New Alcohol Stove

[Jim Wood]

In March of last year, I developed a new alcohol stove that I think was (and still is) unique. Called the SUPER CAT, it is extraordinarily simple, yet is one of the hottest burning alcohol stoves I’ve seen.

I have decided at this point (January, 2005) to release the design into the public domain. If you’re interested, you can find more information and build instructions at: http://timberwolf.us/supercat

Jim Wood.

[Jeremy Best]

Jim, The super cat looks really good. I will have to build and test it soon. With that I will keep you posted.
Jeremy

[Douglas Frick]

I built this stove yesterday. It reminds me of Fuzzy’s Lil’ Stove, but simpler and more stable (because it’s shorter). It’s also superior in that removing the pan while the Fuzzy Stove is lit may cause the stove to burn up (mine did), whereas this stove won’t burn up because it pulls air in through the holes when uncovered (like a Robinson Cat Stove without the jacket). This stove only holds 1oz of fuel, limiting the amount of water you can boil. (I know, use a bigger can.)

Instead of using an ice pick to make the holes, I used a standard hole punch, and since I had slightly larger holes (1/4″ instead of 3/16″) I made fewer of them (8 / 12). This seemed to work fine, since the flame came out without excessive pressure and didn’t burn yellow.

Burn time for my standard setup (500ml water, 30ml denatured alcohol, aluminum pot, windscreen) was boil at 5:00, full rolling boil at 6:00, flame out at 7:00 (including the 0:30 warm-up period). This is about 0:30 more than my Guiness/Pepsi and Pepsi/Heine stoves, and is certainly reasonable. More, smaller holes would probably make the stove burn hotter, so the slower performance may well be my fault. Next time I pick up a can of cat food I’ll follow the instructions more closely.

Thanks for posting the design! This is certainly easy to make.

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