Author's V1 Winter Stoves, Many Canisters, Roger Caffin MYOG Vortex Burner Ultralight Winter Stove System Part 1

Dissatisfied with what was commercially available at the time, I have been working on the design of ultralight winter stove system since 2007, and have settled on a remote canister winter stove system. (OK, OK, a bit obsessive, but so what?) The design required several novel features including versatility, functionality, and safety. These features were explained in a whole series of articles. I ended up with a limited commercial production and sold about 115 of them, mostly to BPL members, but over a surprisingly global range.

But the result of all that work on so many variations was just one design. There were so much unused data and so many incomplete designs that the variations were just begging to be followed through. Having sold so many of the first design, and now having some spare time, I started looking at some of my unused designs. But I did not want just to make another very similar stove as the last one; where's the fun in that?

So I deliberately started down a different track for a very different stove: a Vortex Burner stove. Part 1 of this series will cover the background theory (it does matter) and highlight some successes and some unsolved problems. Subsequent parts will work though some practical realities, with the goal of a UL MYOG remote-canister Vortex Burner winter stove. There may be blind alleys along the way, but we will get there.

Successes

My Winter Stove V1 design met most of my essential goals (and met them very well I think):

  • Liquid Feed for winter use: remote inverted canister
  • Gas Valving (rather than liquid valving) for decent and fast control
  • Safety: a (separate) fast shut-off valve at the canister
  • Lightweight: the final weight for that stove was 3 oz. (86 g)
  • Canister Flexibility: take screw-thread, Campingaz and Coleman Powermax canisters
  • Manufacturable (by me)
  • The stove works well in the snow

Read on to hear the whole story!

Article Outline

  • Introduction
  • Successes
  • Vortex Burners: The Whats and the Whys
  • Early Vortex Burner Stove Designs
  • Critical Preliminary Experiments
  • Summary so far

# of Photos: 13; Word Count: 5000

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