfort, function or luxury?

In this regard I have compromised on my solid fuel stove weight to achieve a set goal of a desired set of function parameters.

1.) Be able to burn a solid fuel tablet a.k.a. Esbit, Bleuet or Coghlan's.

2.) Be able to store a partially burned fuel tablet securely.

3.) Be ultralight and efficient.

Here is the result.

My stove weighs 16 grams total including the bottom "burner" and the screw on top for used tablet storage.

So my stove gained a total of 14 grams. I comfort myself with fact that only the bottom 8 gram half is the burner and the 8 gram top is just there for storage of the partially used fuel tablet. ;-)

I did save some weight on this project. I had to construct a new "combo" pot stand and windscreen due to the lower height of the stove.

The new "combo" weighs 6 grams so I saved 1 whole gram. LOL

I'll be using the stove and combo with the same 2 gram reflective surface ring from my Fancee Feest Clone Stove.

Here is a picture looking down at the stove loaded with a "wrapped" Bleuet tablet sitting inside of the "combo" with the reflective ring underneath.

I gained 14 grams on the stove and saved 1 gram on the "combo" for a total weight gain of 13 grams. Add in the 2 gram reflective ring, 16 gram 1 cup cook pot, 5 gram aluminum lid, 2 gram plastic ring and an 11 gram mini-Bic lighter which brings my solid fuel cook kit grand total up to 58 grams or 2.05 ounces.

Naturally I won't be using a dose cup or a fuel bottle with this setup. But I will have to carry the solid fuel tablets. Each wrapped tablet weighs 15 grams. If I can get two 1 cup boils out of every tablet with this system I'll only have to carry 75 grams or 5 tablets to equal what I was getting out of my "mini fancee feest clone and fuel bottle of 4 ounces of alcohol. That bottle of alcohol when full weighed 106 grams and my alcohol stove weighed 12 grams. So there is some weight savings to be had by going the solid fuel tablet route. That weight savings was already there with my clone of Brian Green's tray stove and original "combo" stand and screen.

I still have to do test burns for boil times and overall performance. There will be some long term observations to be made regarding the stoves material since it is a round storage "tin". Longevity of the stove is a concern of mine but they are very inexpensive to replace.

Here is the good news. I get to do these tests on a 24 hour overnight in the Kisatchie Wilderness this weekend. WooHoo!

Party On,

Newton

[John Donewar]

I did a test run on my 2" screw top tin "esbit" type stove with its "combo" stand/windscreen on my patio this evening.

Here are the particulars.

Ambient temperature was 81* F.
Water temperature @ 50* F. (ice cold water from the refrigerator)
7 mph ENE wind (no real effect on patio due to house shielding the stove)

The fuel tablet was lit with a match and allowed to achieve a completely flaming tablet.
The "combo" was then placed around the stove and the "cook pot" with 1 cup of the cold water was placed on top of the "combo".
The timer was then started.

Performance data:

A boil with visible steam venting from under the cook pot lid was achieved at 14 minutes and 36 seconds.

The fuel tablet continued to burn until complete flame out at 34 minutes and 24 seconds.

Note:

I believe two 1 cup boils are possible due to the fact that the boil time doubled equals 29 minutes and 12 seconds. The tablet burned for 5 minutes and 12 seconds more than that amount of time.

The "cupped" shape of the stove tin may be part of the reason for the slower boil time than the tray type stove.

Observations:

This stove, stand and windscreen setup seemed to perform like a simmering stove.

I blew through the "combo" and it seemed to like the added combustion air as the flame seemed to grow and become more vigorous as long as I continued to blow into the "combo" screen/stand.

After flame out there was quite a bit of residual fuel tablet left in the bottom of the tin.

The bottom of the "cook pot" was well coated with soot.

This is to be expected with solid fuel tablet stoves but it wasn't this bad when I test burned the tray type stove.

R & D:

I believe I can speed up (lower) the boil time by adding more punch holes in the "combo".

Comment:

My darling wife suggested that I try out this new stove at home before going out to the Kisatchie Wilderness without a backup stove. I'm so glad I listened to her and didn't wait until I was on the trail to "test" this stove. ;-)

Party On,

Newton

[John Donewar]

"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley"

Robert Burns

Yes I added more holes and breath-ability to my now 5 gram "combo".

;-)” height=”413″ src=”https://dpcr19kltm61a.cloudfront.net/backpackinglight/user_uploads/1351214414_70757.jpg” width=”550″ />

It looked really cool while burning.

The steam venting was proof of a good boil.

OK kids that is the end of the good news. This is proof positive that Newton will post and own up to his MYOG failures. LOL

Despite how good everything looks the results of the second burn test were WORSE!

The ambient conditions and temperatures were all pretty much the same. Things were done in the same manner and order.

Results:

Boil time evidenced by venting steam was at 17 minutes. FWIW at 21 minutes the lid started popping up and down to relieve excess pressure because there was no vent hole in the lid. It was entertaining while I sat out on the patio dodging mosquitoes waiting for the stove to flame out. I'm dedicated if not smart. ;-)

Flame out occurred at 33 minutes and 20 seconds.

Conclusion:

The 2" round screw top tin solid fuel stove/used tablet storage container is a FAILURE!

The fuel tablet needs to be more exposed as it was in the tray type stove or simply laid on a piece of foil inside of the "combo".

Comments:

I can try these ideas later on. I need to get out my alcohol stove "backup" and finish packing for Kisatchie.

I'm not giving up or giving in on solid fuel stoves I'm just going back to something I can count on so that my outing this weekend doesn't cause me to cuss! ;-)

Party On,

Newton

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

A modified titanium BGET affixed to a titanium triwing pot support.

[Author]

Posts