Alcohol stove info needed

[Darwin Roos]

I'm considering getting an alcohol stove for one person on multiple week backpacking trips.
These are the stoves I'm considering:

-Etowah II Stove Kit
http://www.etowahoutfittersultralightbackpackinggear.com/Alcoholstoves.html

-PackaFeather FeatherFire
http://www.packafeather.com/stove.html

-PackaFeather XL Stove
http://www.packafeather.com/xlstove.html

Which of these do you think would be best?

Darwin
[email protected]

[Gregory Love]

you may just want to make your own it only takes 15 min.
http://zenstoves.net/Stoves.htm

[Denis Hazlewood]

Having used several commercial stoves: Vargo, Minibull, Brasslite, etc., and a dozen or more that I made, I have found that the stove isn't the most important item in your kitchen kit. The wind screen is probably the most important thing to make an alcohol stove work. I would suggest the Trail Designs, Caldera Cone. It solves a whole lot of problems. Try looking at Antigravity Gear or the Titanium Goat.

[Richard Matthews]

Denis is correct. Windscreen is more important than stove.

Also the match of stove and pot is important. Wide pots generally are better. A narrow pot needs a very narrow stove.

The Caldera Cone is very, very good.

[Rog Tallbloke]

The packafeather design looks very interesting. I'd like to know how it works. If you hike in a lot of different temperatures throughout the year, it may be a good option. I find that the stove I have for winter use can be too vigorous in summer.

It depends on how much you like experimenting. Getting to know how alcohol stoves perform is all part of getting satisfactory performance/efficiency out of them. Plenty of threads on here to read all about that… :-)

[Denis Hazlewood]

Roger,
What's a Pack feather?

[Rog Tallbloke]

http://www.packafeather.com/stove.html

[Denis Hazlewood]

I didn't recognize the name. I've had one for 2 years but never used it. If one were to lenghten the cable on the XL version it might work with the Caldera Cone. I don't have a tool that will work on such small cable. I wonder if one might special order a "long cable" version. Also I need to see if the Packfeather is the right height for the Caldera Cone, as pot/stove relationship is also important.

[Frank Deland]

I prefer esbit over alcohol and the Caldera Cone is the most efficient windscreen/chimney I have ever used. For example a typical dinner for me requires boiling 3 cups of water for soup, then 2 cups for main course. Using the cone and one esbit tablet those five cups of water are boiled with the food having to cool down before I can eat it. I assume the cone would work with similar effeciency for alcohol.

http://www.howardjohnson.name/Backpacking/Stove/Stoves.html

[Rog Tallbloke]

Nice. Check it over and tell me how it works. If you get a long cable version, I'll buy that one off you.

[Denis Hazlewood]

Roger,
This got me thinking. I had bought the Packfeather Stove a year or more ago and, other than unpacking it and admiring the design, I hadn't looked at it since. So… I dug it out and also got out my Caldera Cone, with its stove, and an Evernew 0.9L Titanium pot. Here is what I found out: Though the Packfeather stove is about 5/8" taller than the Caldera stove it does work with the Caldera Cone, at least for the Evernew 0.9L version. Here are a few photos of the rig.

1. Packfeather Stove Kit as received.

2. Packfeather Stove kit spread out.

3. Packfeather Stove with legs/pot stand deployed.

4. Packfeather Stove with Snuffer.

5. Packfeather Stove with Reflector.

6. Packfeather Stove side view.

7. Packfeather Stove draft adjustment mechanism.

8. Packfeather Stove kit with Evernew 0.9L titanium pot.

9. Packfeather Stove air intake open.

10. Packfeather Stove air intake 1/2 open.

11. Packfeather Stove air intake closed.

12. Caldera Cone/Packfeather Stove height difference = 5/8".

13. Caldera Cone modification for Packfeather control knob.

14. Caldera Cone with Packfeather Stove and Evernew 0.9L pot.

The Evernew 0.9L pot sits on the Packfeather Stove pot stand and lifts the pot about 1/16" off the Caldera Cone. I think it would work just fine. The Packfeather XL Stove, which doesn't have legs, might work even better and eliminate the weight of the stove legs/pot stand.

[Greg Mihalik]

I cut about an inch from the bottom a Cone (don't ask) and then watched the flame from a standard TD stove. It was very unstable and very sooty. I did this at night in order to see the flame patterns.

With the pot bottom closer to the stove, the alcohol boiled and turned into a 'run away' inferno. I was quite pleased I had decided to run this test outside on a concrete pad.

The Packafeather reflector could minimize the overheating.

I suggest caution and close observation.

[Rog Tallbloke]

Dennis, many thanks for the excellent photos. It's given me a clearer idea of how the stove works, although I've never had the chance to play with a caldera cone or TD stove.

[Author]

Posts