Alcohol stove help

Try the Fancy Feast Stove found on Andy Skurka’s site.

Zen Stoves will give you directions for as simple or as complex an alcohol stove as you want to make, including templates you can print out.

2nd for Zen Stoves.
Lots of stoves here: http://www.backpacking.net/makegear.html
My stove is a GO-TORCH STOVE using the bigger Arizona can and no stand – http://www.backpacking.net/makegear/gotorch-stove/index.html
The next one I play with will probably be a Super Cat – http://jwbasecamp.com/Articles/SuperCat/

acronym 6/22/2009 2:57 PM

I've got several different alcohol stoves. I actually like the cat can stove on Andy Skurka's site, so I'll second that recommendation. It's so freakin' simple to use. It's easy to fill, easy to light, and requires no stove stand. It's also pretty solid, more so in my opinion than a pepsi can stove.

Now, that being said, I've found the most efficient stoves to be the closed jet type alcohol stoves. I'll typically get more boils from them for a given number of ounces of alcohol, but you have to prime them and they're harder to fill. http://zenstoves.net/BasicPressureBurner.htm is a reference. On the stove he builds, he puts the jets on the outside of the rim. I put mine on the inside. It seems to concentrate the flame more which works well on smaller pots (like a snow peak cup or the like).

Also, if the jets are on the inside, one can extinguish the flames when one is done cooking (I use the lid of my pot) and save the alcohol. With a Skurka-type cat can stove, once you light it, that's pretty much it. The flame goes out when it runs out of alcohol.

I've generally found that alcohol stoves that use wicks don't work as well. YMMV

Were I you, I'd try the Skurka stove first. It's easy to make; Skurka has a video on YouTube that walks you through. I'm sure you have a cat loving friend who will toss a can your way for free. :) After that, maybe try a couple of simple pepsi can stoves and play with them a bit before deciding which alcohol stove to use long term. You might just wind up going with the Skurka stove since it's so danged simple and easy.

So many stoves claim to be ever so efficient. It's hard to know who to believe. I guess just find one that works for you, that is unless you want to spend hours and hours testing stoves to find out which ones are the most efficient under which conditions. There are a gazillion variables — yikes! It seems like a Sisyphean task to me. Like I say, find one that works for you.

HTH,

HJ