Weber cubes

How much do they weigh to get 2 cups (or whatever) of water boiling, compared to others?

I gave the Weber fire starters a try last night, after reading the Esbit/alcohol thread. The "tablet" weighed 0.4 oz., and it was easy to light. I used a wind screen, although there was only a minimal breeze. 2 cups of 50* F water boiled in about 6 minutes, and the tab burned for a total of 9 minutes. However, there was an immense amount of black smoke throughout the burn. My pot was caked thick with the tar-like residue. I won't ever use those tablets to boil water again!

Gary,

Thanks for the heads up on the soot levels. I was planing on trying the weber cubes next week and you just saved me a some scrubbing.

Regards,
John

Yes, John. When you consider the additional cost in SOS pads, they're not all that cheap. Weber's instructions say to not do any grilling of food until the tab is completely burned. Man, they're not kidding. I can't guess at the chemistry involved, but there must be all sorts of aldehydes, ketones, and other bad things in those fire starters. It makes me want to burn only Everclear now…

Happy Thanksgiving!

Does esbit residue come off easily? Can I rub it off in the dirt? Is that no longer LNT?

Esbit does rub off in the dirt. It is not LNT, but I do it. I just do it in a frequently used spot w/packed dirt and call it "ok". I wouldn't do it next to water though.

or you can just pour a little water on it and it comes off fairly easy. I can get two near-boils out of one .5 ounce cube. If you don't don't need to boil, that's a pretty light fuel option. Also like the fact you can't spill it. This is Esbit I'm talking about; not used Weber cubes due to negative comments I've read in the past.

Warren, what size and material is your pot? You say 2 near boils with one cube? we talking 4 cups of water?

I did a video recently in which I tried to get 4 cups of water to boil on a single 0.5 oz Esbit cube. I used 4 cups of cold water straight out of the tap in my 1.3L Evernew UL cook pot and the Gram Cracker stove with my Sidewinder Caldera Cone system. I took it all outside to mimic actual conditions.

In the end, the water did not come to a boil, but it was steaming and there was a few tiny bubble formed along the bottom and edges. If the water were filtered before hand, this would have been hot enough for coffee, oatmeal, or whatever. But, in the end, I would plan up to 2 of the cubes for a full boil with 4 cups of cold mountain spring water just to be safe.

As far as soot, I have found that with the Sidewinder system I seem to get more soot with Esbit than I do when using my smaller Esbit set-up in which I use a Heine pot. Not sure why this is… then again, maybe the extra soot is a mixture of wood burning soot and Esbit… I dunno…

Anyway, here is the video if anyone is interested:

aluminum. Doing two cups at a time.

Dennis,

In the field, I just have a strong small plastic bag that I wrap around my pot for storing the pot in my pack so that the gunk on the bottom of the pot does not soil my gear.

Scrapping with a rock can remove some of the heavy build up, but other than that, I don't bother to try to remove it til I get home because it will never be clean enough to put the pot back into my pack without the plastic bag around it.

When I get home, I just use some toxic spray on oven cleaner.

Spray it on and let it foam up….walk away for about 15 minutes and then rinse off.

Warm water and soap to wash off any of the toxic cleaner and shiny like new with little to no scrubbing.

-Tony