Caldera Cone Stove

Really neat!

I have one, but unfortunatly haven’t put it into action yet. It seems like a pretty sexy system.

I can attest to the excellent customer service provided by Rand @ Trail Designs. It stands in stark contrast to issues with another company.

Will and I have been working with Rand and Russ at Trail Designs on their Caldera Cone system. The Cone is very stable and supports the pot very well. It is also very wind-resistant.

The original burner had been optimised for extreme fuel efficiency, but that made it just a bit too slow to boil. in my opinion.

Rand and Russ have been working on ‘hotting up’ the burner which goes inside the Cone, and the new model I tested recently now has a much better speed. I think they are now upgrading the design of the Cone to support the faster burn rate, but you can achieve a similar effect by raising the bottom edge of the old design a wee bit off the ground, plus making sure there is plenty of exhaust gap around the top.

I am sure they would appreciate any feedback you guys could give them.

Cheers
Roger Caffin
Stoves Editor

I need to stop visiting this site. Everytime I take a look I find a link to some new piece of cool kit.

What can I say, I want one, I want one, I want one!!!!

Help, it’s costing me a fortune!

Ha! Tell me about it! Everyone who works here has gear coming out their EARS! Gotta say- I need a Caldera too- just to add it to me collection of 10 or so stoves!

Best of luck Scott!
Gear Addict Doug

Curious of your thougts on how well an Esbit tab would burn inside one of these caldera cones. Would the decreased oxygen cause an incomplete burn (i.e. even sootier?), or would it help regulate the flame height?

Caldera cone looks very nice.

What about a DIY?

BPL Ti rods for a lt. wt. frame, and then easily replaceable heavy duty Al foil wrapped around the “skeleton” of BPL Ti rods? Easy enough to fabricate and user adjustable for air-flow for different stove options (esbit tabs as one has already suggested, and a variety of Alc. stoves). sure the foil will need replacement from time to time, but that’s a simple matter.

will the cone shape made of the Ti rods with the foil adding to their strength (similar to the structural integrity achieved in an intact pylon structure) be strong enough to support a pot? when the rods get hot, the rods won’t be able to bend out due to the foil shell somewhat tightly wrapped around them, but they may still bend somewhat laterally. an additional circumferential rod located half-way up may prevent any bending. lastly, if they are still not strong enough when reinforced by the foil “skin” and additional circumferential rod, maybe sacrifice a spare Ti tarp stake or two to assist the rods in supporting the small Ti pot filled with water, or simply temporarily utilize the two tarp stakes at the time when the stove is being used. at least this approach has the virtue of some dual use.

is this another inane suggestion from “Bad Ideas R Us” (pj, President) ???

> What about a DIY?
> BPL Ti rods for a lt. wt. frame, and then easily replaceable heavy duty Al foil wrapped around the “skeleton” of BPL Ti rods?

Well, anyone is welcome to experiment, but … imho, the result would not be very reliable! Tghat’s the key thing about this Caldera cone concept: it really is reliable when it comes to supporting the pot.

Some of you may remember the modified MSR Whisperlite stove with the BPL Ti wire legs which Mike Martin made. Ryan took it on his SUL experiment – but lost two pots of water off it. I reckon I would have a LOT of trouble upsetting a pot which was on a Caldera Cone ** designed for that pot **

Cheers

>> Some of you may remember the modified MSR Whisperlite stove with the BPL Ti wire legs which Mike Martin made. Ryan took it on his SUL experiment – but lost two pots of water off it.

Ahh, but that’s only because Ryan wasn’t willing to stabilize the pot between his knees while melting snow. I tried to convince him that this would help warm the blood flow through the femoral arteries and make snowmelting a warm, cozy experience. But, he wasn’t buying it. ;-^)

All:

WOW! Thanks so much for all the great comments! As Roger said, we would love to hear any ideas or feedback you might have. In the mean time, let me comment on a few things from this thread.

1) BPL Involvement – Roger and Will have been HUGE in helping us refine and perfect the system. They really held our feet to the fire (pun intended) in optimizing the stove performance. We had been myopically driving toward the most fuel efficient stove performance at the cost of speed. With their help, we were able to find a sweet spot where the stove could still get over 90% of the efficiency we were shooting for with a tremendous reduction in boil time. Also, Will’s help in high altitude testing has been invaluable. As Roger mentioned, we are doing some additional tweaking on the lower venting configuration….and while important to optimize and fine tune….can be field configurable as described if needed to address altitude or other conditions.

2) Esbit – Yep! Have done quite a bit of testing using Esbit solutions. My personal test rig was a Snow Peak 600 using an Esbit….so I have a few meals under my belt with that setup :)

3) DIY – The 3 of us here at Trail Designs have all wallowed around in Zen Stoves and done our fair share of DIY stuff we found on the internet…..and encourage others to do the same. The Caldera System and our Vari-Vent windscreens are patent pending mostly to protect against commercial infringement. For example, we envisioned MSR taking the Vari-Vent idea, flooding the market with it and killing our little dream of doing a ultralight startup. With that said, our belief is we can make these products at a low enough cost and high enough quality that the majority of the folks will prefer to just buy it. Nevertheless, we understand the community and expect some number of the more inventive in the crowd to be pulling out their exacto knives and cutting into aluminum cookie sheets and whatnot. When you do, all we ask is that you let us know what you find out so we can keep enhancing the product! Finally on this subject, I would like to re-enforce Roger’s comment on home grown Caldera cones. The geometry involved to get the diameter of the top of a truncated cone to be the right size to snug up under the lip of your pot….while not rocket science….is a little trickier than the average DIY gear project. Further, we build these with some relatively tight tolerences to ensure that the pot will be securely supported. If that support is not secure, you run the risk of having a pot of boiling water falling on you. I would just caution folks to consider their adventures down this path carefully. It isn’t trivial.

4) Finally, I would just like to comment on the state of the union here at Trail Designs. If you looked at our product page, you will see that we offer primer pans, Classic Windscreens and Vari-Vent windscreens along with the Caldera. We are in full production on the windscreens and primer pans, are fully automated and are able to meet most any demand. The Caldera System, as you might have infered from this thread, is really just coming out of pre-production now. We are doing the final tweaks to the design and begining to investigate manufacturing techniques like water-jets, plasma cutters, laser cutters etc. in order to meet demand. In the interem, every Caldera cone is hand cut, punched, and formed. In addition, every Caldera cone must be designed for each individual pot/mug design. Consequently, our volume at the moment is very low….but we anticipate being able to fully roll it out in high volume before the end of the year….so stay tuned.

Thanks again for your interest….and please feel free to contact us with any ideas or suggestions you might have.

Rand :)

Hey Rand… do you think you’d even make a cone that works with a jumbo beer can? That’s my pot of choice as and it is… there are few commerical stands designed to work with it… my solutions have all been DIY… out of necessity.

Interesting thought! I will definately pass it by the elves down in the workshop….however I’m not optimistic you will be seeing one in your stocking at Christmas! :-) One of the reasons we focused on the titanium pots was that given the cost of developing tooling that the big boys make to produce the titanium pots, the chance that they were going to tweak the dimensions on them capriciously was very small. Consequently, we could lock in our cone dimensions….and likewise OUR tooling based on a somewhat stable OD and lip dimension. Beer cans….well…they’re disposable…and subject to the whim of marketing more so than a titanium backpacking pot/mug. Like I said, we’ll kick it around the board room, but I would start looking around for another stocking stuffer just to be safe!

Rand :-)

I just checked out the Caldera on the Traildesigns website. Really ingenious design. One question: How does one get at the handles to lift the pot off the stove? Also, wouldn’t the handles be pretty hot by boil time, assuming they are folded next to the pot body?
I know there’s a simple answer to this, but I’m missing it. Help!

Yep…..the answer is pretty simple….we cut a slot in the top of the cone to allow the handles to pass through. Or, in the case of the AGG pots, we cut a slot so you can get a gripper in there and grab the pot. The main “Caldera picture” doesn’t show that side. Look at the next picture down on the website and you will see a variety of different styles with their handles poking through….and the one on the far right is the AGG with the slot. (click on the picture to enlarge it.) That picture also shows you where the closure mechanism is located….right under the handle cutout.

Hope that helps!

Rand :-)

Rand,

I wonder if setting up a caldera for ‘jumbo beer cans’ might not best be achieved with a ‘generic beer-can cone’, sized just a barely large enough to fit around the can with some slop and a ‘mini-cone’ that fits the individual beer cans pots perfectly and then ‘connects’ to the top of the generic beer can cone.

That way, should the beer makers change designs, TD would only have to ‘retool’ a very small part + that would have the benefit of having the same generic cone for Fosters / Henie / whatever else cans (which would hopefully balance the production risks with production effeciency gains for the beer-can pot market).

(Edit – Actually, this could probably be done with the SP750 or Vargo Ti-Lite models, or maybe the SP600 but I suspect the SP600 cone would be a little too small… you could just make a set of connectors that could be ordered to use a henie pot or fosters pot with one of these cones that would really bump the production effeciency upwards)

(edit2 – though the SP600 cone might could have a fitting for using a 12oz? Henie Keg Can)

I honestly don’t know if that made any sense at all, but I can envision in my head and it makes sense to me…

If it doesn’t make sense, I can probably sketch something up…

Actually… I would not expect beer can dimensions to change any more than pot dimensions. They are pretty standard. I don’t think pop cans have changed in decades. That said… I don’t really expect to see a cone for a beer can. It was just an idea. Chances are… if you’re using a beer can… you’re not likely to use a stand that weighs more than your beer can… you’re more likely to be the type who would go with the lightest possible solution… like a small hardware cloth ring and a BPL Ti foil windscreen.

Joshua:

I understand your theory. Have a smaller nested cone on top of a bigger….more standardized cone. We have looked at that solution for other reasons (packability mainly) and have a hard time making it work because of the need to split the top cone for the handle or gripper cutout.

David:

Yep…there is the weight, cost, overhead, and the DIY notions that come with a beercan pot that are somewhat discordant with the current cone business model. With that said, at some point I do think it would be to our advantage to put together some sort of “kitchen” where the cone comes not only with its own stove but its own “pot”, lid, gripper, etc. The low overhead of the beercan would make it easy enough to bundle it in. But like I infered earlier in the esbit discussion….we have to draw the line somewhere so we can release “round 1” and not get bogged down with an ever increasing product matrix.

Thanks for all the input….keep them coming!

Rand :)

“We have looked at that solution for other reasons (packability mainly) and have a hard time making it work because of the need to split the top cone for the handle or gripper cutout.”

Ah, yeah and on a smaller cone the cutout is going to take away a lot of the strength of that little cone… yeah, unless you guys wanted to manufacture your own handle. It probably wouldn’t be worth it… also, there is the whole, ‘beer-pot users tend to be DIY’ers’…

I must say that, IMO, you guys definitely picked the correct pot to work with first. The AGG pot is great.

Rand: I’m wondering if one solution for different pot sizes would be to make one cone that is sized to the lowest common denominator and then simply have a ring that would sit on top with different sized center holes to accomodate different sized pots. When ordering, you could order the proper ring (or rings) for your pot (or pots). This is similar to the dual cone idea suggested above… but simpler. In order to maintain the strength of the cone, the disk would have to have a rim / lip of it’s own… so it would sit down inside the cone by 1/8″ or so… something like this (viewed from below):

The only issue with this would be… how to deal with the handles that many pots have. BTW… this ring could also have vents in it. It also would not work with a Heineken can as that can has a rim than is narrower than it’s body.

> The only issue with this would be… how to deal with the handles that many pots have.

That is definately one issue…but not the only one.

A second issue is that it erodes one of the main selling points of the system and one of the primary goals of our target audience….minimum weight. If the “base cone” were sized to the LARGEST common denominator, you end up asking a customer that has trimmed down to a Snow Peak 450 to carry the same weight cone required to accomidate an MSR .85 Kettle for example.

A third issue is that the distance from the bottom of the pot to the top of the stove ends up being somewhat critical for optimal performance. In order to address that with the insert concept, the insert would have to sit way down inside for the smallest cups. Look at the heigth difference between the Snow Peak Mini Solo and the 450 for example.

A fourth consideration, with the cone running closer to the pot, we are able to direct the hot gasses off the stove right by the sides of the pot providing better heat transfer. Further separation will reduce this effect somewhat. Probably not much….but it is a consideration.

….and then the handle issue you noted.

Please don’t think I’m trying to poo-poo your ideas….I love all the insights….please keep’em coming! It’s just that after living with this product for a couple of years, we’ve beat our heads against a lot of different scenarios. I’m sure we haven’t hit them all so like I said….keep firing away!

Rand :-)

> Please don’t think I’m trying to poo-poo your ideas

Oh no… not at all. It was just an idea. No biggie. I didn’t think about the height thing at all. I guess it just seems like it’s not ideal (from a manufacturing point of view) to have to design so many custom cones.

> it’s not ideal (from a manufacturing point of view) to have to design so many custom cones.

Agreed. However……while manufacturing is definately an issue (and I commented earlier on some mfg techniques we hope might mitigate this issue)….the bigger problem that so many custom cones creates is one of inventory.

Rand

Since I really like my Snowpeak Titanium 600 Mug, I sent an email to TD to see if, maybe, they’d have a SP600 Caldera model left. Luckily they did, and sent it out the next day.

It just showed up this morning, and I must say I am impressed not only by the product itself but also by the customer service I’ve gotten from Rand and the others at TD.

I figured I’d post some pics and comments about the kit. Sometime soon I’ll get a burn or two going and give you my impressions.

However, some initial impressions:

1) Very nicely finished.
2) Light (not weighed it yet, but it’s light)
3) Dead simple to assemble.

Anyhow, enjoy the pics.

Photos and Comments

At the risk of straying off-topic, I’d like to replace an Evernew Ti 900 ml pot with an UL pot such as a beercan. But alas my appetite is far from UL, and so for dinner I need a pot in the 900 to 1000 ml (31 to 34 oz) range. Has anyone found a pot of this size made out of the same gauge aluminum used in soda and beer cans? I’m hoping it would weigh around 1 oz.