Brian Green Esbit Tray BGET

Dan,

Thanks for selling BGETs for those of us with no metal working skills.

Why stainless steel versus titanium?

— Rex

Hi Rex, thank you for your purchase.

I had the stainless steel on hand and knew of it's heat resistance and super light weight with ability to fold easily. The titanium I've worked with in the past cracked when I would try to make a sharp bend. It seems it has the ability to transfer heat to the liquid esbit in the tray to efficiently burn it to oblivion and beyond :)

(Edited to correct spelling of the word knew)

out of curiosity, how is this different than the traditional gram cracker esbit stove?

The BGET has a tray to contain the liquid esbit. It also does not have the movable "fins" of the Trail Designs Gram Cracker that allow you to stand two esbit cubes vertically.

This is what 2 vertical esbits looks like in the BGET

Dan

Do the BGET stoves sit the cubes at the same height as the TD Gram Cracker? TIA!

KJ

I like the idea of using a disposable ramekin as a container. Looks like I have to make a trip to Five Guys to pick one up for my MYOG BGET!

KJ, I have not been able to find my TD Crackers to do a comparison in height. I will make a strong effort to search my garage this evening to answer your question. Maybe someone can tell us what that dimension is.

The BGET is made to Brian Greens specs. I'm not sure what stove configuration he had in mind. I'll have to read his blog and maybe quote some stuff from it. Brian has been super busy and will eventually show up.

The BGET raises it off the ground 3/8" and the GramCracker raises it 3/4"

Thanks Dan!

KJ

Tempting…

Robert, your mini esbitmizer should be sufficient… ;)

For those of you that have the tri-wing esbit stove, this BGET sits nicely on the stove to provide extra efficiency.

The little plastic storage container with snap on lid weighs in at 2 grams. It will provide sufficient storage protection to store in your pot…no leaking of soot or whatever is left from the burned out esbit.

This entire bundle weighs only 4 grams. You get the tray, reflector disc and storage container plus 3 large esbit tablets to get you started.

The heights I ended up with were based on my burn time and boil time tests. The height off the ground has no direct correlation to efficiency other that it changes the height from the top surface of the Esbit tablet to the bottom of your pot – that's the critical measurement for efficiency.

The efficiency of the boiling process increases as the distance between the pot and the Esbit tablet decrease. In my tests I found the hottest spot of the Esbit flame to be very close to the tablet itself, more than I had expected. I found the ideal distance between tablet and pot being 1.25" – 2.25". So you would want to adjust your BGET stove accordingly based on the configuration of your Esbit tablets (one or two).

Hope that makes sense?

Rex, I second what Dan has already said regards titanium being easy to snap when folded. I made mine out of titanium just because I could and I wanted to, but it is a PITA to fold the small flaps without work hardening them and snapping them – basically you get one change and can't readjust without them snapping!

On top of that the weight of my titanium BGET stove was 0.97g so the saving is so negligible that it doesn't justify the added complexity and cost of using titanium – unless you like the wow factor when you tell your friends :) I made my first few prototypes using aluminum (al-ooo-min-eee-um to us Brits) and they worked extremely well.

Thanks for your comments, Brian. I figure that you have more knowledge than most of us regarding Esbit use. I found your tab-to-pot distance range interesting. I have usually seen 1.25"-1.75" to be the optimal range, but never as great as 2.25". The folding Esbit brand stove places the pot bottom about 1.0" above the top of the tab, and I assume the Germanic Esbit folks know what they are doing. My various wing stove/supports keep my BPL Firelite 550 pot about 0.5" above the tab–not very much, but it seems to work OK (but more residue on the pot than if it is positioned higher–presumedly due to more complete combustion when a bit higher?).

I use a pop can bottom also (actually the bottom of a small V-8 juice can, the lightest I've found), and I design my pot supports to be 1.25" above the tab top. That way, I am assured of having a tab-to-pot distance of 1.25"-1.5". This gives me about the same efficiency (boil times), but with a bit less residue on the pot.

I am curious about Dan's comment about placing a BGET on the tab holder of a wing stove for "increased efficiency.". It seems that this would place the tablet very, very close to the pot. Can this be done without smothering the flame?

As for the brittleness of titanium foil, I have found that Type 2 (commercially pure) foil is more forgiving than the more brittle Type 5 (6AL-4V). It can be bent several times before it breaks.

Gary, the esbit is raised only 1/8″ closer to the bottom of the pot. The BGET straddles the tray of the Tri Wing. You can see how it is in this photo:

I see, Dan–it straddles the tab tray rather than sitting inside it. The depth of my wing stove's tab holder is 3/16", so it would raise the tablet by that much. What do you mean by "extra efficiency?" A quicker boil, less residue on the pot, less fuel used, or just what?

Dan

Do you know how the increased Stove-to-Pot Bottom distance would effect the performance of a TD Ti-Tri Sidewinder/Evernew 900 setup? I get great performance out of that setup with the Gram Cracker, but hate the "drippy pieces" I end up leaving in nature caused by the Gram Crackers non-tubbed design. I'd like to move to a BGET in order to prevent that.

TIA for any info you can provide.

KJ

Dan

Found this article:
http://thru-hiker.com/articles/esbit_stove_height.php

It is my understanding that the TD Ti-Tri Sidewinder/Evernew 900 setup has a ground-to-pot bottom distance of 2″ (based on someone else’s response here on BPL [when not using stakes…aka the ESBIT setup]). You stated the Gram Cracker raises the cube 0.75″ off the ground and the BGET 0.375″, so that creates (with the above stated setup) a cube base-to-pot bottom distances of 1.25″ and 1.625″ respectively.

…so according to the chart in the article, it appears this will make something like a 0-8 second boil time difference. …my question now is what kind of a difference does this distance make on soot deposits.

Dan, any chance you could make a BGET that puts the cube at 0.75″ off the ground so I could find out which leaves less soot? I’m on a quest to make ESBIT an overall cleaner/less environmentally dirty fuel solution.

Also, are you going to be coming to the Midwest GGG?

KJ

Gary, "extra efficiency" means the raised side panels slows down the burn rate which reduces the amount of heat being lost up the sides of the pot. Slower is better. The Tri-wing does not have those side panels like the BGET and Gram Cracker. Just adding the side panels makes a big difference according to what I've read in other threads here at BPL.

KJ, I'll be back later to answer your questions.

KJ, here is a quote from the link you gave that had some food for thought:

(Commercial Esbit stoves are at a height conducive to an efficient heating process. Homemade solid fuel tablet stoves should be made so that the height of the pot over the burning tablet is similar to that of the commercial stoves. )

I have a Calder Cone made for the 12cm Imusa mug and it has the 2" dimension from bottom of pot to ground.

Yes, I can make you a BGET that raises the esbit 3/4" above ground level. I'll work on it tomorrow and ship Friday.

I have to do a search when the Midwest GGG takes place and then I can let you know. I leave next week for a 3 week vacation, going west to Utah and beyond :)

I see what you mean now, Dan. I might give that a try, to see what it does. I'm wondering if it might be better to just use a BGET with a separate pot support, and leave the wing stove at home. I'm just thinking about tab-to-pot distance here, and it seems like placing a BGET on top of a wing stove tab holder would minimize the needed space between the tab and pot, and decrease efficiency. But I'll give it a try and see what happens. I assume that you have already done it.

Gary,
Just cut a piece of foil in a plus shape to fit in the tray of the tri wing so it has the higher walls. That won't change the fuel to pot spacing and should increase the burn time.

By the way Brian's blog has a PDF that can be printed and cut out and temporarily glued to foil to make the BGET. It makes fabrication quite easy.

Cliff

Yes, Cliff, I have cloned several BGETs using Brian's instructions, and I do have some scraps of ti foil. I guess where I am getting hung up is with the wing stove's tab-to-pot distance in the first place. For me, the sweet spot is to have that distance be 1.25". Slowing down the burn has its place, namely for simmering, but I don't do that with Esbit often. I just want a cleaner 8-9 minute 2-cup boil when I do Esbit, and I have found my way to do that, in a caldera clone with a pot stand and the V-8 can tab holder. Still, I do like to geek out over the various possibilities, strictly in the name of science, you understand.