Help me brainstorm a Caldera Cone (TM) for the FireLite 475ml Ti Trapper’s Mug

Gentlemen/Gentlewomen:

I have been hanging on every word…..and biting my tongue the whole way. Just so you know, Trail Designs has been working on this idea for quite some time now. We have come up with a design that is probably very close to finalized, and even have prototypes in the hands of some of the folk that are participating on this board. At this point, I would like to make a few comments:

First, I want to thank our early adopters for keeping their word and keeping quite about the design…and would encourage them to continue to do so for a little longer. I suspect that when you read what I have to say below, you will realize why I would like to keep your designs under wraps.

Second, the reason we haven't been more vocal about this design is that it is incredibly difficult to manufacture in volume….and if we were to leak it too early….we know we wouldn't be able to meet demand. Now, with that said, we are developing a machine that CAN make this in volume but it only exists now in many pieces and mental concepts so we can't go "big time" yet. (side note….one of the TDesigns founders is a manufacturing tool developer/manufacturer ….so we are confident this will happen)

Third, back to your discussion…and taking you to the place you haven't quite gotten yet. At the highest level, you are going down the right path…..and just about have it….but you now need to start considering the pot that has to go in it. If you look across the vast majority of the pots out there, there are two aspects that prevent them from being candidates for this design. The first issue is the handle. Again, the vast majority of the pots out there have handles that will cut completely through your top cone making it almost impossible to hold its shape. The second issue is the pot height. This design only works with the taller aspect ratio pots. If you think about it, the two cones need to overlap, and consequently, either one of them will be taller than the shorter pots…..and therefore won't fit inside the pot for storage (which is the objective of this exercise).

Fourth, you now should see that the problem is 3-fold. First the design (which you all are closing in on), next is being able to manufacture in volume (which we are closing in on) and finally sourcing a pot that will actually work in this space. To this last issue, I don't know how many of you have been following the trail designs website evolution…..but if you have, you will have noted that we have gone into the Evernew pot business in a big way. This was not random chance. We were fully aware of the potential of the split cone (Caldera Fissure?….that sound good?) and the need to get a source of pots to support it. As it turns out, Evernew makes a nice line of tall aspect ratio pots with handles shifted WAY up toward the top….PERFECT for the Caldera Fissure (again…that name sound good?). If you take a look at our Evernew pots page at http://evernewpots.com you will note that there are 2 pots in the 640ml range (ECA264 and ECA401), 3 pots in the 900ml range (ECA721, ECA402, and ECA265) and 2 pots in the 1400ml range (ECA722 and ECA403) that we have been stocking up on and are targeting for this product once it is released. Again…..we're trying to think ahead here and get all the pieces in place so we can meet the market demand once we unveil it.

Fifth, this mail thread, and our proximity to a finalized solution is prompting me to reply now…..and to consider a limited, word of mouth only, "pre-release" to the BPL crowd. This is not an offer yet….but just kind of an open thought. If we were to do an early release, the price would reflect the heavy hand crafting we have to do at this stage for each cone…probably something in the neighborhood of $100, and would require purchasing one of the Evernew pots from us to fit it. Is this something that we should consider?

Thanks again for all your energy around our designs….we do read every word and appreciate all your support.

Rand :-)

Absolutely Rand….I like the fissure name as well.

I would be interested in one of the bigger pot setups for my family outings.

Curious on your material choice for these cones and what ratio the weight increases to this design? I understand if you cant answer at this time. Looking forward to a few of your new offerings.

Jeff

Guess I really opened something up with this thread, huh?!?

Thanks Rand for being so open about this topic, which is obviously a complex business planning consideration for you. Hopefully members here will be respectful of what you have disclosed and not spread it on other forums until you are ready for the word to get out.

Great to see that these are in the works! I can't wait to see them hit the market. I think a pre-release offering to BPL members would be an awesome idea.

The Fissure sounds like a great name for it.

I'll cast my vote for the Caldera Fissure too! I'm pretty excited about them.

I think the name Caldera Fissure is a good one and think a BPL offer would be a good one. I am certainly interested in the setup you have descibed.

Looking forward to hearing / seeing more.

Scott

Rand

Sounds very interesting and would be even more interesting if it did fit the FireLite SUL-1100 Titanium Cookpot instead of the Evernew pots;-)

Oh no! I love my CC and i'm gonna have to get another one?:)

Rand,
I'm not surprised you guys are already working on this as it is a great idea. I have the original Ti-Tri and love it, but I am thinking that one of the 620ml pots would be great for solo jaunts. One of my favorite features is the ability to use a wood fire. Is the Caldera Fissure (great name by the way) going to be offered in Ti? I might be interested in an advanced offering, depending on finances.

Tim

All:

A few replys:

1) We have been playing with the Trapper cone a little more now, and need to make everyone aware of an "issue". The lip on the Trapper is almost non-existent. Consequently, we have to make the cone fit very closely….and you are going to have a hard time extracting it while the stove is blowing heat out of the top holes. One idea we have is adding a "bale" handle to the top of the cone so it can be picked up and moved off the heat. This is just an idea….and not a tested/fleshed out option…so we may take a little longer to figure this out. Any thoughts welcome!

2) Split cone name feedback. Looks like Caldera Fissure is catching on….thanks!

3) Caldera Fissure pot selection. As I mentioned earlier, it is a real pain to make these right now for a number of reasons. Consequently, our motivation will be to minimize the pain, which for the short term means we will aim toward the 3 Evernew pots I mentioned earlier. Once we figure out a full on production solution, we might consider other pots at that time.

4) Caldera Fissure in Titanium. Referencing the current "pain" of building these things….one of the pain points is that we have to cut these large arcs out of the material, and figure out a way to hold the material while doing those cuts. The "production" rig we have right now, applied to the split cone, wastes a LOT of material. Far more titanium than we are can afford to scrap. So, again, until we get a full on production solution, we won't be making any titanium split cones.

5) Caldera Fissure offering. Over the 4th, we will be doing a production run of regular cones and what not. As time permits, we will try to sneak in a few split cones in the 3 sizes mentioned earlier (oh….and the Evernew 750 Stacking Set). After the break, I'll report back here on what we were able to accomplish and how to pick one up if do get any built.

Thanks again for all the interest….

Rand :-)

I would support the idea of a bale handle.

On my Snowpeak 700 (with handles), I routinely pick up the cone and pot together, and that is with the 'standard' fit. With a tighter fit and no handles, I think this would be a necessity.

I will be curious to see how you make a lightweight stable handle for pouring that is also removeable/stowable. I look forward to finding out.

Rand,

I usually leave the cone on when I pick up my pot anyway. Kind of acts like a cozy. As to a bale: I really wouldn’t use it, but I’m not against having one. Presumable I could remove it if needed. I’m a fan of David Lewis’s pot lifter which might also solve the problem.

David Lewis’s Handle

Just a thought.

-Mark

Hi Rand,
I think a lot of people who are using the trappers mug are using it for it's lightweight and simplicity. Someone in a previous post mentioned a half height caldera with tabs affixed to the side of the mug. Working on this idea it may be possible to make a Caldera that comes 1/4 to a 1/3 of the way up the mug and supply a couple of tabs that people can glue on to their mugs with JB weld etc. Because of the height of the trapper the cone could hopefully be sized so that it could be stored in the mug.

Hey Rand

Just checking in on the trapper caldera, any update to the release date?

I like the idea of having a handle as an option. I guess until I can use it and see what my needs are, I will be undecided on its necessity

Jeff:

Sorry for not providing a more timely update. The day job kinda took me out of commission there for a while and am only now catching up on stuff.

Yep! Russ and I built a bunch of standard Caldera Trapper cones over the 4th…..along with a hand full of Evernew 640ml&stacking set and Deep 900ml Fissure Cones. We thought over the Trapper design quite a bit, and ultimately decided to fore-go the bale handle for a variety of reasons.

We will be pushing them all out through the AntiGravityGear site like most of our stuff. The systems were put in the hands of UPS on Monday, and should be in North Carolina either Friday or this next Monday. At that point, I'll put the Trapper up on both our web sites, and post a "word of mouth" deal here on the Fissures to give you all first crack at them.

Thanks again for the interest!

Rand :)

All:

Thank you for your patience. I just got through putting the Trapper Cone and a couple of Caldera Fissure offerings up on the AGG website. They will weave their way into the main navigation pages over time.

For the Trapper guys….we have about 8 available and they can be found here:

http://antigravitygear.com/proddetail.php?prod=TDCTRPR

The cone pictured is our standard "glamor shot" and is not the actual Trapper cone.

For those of you interested in the Caldera Fissure (aka split cone)…..we have 2 or 3 that fit the Evernew 640ml and the Evernew 900ml pots. We are working on a 1400ml and should have a couple of those available next week. For these two systems, you can pick them up here:

http://antigravitygear.com/proddetail.php?prod=TDCE9SPL
http://antigravitygear.com/proddetail.php?prod=TDCE64SPL

Now….what it looks like…..I am including below a few pictures of a prototype model that is for all intents and purposes identical to the ones in this limited release. Notice that the dovetail closure is reversed on the bottom cone, and that the two cones are attached via a "snap fit" over strategically placed rivets. These two smaller cones roll together and can fit inside the taller pots. Getting everything to line up….in conjunction with the huge material waste and the very limited number of pots whos handles don't cut through the top cone and who are also tall enough to accept the cone….is what makes this a challenge.

There you go! Thanks to everyone for kicking us in the rear end and getting these out there. We have been dragging our heels for some time….and it feels good to have it going now.

Rand :-)

Good job Rand. To anyone wondering if the Fissuure is any good, I have been priveledged to use one for the past few months. It is a revolutionary advance in UL cooking IMHO. It's compact, stable, stowable and just plain cool. For anyone who uses pot sizes that don't have Fissures available, the Caldera Caddy is a superb piece of multi-use gear. Stores and protects your cone and other cooking stuff (pot holder, matches etc…), can be used as a bowl, a cup or whatever.

$100 for a couple of punched and rolled pieces of aluminum seems a little steep. (not to be taken as any sort of criticism of the design). Is it this high because it's a short non production run?

On behalf of Rand:

Yes, this is a very limited production run. As Rand said earlier, it is very difficult and time consuming to make the Fissure with their current production rig and there is a lot of waste. Look at TD's normal Caldera Cones, they are much more reasonable.

Yeah, short run, very labour intensive and probably just checking the market to see if a larger run would be of interest.

One way you could look at the cost is to compare it to a titanium one piece cone. Although the Fissure is not titanium, the protected nestling design essentially makes it as robust as the titanium (in terms of potential longevity) unless you actually step on the thing while assembled.

Just ordered my trapper, thanks Rand. Look forward to putting this to good use.

So… for more background on pricing, Alison and Peter got most of it. In addition, the top cone has to be custom fit to the bottom cone. The nature of design features plays havoc with the tolerances….so much so that we can't tighten it up enough so that all top cones can interchange with all bottom cones in a given pot size. Consequently each Fissure comes as a "matched set".

Further, in trying to develop the right height of the top and the right height of the bottom, so they stacked to the right combined height, and had enough overlap to do the rivet trick, and then when they broke down neither was taller than the inside of the pot…..I guess we made somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 or 8 scrap cones just trying to dial in the final size on each pot size.

Finally, we had this design concept some time ago, but never put it out on the market because we knew just what a pain it was going to be to manufacture without some significant investment in tooling. So, when this thread came along, and I opened the kimono and let folks know about it…there was enough interest that we decided to make a few…and I threw out this price at that time. In the end, if we picked a price point like….oh….say $60….I suspect they would sell out instantly. At that price, we could never keep up with demand given the huge amount of hand crafting that is required at this stage. The return on the labor invested would be WAY too low.

So….yes….it is just a couple of pieces of sheet metal….that represents significant effort figuring out exactly where it should be punched, rolled and cut!

Hope that helps provide a little more insight behind what the wizard is doing behind the curtain!

Rand :)

What is the total weight with the 640ml mug?

Rand, thanks for the info. I get it.

Good catch….sorry for not providing this earlier.

The 640ml Fissure cone is 40gm for both pieces
The 900ml Fissure cone is 43gm for both pieces

As to complete system weights…..I use the GramCracker esbit stand at 7gm….lighter and more efficient than alcohol. As to the pot weights, they differ depending on whether you want a frying pan lid, non-stick coating, stacking set, etc. However, the ECA264 640ml pot is 98 gm. Various other weights can be found on the web site.

Rand

I'll jump in and agree on the difficulty of making stacked cones. I made my first cone screen before I ever knew what a Caldera was. They are an excellent design at conserving heat (and consequently fuel). I tried to make a split stack size but wanted to stay with the MSR Titan (I like the pour spout and tight fitting lid) and it is simply too short for the sections to nest(though a shorter fatter pot works better for heat absorption). Even single cones are much more labor intensive than vertical wall windscreens but worth the work no matter what type of alcohol stove you use because they conserve heat so well.

I am remaking mine again with some improvements and will make a detailed post for those who would like to add one to their existing stove set up.