Second stove choices…

Make a cat stove from a can of tuna or cat food. It burns cheap alcohol. It only takes about 15 minutes to make. A paper hole punch is the only tool needed. Its a good introduction to alcohol stoves. Your son will think its cool to make your own stove.

If you're already fooling with canisters, though, it may just be easiest to get a second cheap/not light canister burner. Just depends on what your goals are.

Philip,

Ben has it right. Make your own and involve your son in the process.

Cut the bottom of an aluminum beer bottle and punch some holes around the upper edge using a common paper hole punch. Use the lid from any canned foodstuff, removed with a safety (side cutting) style can opener, as your priming pan. After the stove warms up the top of the stove is the cook pot support / stand.

The one below is a little more involved but works pretty much the same. The inner ring is from the same style bottle as the one above. The outer can is a cut down Vienna sausage can. In-between the two are 4 layers of folded into and onto itself of fiberglass cloth that acts as a wick for the fuel.

Make your own windscreen out of aluminum flashing and you are good to go. It also helps if you use a reflective surface under your stove for efficiency.

"Or I could just save up and get one of each… I may have been bitten by the stove bug…"

Too Late! You're Bitten! Welcome to my world. ;-)

Party On,

Newton

I think maybe you actually want 3 stoves. Make the cat food can stove for UL backpacking, that's darn near free- the cost of a can of cat food and then punch some holes in it. For car camping, I personally would never choose to limit myself to an alcohol stove, however. For that, I'd bring a white gas stove- in my case, my MSR Dragonfly. It's big enough to hold a good sized pot, it has simmer capability, it's 4-season, and it's fast. A Dragonfly will boil a couple cups of water in under 2 minutes, an alcohol stove is more like 7 minutes. For car camping I never see any reason to go UL unless the UL gear happens to be better and while the alcohol stove is 100% functional it can't simmer and it's slow to boil and it's also not well suited for actual cooking. The Dragonfly and other white gas stoves are better for actual cooking. If I had to pick a single compromise stove it would be a canister stove like the Pocket Rocket. It's light enough to be UL but has the features I want for being able to boil quickly, simmer, etc. but they aren't as stable as a white gas stove. You can save money by checking on the gear swap here and also on ebay for your stove…and that way if you don't like it you can just re-sell it for the same amount you have in it.

For car camping get yourself an "Origo" 1500 alcohol stove single burner. They are made for watercraft but work very well on dry land. I use one and also have a two burner. They are expensive but worth every penny/dollar. Did I mention that they are quiet? :)

Phil,

The VERY best alcohol (or wood or ESBIT) stove I've found is Trail Designs' Caldera Cone line of stoves.

I have a "Sidewinder" stove of sheet titanium so I can use the "Inferno" optional wood burning insert.

Caldera Cones come in less expensive aluminum for using alcohol or ESBIT only.
Their efficiency is amazing as the cone is not only funneling heat to the mating pot but it's an excellent windscreen.

Just use SEARCH here on BPL for Caldera Cones and you will find many testamonials for it.

P.S. I need to add that Trail Designs includes their own alcohol burner which they, after many attempts, have develped to be efficient at all altitudes which backpackers commonly travel. That cannot be said for all alky stoves, only some of them.

Also, note that you will not be allowed to use home made alcohol stoves on scouting trips. The BSA does not allow its members to use home made alchy stoves. Store-bought ones are in a grey area, but I don’t know how much you want to rock the boat on that one.

So, a canister stove of some sort may be your best bet if you want to use it on both personal and scouting trips.

Just an heads-up.

Agreed on the BSA issue – I've got a sub 3oz canister stove that I like so for scouting that may be my best choice.

So I think the plan is to build an alcohol stove for when we backpack together and I don't have to worry about BSA rules….

And pick up some sort of one burner addition for car camping – the little coleman's seem to be the most cost effective dual fuel options – and still portable.

Probably the best would be a dual burner propane model but even for car camping I try to keep the volume as low as possible and those bigger stoves don't fit on my small camping table and take up limited room in my Civic Hybrid (intentional choice I might add – the small trunk due to the hybrid battery pack keeps us at least somewhat focused on what we are bringing).

For "second stoves" on Scouting events, my wife and I (both ASM's) go one of two ways:

–a small, fast stove used for our personal coffee in the AM, etc…, or
–a giant, badass, high BTU stove as part of the adult leader kitchen.

Your son won't need a second stove, because he's supposed to be cooking over with his patrol, and maybe with the ubiquitous, effective Coleman 2-burner. You will either be hunched over your own rig or, if your fellow adult leaders can Walk the Walk your boys do, you'll be cooking in an adult Patrol and will have some need for a larger stove/more burners. For those purposes, we use either my 50-year old Coleman white gas 2-burner or a monstrous dual 30k BTU beast that runs off a 3-gallon propane tank and will grill up a pound of bacon on the cast iron griddle, jiffy quick. Next, hash browns made from actual potatoes. :)

How about making a wood stove?

Become Hiker Jim's intern and get one of every stove ever made…

;-)

I love stoves too, and for solo use only use my Trail Designs systems. Look for my name here for a bunch of them.

http://tinyurl.com/9eb6jfr

There are all kinds of two burner propane stoves available and they work great for car camping. I bought one of the Camp Chef stoves that REI had on sale early this summer for $35. We used it for a ten day car camping trip up the coast of Washington and Vancover Island. It was so much better than my old Coleman white gas two burner— easier to set up and light, no liquid fuel to spill and no pumping. One with an igniter would be nice, but a long BBQ style lighter worked fine.

Car camping is an opportunity to do some more complex cooking than when hiking, using larger pots, frypans and long simmering times. Making a big pile of dirty dishes means more hot water too. We have done minimalist car camping and just used a hiking canister stove, but the breakfast menu was hiking style: instant oatmeal and coffee.

The really sexy car camping stoves are those folding propane Coleman rigs with griddle and grill inserts and legs—- and a $200 price tag.

Other than a canister stove my alternatives for hiking stoves are alcohol and Esbit. The Caldera Cone stoves work very well for alcohol and I strongly recommend them. I have a Brasslite alcohol stove with a DIY windscreen, but I rarely use it— the canister stove has spoiled me.

For my lightest and most compact stove, I have an Esbit Ti wing stove and an aluminum flashing windscreen. I like it for a warm drink or soup on day hikes. I plan to make some hardware cloth pot supports to experiment with some DIY Esbit setups.

So, to answer your question, I would get a big propane rig for car camping and get a Caldera Cone for UL an hiking alternative.

For a classic bomber liquid fuel stove get a Svea 123 or Swiss Army stove. For a science lesson and a quiet easy way to efficiently do FBC, do try a Caldera Cone. It's what pushed me over from cannisters to alcohol, and, while it's now not my only alcohol stove, it's the best at what it does.

butane, cheap, easy, reliable, good for car camping, light enough for backpacking, safer than alcohol around kids IMO, and easier to adjust

and best of all its under 10 smackaroos

http://dx.com/p/ultra-mini-portable-outdoor-metal-gas-stove-with-a-case-2-ag3-52063

or this one … which is also reviewed at … http://sectionhiker.com/ultralight-and-inexpensive-backpacking-canister-camp-stove/

http://dx.com/p/outdoor-portable-ultra-mini-stainless-steel-gas-stove-with-a-case-2-ag3-46371

honestly a second stove is just that IMO … get something easy to use, basic, light and CHEAP

I like my cat can stove. It started as an experiment and has become my primary stove. The canister stove stays at home now.

My cookpot is the Fire Maple kettle ($25). It with the stove, windshield, Bic, camp towel is 8.5 oz which is on the heavy side for the ultra-light crowd but I'm not going to stress over it. Everything fits into the kettle except the yellow HEET bottle.

http://firemaple.en.ec21.com/Portable_Coffee_Kettle_Tea_Kettle–1246054_1341176.html

I typically just buy and carry a HEET bottle because I'm lazy and it pours right into the stove without another measuring device. I use just about an ounce (liq. volume) per 19-20oz. boil which gives me twelve boils per bottle of HEET. I like my Mountain House meals a little wet and I tend to use three boils per day maximum (two meals, one coffee).

The fuel is about 0.8oz per boil and the HEET bottle itself is only 1.1oz so the weight starts off around 11oz. and dwindles from there. The stove boils my 19-20oz of water in < 6 minutes.

It is dirt simple with absolutely nothing to go wrong. The kettle is easy to pour without burning my fingers and the lid is large enough to easily fill. The kettle is short and stout which keeps the center of gravity low. For just boiling water this is my favorite set-up.

Summary of Weight:

Kettle + Stove + Windshield + towel + Bic: 8.6 oz.
Empty HEET bottle: 1.1 oz.
McDonalds Coffee cup: 1 oz.
Long Orange Plastic Spoon: .4 oz.

Weight per boil: 0.85 oz. x 3 per day = 2.55 oz per day.

Thanks for the input and ideas – lots of good ones.

Out of curiosity I checked out the Vargo Triad XE at REI when I was there over the weekend and was, well, not sold on it. Neat design but the rivets for the pot supports were loose and they were consequently not at all stable. It's hard not to get either a less expensive Trangia or make one.

I sort of like the Svea 123 – certainly from an aesthetic perspective it is a cool design…

Yep the Svea 123 is a classic and that makes it cool, but remember that the little bugger is noisy.

Quiet operation is a big part of the appeal of Alcohol stoves – at least to me. I'm a Trangia bigot personally, even though the burner is brass.

Here is my setup – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHYLXp562-Y