Solid Fuel Stove Techniques

[Bob Gross]

"12 pack of the Bleuet"

Those are the pink cubes in the blue box, I think.

Pretty soon we will have to run down to the store for a 12-pack of Bleuet and a 12-pack of Bud.

–B.G.–

[John Donewar]

Bob you're up way early this morning or are you just up way late? LOL

"Pretty soon we will have to run down to the store for a 12-pack of Bleuet and a 12-pack of Bud".

You've got an Academy that sells "Bud"? Now if we could just get them to stock dehydrated Yak dung we'd be in business. ;-)

Party On,

Newton

[Bob Gross]

"You've got an Academy that sells "Bud"?"

I've never heard of that store in Northern California.

"Now if we could just get them to stock dehydrated Yak dung we'd be in business."

Nahh, you have to get the fresh stuff and dehydrate it yourself.

Seriously, though, sun-dried yak patties are a standard fuel in Nepal. If it is burned in a well-designed stove, you would never smell anything odd.

–B.G.–

[Greg F]

http://zenstoves.net/StoveChoices.htm

Zen stoves has a great graph of starting weight of a stove vs time. Esbit is meaurably lighter for tips around a week in length. So for a week long trip you can save between 2 and 4 ounces. Which doesnt sound like much but we pay about $15 per ounce or more to lighten our load in other places.

[M B]

One big advantage of esbit is you can mail it , you cant mail alcohol or cannisters. Important for people doing food/fuel drops or resupply on long hikes.

My alcohol setup uses as little alcohol, as would esbit by wt. Max savings is the wt of a fuel bottle, which for a short hike would be 0.6 oz .

Small price to pay for not dealing with a sticky yucky pot. Much easier to light too. Dont need to fiddle with small crusty residues and save for later.

You can make all kind of comparisons that mean nothing. Efficiency all depends on wind screen and stove/pot/windscreen setup. It is easy (and common) when comparing to be more optimized for one fuel, or stove, but not another being evaluated.

[Jon Fong]

A good Esbit cooking system will boil 3 cups of water using a 14 gram block of Esbit. An outstanding System will boil 4 cups of water (very rare). A good alcohol system will boil 2 cups of water using 15 ml.

(15 ml)*(.78 s.g.) = 11.7 grams of alcohol to boil 2 cups

11.7 grams (3 cups/ 2cups) = 17.55 grams of alcohol to boil 3 cups of water

14 grams of Esbit / 17.55 grams of alcohol = 0.7977 Therefore Esbit wins

I hope this makes sense. My 2 cents – Jon

[Steve C]

You can mail canisters, I have done it (legally). The box must be labeled so that it is ground only transport. Don't know about alcohol, I haven't had to send any yet! Sorry for the thread drift, wanted to get the record straight.

[Ken Thompson]

You can mail alcohol also…

http://www.e-nrg.com/shipping-faq/

Hazardous flammable materials (HAZMAT) require special handling, so please remember that your delivery will take just a little longer than normal deliveries.

In accordance with regulations, all deliveries must be via ground only (air transport is not permitted).

[John Donewar]

@ Bob and

@ Jon and

Thanks to Brian Green

I've found a reason for me personally to make the switch and scratched my MYOG itch at the same time.

Thanks to the generosity of Brian Green posting a link to a pdf of a template for this stove on his backpacking blog I had an easy job of constructing this stove.

I used common aluminum flashing for the construction of this trial run. Bob may have been right about my scale needing to show milligrams because it couldn't make up its mind whether to show 1 or 2 grams on the display. I erred on the side of caution and snapped the picture while it was showing 2 grams. ;-)

I figure it this way. If the number of boils that I can achieve per ounce of fuel is about equal I will have saved weight by reducing my "stove" weight by 9 grams as compared to my Mini Fancee Feest clone.

Take as a given for a second that the windscreen used with my alcohol stove can be used with the MYOG Esbit Stove and keeps that weight as "even".

My next challenge is to construct a pot stand that is less than or equal to 9 grams and keeps the cook pot the correct height above the stove.

Can anyone clue me in on what the distance from the burning Esbit/Bleuet tablet should be using this kind of stove?

Party On,

Newton

Edited to repair broken link and to add this hint. When printing out the pdf template un-check the box that says fit to page or your template will be too small.

Newton

[Andrew Weldon]

Wow, that's some exceptionally clean folding. Did you do it in the steps Brian Green wrote, or did you find a better way?

I've made 3 now (backups), and while it's a piece of cake, it's never really gorgeous like that.

Love the tray though. I'm getting 8-9m boils consistently and up to 15m usable burn, 18ish minutes total.

[John Donewar]

Andrew,

Thanks.

Finding the proper width straightedges and some rather strong and long thumbnails helped to produce the bends. The creases got sharpened up with common pliers. The edges got cleaned up with a "fine" file.

How high do you keep your cook pot above your stove's top and the burning fuel tab?

Thanks in advance.

Party On,

Newton

Edited to add some new found information.

After viewing this video…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERtwfJPNGhY&feature=youtu.be

…where Hiram is testing out the Flat Cat Gear Epicurean stove using Esbit tabs I gathered this info on the height. The Epicurean base is a flat cup style burner that sits directly on the "surface" supporting the stove. Hiram states that the pot stand should place the cook pot 1.8" above the same surface supporting the stove. This measurement is mentioned at 1 minute and 14 seconds into the video.

The portion of this tray style stove that are best described as the legs add another .375" of height to this equation. So if I'm doing my math correctly my pot support needs to support the cook pot 2.175" above the same surface that supports the stove. For those of us who are still into fractions that is just a little less than 2 3/16".

Now I need to fabricate a combination windscreen and pot support for my 1 cup generic cook pot that I purchased from Zelph's. The goal is to have it weigh less than 18 grams. My current windscreen weighs 9 grams and this tray type stove weighs 9 grams less than my alcohol stove, hence the figure of less than 18 grams.

Wish me luck. ;-)

Newton

[Brian Green]

Can I first say that I'm blown away to see others making my little Esbit tray stoves and using them. I created it as part of a journey that I was on to "rediscover" the beauty of solid fuel – a.k.a no other Esbit stoves were working for me. I gave Jon Fong permission to post my template on his site but didn't know that people were actually making them.

I'll check the exact height that I have my pot at above the stove when I use it, typically that's in combination with my Flat Cat Snow Leopard system so Jon could probably provide the exact heights off the top of his head – I'll need to measure. I've made these using titanium foil, aluminum flashing, and old Bud Light bottles and all have functioned well for me.

if you have suggestions for improvements feel free to let me know!

[Kent C.]

Newton,

I found this graph at the following site:

http://thru-hiker.com/articles/esbit_stove_height.php

edit for spelling

[John Donewar]

@ Brian,

"Can I first say that I'm blown away to see others making my little Esbit tray stoves and using them. I created it as part of a journey that I was on to "rediscover" the beauty of solid fuel – a.k.a no other Esbit stoves were working for me".

Until this part of my "journey" I had never used a solid fuel stove fueled by Esbit or Bleuet fuel tablets. Thanks for blazing the trail with your sharing of the template.

@ Kent,

Thank you so much for that graphic table of cook pot heights. I seems that I was close in my "guesstimation" of the distance by looking at the third green bar in the graph. The second green bar seems pretty close to the distance Hiram quoted. It also seems just a touch quicker by about 27 seconds. Naturally the first bar in the graph is the quickest boil time.

Now I have another question. Hiram did a video using a Flat Cat Gear Epicurean Classic Stove in simmer mode. He never achieved a boil but there was no soot on the pot after the burn!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0AKSDzOMrs&feature=youtu.be

Now I'm wondering about how much air to allow in to the stove and a combination which of the three first heights together will give the cleanest and most efficient burn.

A clean cook pot is a happy cook pot and hiker! L O L

Party On,

Newton

[Andrew Weldon]

I'm right around 1.25" from the top of a new esbit tab to the bottom of my pot.

I've noticed that if you clean off a pot, my first 2-3 burns actually have virtually zero soot/goop on the pot, but it accumulates after a while.

Here's a video of my system boiling 2c of water

[John Donewar]

Andrew,

Thanks a lot for that info. ;-)

Party On,

Newton

[John Donewar]

"Now I need to fabricate a combination windscreen and pot support for my 1 cup generic cook pot that I purchased from Zelph's. The goal is to have it weigh less than 18 grams. My current windscreen weighs 9 grams and this tray type stove weighs 9 grams less than my alcohol stove, hence the figure of less than 18 grams".

My first attempt at combining the pot support and windscreen on my 1 cup cook pot looked great but failed miserably. There weren't enough holes in either the top or the bottom and the Bleuet solid fuel tab extinguished itself.

I used a similar design like the one in the picture below.

No my cook pot isn't a kettle. I'm having computer problems and having to use whatever illustrations I can gather up. LOL

I had 1/4" draft holes 1 inch apart on the bottom and 1/4" exhaust holes every 1/2" on the top. The diameter of the combo is 2 7/8". the total weight of the combo unit was 8 grams in the original configuration. I'm sure that it weighs less with all of the extra holes. See below.

After the initial flame out I added an additional 1/4" hole in-between the draft holes and a second row of staggered 1/4" exhaust holes below the existing holes. The next test run was a success. The combo windscreen / pot stand works and breathes well. I didn't time the boil as I was looking for functionality first.

I used my Esbit/Bleuet tray type stove over a reflective surface inside of the combo stand / screen. The tablet to cook pot air gap was 1 1/4". I used a can with 1 cup of water for testing. There was some sooting, probably due to the flameout failure more than the type of fuel.

I'm considering reconstructing my combo unit out of Titanium because of the high heat and small diameter. I am a little concerned that it may start to fail because of the high heat so close to the aluminum with so many 1/4" holes.

Party On,

Newton

[michael levi]

So should the base where the esbit rests, to the bottom of the cook pot measure 1.25 inches?

[Alpo Kuusisto]

How about fire dragon fuel?

[John Donewar]

Michael,

I see your point.

I took my cue from Andrew's post. "I'm right around 1.25" from the top of a new esbit tab to the bottom of my pot".

Looking at the graphic table that Kent posted the measurements are equal but the difference is that in the table the height of the cook pot is measured from the Height Above Esbit Platform.

It seems to be an error on my part thinking that the two quoted distances were in total agreement from starting to ending points. But looking back at the table the only real difference would be 6 seconds of elapsed time to boil.

I'm going to stick with the measurement from the top of the fresh tablet because of what Andrew said later in his same post on the measurement.

"I've noticed that if you clean off a pot, my first 2-3 burns actually have virtually zero soot/goop on the pot, but it accumulates after a while".

Party On,

Newton

[John Donewar]

If it lives up to its press and becomes available locally it would be worth a try.

I wonder how competitively priced it would be with Esbit and Bleuet.

I googled it and from what I gather it is still being developed for production, sale and patent.

Party On,

Newton

[michael levi]

Thanks for all that information. I will keep in mind that the distance from the top of a fresh esbit needs to be 1.25 inches.

[John Donewar]

OK so now the formally defunct power supply in my "hot rod" PC has been replaced and I am once again back up to speed on my home PC. ;-)

Here are some pictures and info to go along with this solid fuel stove experiment of mine.

This is how my 1 cup generic cook pot sits atop my combination windscreen and cook pot support.

There are 35 1/4" holes in the top of now 7 gram "combo" and a 36th hole where the eyelet permanently joins the top end together.

On the bottom there are 17 1/4" holes and an eighteenth where the other eyelet joins the bottom ends together. You may notice the patina on the "combo" that resembles tarnished copper. This is a color change that takes place in the protective coating that is applied by the flashing manufacturer.

Down inside of the combo is my MYOG clone of Brian Greens Esbit tray stove.

Once the water was boiling I could remove the cook pot and BLOW OUT the flame. The caps are there to emphasize that it takes some force to blow out a burning tablet.

Here is the reflective ring that I plan to use in place under the combo with the stove inside and the cook pot on top.

This is the same ring that I use with my mini fancee feest clone.

When I was doing my test burns I simulated windy conditions using a 20" box fan on all 3 different speeds. The only real difference that I noticed was that at the highest speed the combo actually began to act and look like a stove with flames licking out of the top exhaust holes.

Question:

Can any of you suggest a way to carry the "saved" leftover tablet? Zip lock? Vinyl pill caddy?

Boil times will be coming later with some pictures of the stove and combo unit in use.

Party On,

Newton

[Bob Gross]

"Can any of you suggest a way to carry the "saved" leftover tablet?"

Put it back into the original plastic bubble and foil packaging. It is for that reason why I carefully slit open the packaging in the first place.

Sometimes I have a half-used tablet when I finish dinner, and it gets saved this way for breakfast use. I seldom carry a half-used tablet to the next camp, but I could.

–B.G.–

[John Donewar]

Thanks Bob,

Do you just lay the foil packaging back over the tablets blister pack?

After reading your post I was thinking that a dedicated, small piece of aluminum foil folded over the edges might be beneficial to keep any "crumbs" from the tablet contained.

I was thinking along these same lines for the stove itself and maybe a tyvek or even cuben round bottom stuff sack for my cook pot if soot rears its ugly head.

I'll have to do some careful measuring but if I continue to use the "tray" stove two of the empty blister packs and one good rubber band might just hold the stove and any leftover fuel tablet.

I'm attempting to answer the challenge of getting my fuel, stove, lighter, pot stand and reflector to all nest together in my cook pot with the lid "snapped" into place.

BTW have you ever seen the 5.25 oz (net weight) size plastic jar of Zatarain's Prepared Horseradish. It's about 2 1/4" wide and 3 1/8" tall. It is shaped like a miniature mayonnaise jar. I know you've been collecting small jars and bottles for stove fuel. This one may hold about 6 or more fluid ounces of alcohol but that's only a "guesstimate" by eye. I'll have to finish the horseradish first to do the measuring. ;-)

But this shouldn't take to long for a "Louisiana Man".

Party On,

Newton

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