Anyone here use a Ghillie Kettle?

[Gordon Smith]

I stumbled across this interesting item while roaming through cyber space: The Ghillie Kettle. It's a chimney-shaped kettle with an integrated wood stove at the bottom. The smoke and heat rise right through the center of it. Does anyone here use one of these? What does this thing weigh?

[Dean F.]

Ghillie Kettle, Kelly Kettle, Thermette, Benghazi Boiler, etc. Many names for the same basic thing. (As a matter of fact, I think that products with several different trade names are all actually made by the same contractor in the UK.) They do the job well- the job being boiling water. Yes, they are well known, but being made of thick aluminum or copper most are too heavy for the tastes of most people here.

However…

Someone here was working on making a UL version a little while ago, with aluminum walls not much thicker than a soda can. There's a thread about his attempts to spin the aluminum.

EDIT– Yeah, here it is:

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=7456

[Worth Donaldson]

I believe mine is 2.5 pints and weighs 1 lb 4.2 oz. It boils the water about as fast as white gas and incinerates everything to ash. All you really need to burn is tender. However, it is only good for boiling water. It is not really a weight saver on short trips. It only failed me once and that was during an extremely wet trip into muskeg and black spruce country. Nothing was dry, not even the center of the dead standing spruce.

[Dean F.]

Oh, don't get me wrong- I used the larger Kelly Kettle on a kayaking trip in Alaska a couple of years ago and it worked MARVELOUSLY. (Oddly, I just mentioned that trip in another post…)

Since we were in kayaks I wasn't really worried about the weight. And as fate would have it my buddies lost their brand-new JetBoils when one of them took a swim, and the Kelly Kettle fed all four of us for the whole 10-day trip. The fuel was twigs and pine cones- nothing that couldn't be broken by hand- and it burned pretty completely. Except for the weight I couldn't be happier with it, and it is now part of my standard expedition kayaking kit.

It just pretty heavy for backpacking.

[John Roan]

google tri ti inferno

[Gordon Smith]

>>google tri ti inferno<<

The Inferno is more closely related to the Bushbuddy. The Ghillie Kettle burns wood but that is where the similarity ends. It is not a wood gas design. One advantage of the kettle might be that the soot would be confined to the center "chimney", making it less messy to use. I don't own one so that's purely speculation.

G

[Dean F.]

>> google tri tr inferno

So NOT what we are talking about.

I do have one, though, and I think it is an excellent product. I will grant that if Gordon is looking for a lightweight wood-burning water-boiler he could do a lot worse. Or, why not get a BushBuddy?

The nice characteristic of a Ghillie Kettle- or whatever you call it- is that it is one piece (well, two), durable, and mindless to use. I hadn't thought of the cleanliness of a chimney (compared to the pot for a Bushbuddy, which gets sooty on the outside), but I suppose it is a factor. Though, to pack it smaller I have to flip my firepan so it fits inside the bottom of the kettle, thus exposing the sooty inside of the firepan…

All commercial versions of which I am aware are far too heavy, though.

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