Caldera Cone and Starlyte stove

[Dan @ Durston Gear]

That does sound really awesome – perhaps the perfect pot? I'd love to check it out if you ever get a spare one. I might have some spare ti foil to make a pseudo-cone for it.

[Dan Yeruski]

DanD, I got word from TD that my Ti Cone has been shipped. Whoo! can't wait to burn some wood with it. I know it's going to work great with alcohol and esbit. They made the cone to my specs to work with the Modified StarLyte. My adventures in woodburning says I can boil 4 cups of water on one load of wood in a container 4" in diameter by 5" tall. The cone will be 4" diameter to fit the pot and 4" tall. If I load it with twigs 2" long and verticle stack-em and then top light I should be able to get at least 2 cups to boil. I've made a stainless steel pot support that will sit on top of the cone. Perfect pot? …..only time will tell:-)

[Dan @ Durston Gear]

Awesome. I'm looking forward to pics/results.

[Dan Yeruski]

I got the Ti Cone on Friday and did 5 wood burn test in it yesterday. StarLyte and Esbit tests will begin tomorrow. The cone is custom made for the pot. Due to the ridgeline at the 2 cup level they could not make it to burn wood unless it was inverted. They furnished the Ti stakes and grate. While waiting for the cone to arrive I devised a top pot support using soft stainless steel that is easily flattened out and curved to fit inside the pot. The grate fits inside the pot lid and the cone fits inside the pot soft rolled in the vertical position. All 5 tests boiled 3 cups of water using vertical stacked and top lit wood one load per boil. No need to feed twigs.

You can see the heat coloration on the cone due to the stacking and burning in the vertical.

Ti Cone wood burning mode

[Dan Yeruski]

DanD, here are some photos and results using denatured alchy:

pot w/lid, handle and cone weigh 4.7 ounces. Pot is 3 cup capacity with plenty of head room. Cone fits inside in the vertical position.

TEST RESULTS
July,3, 2013

Zelphs Fire Pot , Modified StarLyte , 1/2oz denatured alcohol with custom Caldera Cone.

Conditions: 70 degree air and starting water temps.Kitchen environment.

Three tests were performned.

1. 7 ½ min. boil time and continued to burn for an additional 1 3/4min.

2. 7 3/4min boil and continued to burn for an additional 2 3/4min.

3. 8 1/2min. boil and continued to burn for an additional 3 min.

Because the burner has a tight fitting storage cap, it can be snuffed out and then capped once it has cooled sufficiently.

CONCLUSION:

Uses less that 1/2 ounce of fuel per 2 cup boil consistently for the three bench/kitchen tests. Awesome set-up.

4.7 ounces

[James DeGraaf]

Is that a Grandpas Fire Fork for a handle? Does it come off to pack things away? And will this be something you make available to the public?
Thanks,
James

[Dan Yeruski]

Yes James, it's a modified Light My Fire Grandpas Fire Fork. It's heavy gauge tempered stainless steel. The spring tension of it holds the handle tight in the bracket that is welded to the pot. I've used the handle attached to a branch to roast wieners and marshmallows. Today I'll use it to extend a pot full of water into a campfire. I'll leave it attached until the 3 cups of water come to a boil and then remove it via the long handle extension. I've boiled water in the pot on my kitchen stove with the handle attached. After boiling 3 cups of water the handle remains cool enough to pick up the pot and pour out the water. The flames of the stove went up the side of the pot about 1/2 inch. so there was plenty of heat going up to reach the handle. The handle has the ability to dissipate the heat quickly. The fire pot and fire fork handle should work well with all stoves.

I can make a dozen or so of the pots available to the public. Trail Designs can provide the cones.

I'll see if I can get a video put together in the next couple of days showing how the handle can be used and the cone set up to burn wood. Today I'll burn some 1/2 esbit cubes to see if I can get it to boil 2 cups under the cone. I was surprised to see the results of my alcohol tests. The ridgeline on the pot, the cone and use of the Modified StarLyte all came together well.

Yes, the handle comes off and packs inside with the fire grate, cone and burner. The grate stores inside the pot lid. The grate is inside a protective sleeve and the edges of the sleeve make it so that the little package sticks to the underside of the lid but is removed easily.

One other thing that I wanted was a cone that did not have a large opening at the top to allow heat and flames to exit to one side of the pot. Most pots have large handles that require the large opening in the cone. That opening focuses the heat right to the handles. One exception is the Cone for the Keg.

[Dan @ Durston Gear]

Looks like an excellent setup. I really like the size of the pot – probably 900ml if you count the space above the 3 cup line (which the manufacturers like Evernew do). My pot is 750ml and I wish it was a hair bigger like this since I can feasibly only get about 2.5 cups in.

Very cool how the handle is affixed. I like that it's removable.

Those are surprisingly fast boil times with the modified Starlyte. Have you tried a regular one to see how fast you can get and what the fuel penalty is?

You should get TD to offer the complete package on their site (or buy a bunch of cones from them and offer it on yours). Customers would love getting an amazing package like this with the simplicity and low shipping costs of getting it all in one place.

"One other thing that I wanted was a cone that did not have a large opening at the top to allow heat and flames to exit to one side of the pot."
Yeah I certainly agree on this. One of the criteria for the pot I chose was handles way up high so I wouldn't need a cut out in my custom cone. TD was happy to oblige my no cutout request. Is there a reason for the small cutout at the bottom? I needed some extra holes in the bottom of my cone, so it looks like this cutout would achieve that while only making it more wind vulnerable on one direction.

[Dan Yeruski]

Dan, I hav not tried a regular StarLyte burner under the cone. I tried Esbit today and was able to boil 3 cups with 1 full size cube. I've been putting the pot/lid and handle through some fire tests. Good day for a campfire. I'll be sending you a pot soon as you give me your address. I have some other info for you also in regards to the cone. I need further testing of the pot in the campfire to see how the bracket holds up to repeated lifting of the pot when it is full of water. So far, the ridgeline at the 3 cup level is preventing the thin pot from flexing when the handle lifts the pot.

Link to youtube watch Fire Pot Fire Fork

[Dan @ Durston Gear]

It looks great in that video. I wasn't familar with the fire fork so I didn't realize you could use a stick like that – very handy. That's such a great all around setup.

[Harald Hope]

dan y, what denatured alcohol are you using, if I remember right, you use sunnside or one of the high ethanol ones, right? Which would alter the results by roughly 15% over slx I believe re efficiency, at least in theory, still excellent efficiency/speed though.

I was testing some of the things dan d brought up here and realized all my tests were using a large fan above the stove to blow out the toxic gases through an open window, which creates a light breeze over the screen, I'm sure all screens with air holes all around the base will have the same exact problem, just to test an idea I popped a 1.5" or so high short screen in front of the air holes windward side, about 1" out from main screen (my air holes are low, so that would be about 1" above top of air slots, the results were spectacular, the degradation I'd seen due to the small breeze coming through the bottom holes vanished instantly, even with the fan turned up higher than normal.

For real world outside in the elements including wind burns this might be of interest as a trick to get around having holes facing the wind, I wasn't sure if it would work, but it does. Obviously the lower the air holes on the screen the better.

dan d, also, I noticed you are testing with 40F water, what I found studying the efficiency of alcohols fuel/stove / water boils was that if you roughly get 14ml to boil 70F water, then you can simply consider 1ml per 10F as what is required if you go below 70F, that makes it easy to translate your cold water numbers to 70F numbers, and for you to translate 70F numbers to your numbers. The energy required to bring water up 10F is a constant no matter what the water starting temp is. that is.

[Dan Yeruski]

Harold, yes I still use Sunnyside Denatured Alcohol. It's interesting to know that shielding the holes around the base of the cone decreased/eliminated the degradation caused by a small breeze.

I'm still soaking up some info on water temperatures, Here is some info I received a couple of days ago at Whiteblaze.com :

Thread at Whiteblaze

Odd Man Out
Heptane essentially is gasoline/white gas. I didn't think that was advisable in an alcohol stove. Using white gas would eliminate a lot of the advantages of alcohol for me.

Also, I don't see the need for a bomb calorimeter. It seems that you are most interested in two parameters – the power and efficiency of the system. Power is how fast it heats the water and efficiency is how much heat is delivered to the water from a given amount of fuel. Often these two are at odds – powerful stoves tend to be inefficient and efficient ones have low power. Which is best for you depends on your own preferences.

The way that I have been able to measure both of these parameters in a single easy test is to use an amount of water and fuel so the water DOES NOT come to a full boil when the stove burns out (say 15 mL fuel and 750 mL of water). You will need to measure accurately and precisely to get good results. Measure the starting temperature of your water, light the stove, and measure the temperature of the water every 1/2 minute (I have a digital probe thermometer and a pot lid with a small hole so I can easily monitor the temperature during the test). Keep measuring until the flame goes out and the temperature starts to drop. Plot the time in minutes (x-axis) vs temp in deg C (y-axis). The points in the middle of the graph should be very linear. Do a linear regression of these points to get a slope for the line. Also subtract the minimum temperature from the maximum temperature to get a change of temperature (delta T). All these calculations can be easily programed into a spreadsheet.

The power of your system (in Watts) is the slope of the line (degC/min) times the volume of water (in mL) divided by 14.34
14.34 is a combination of conversion factors including 1 min per 60 sec, the specific heat of water (1 cal/g-deg C), the density of water (1 g/mL), and 4.184 J/cal. Some of these are approximations, but they are close enough for home use.

The efficiency of your stove (in Joules/mL of fuel) is delta T (in deg C) times the volume of water (in mL) times 4.184 J/cal divided by the volume of fuel used (in mL).

With these numbers, you could easily estimate other commonly used stove performance standards such as time to boil 2 cups of water (which will be based on the power of the stove) and the Volume of water that can be boiled using 1/2 oz of fuel, or amount of fuel needed to boil 2 cups of water (which are based on the efficiency of the stove).

[Dan Yeruski]

James, this is what the ridgeline looks like on my SP600. I didn't bother to clean it to it's original finish :-))) Charcoal is nice!!!

[Dan @ Durston Gear]

Do you have specialized equipment to make the ridges? Or is this something anyone can do with regular tools?

[Dan Yeruski]

I use specialized tools that have been adapted to create the ridges. My father was a "tool and die" maker and taught me many things. Even with specialized tools, the ridges are difficult to apply. It's a "slow" process. I have many many Foster cans with defects because of trying to go too fast. I need to have a scratch&dent sale :-)))

You should be receiving your SS pot soon. Let me know when it arrives. I'm waiting on some 4 gram esbits to try out with a small container inside the cone and using the SS pot. One full size cube was way too much for 2 cups. That test was performed outside with a stiff breeze.

[Dan @ Durston Gear]

Thanks for the explanation – it sounds like a job for the pros. I've very excited to check out the pot. I'll let you know when it arrives.

[D S]

zelph – Any chance of sharing the source of the SS Pot? Do you plan to sell them?

[Dan Yeruski]

Dean,

I initially saw the pots in a thread here at BPL. The author was located in California. He got them locally at an Asian food store. I did a search locally and found some at an Asian store. I liked them so much I had them order me 50 more so I could modify them and offer them to BPL members only. The pot only weighs 2oz and the lid is heavy at 1oz. :-) The order from the Asian food store is due in any day now. I'm also waiting on some small 4 gram esbit tabs to test under the pot and cone, they should arrive today. If I can get 2 of the tabs to boil 2 cups using a small feather weight aluminum tin then I'll include one of the tins with the pot.

edit: the pot was originally purchased at KV Discount in Oakland, CA

Cheap and Light Stainless Steel Mug/Pots in Oakland, Ca

[Harald Hope]

Dan, if the ones you get are the same as the KV ones, the spot welds are not very solid. I almost was going to ask the KV people if they could contact the distributor to see if the company making them would consider a batch without handles or spot welds, for a small premium. Check the insides of the pot at the spot welds to see how they look.

The 600ml lid weighs about 21 grams.

Pots are less efficient than ti in my tests, noticeably so. But the lids rock, they are really good, better than any ti lid I've ever seen, and just as light.

[Dan Yeruski]

Harald, that would be great if you could have them get a pallet full with out handles. Yes, I agree about the welds. I have to leave a small tab on the lower portion of the pot that is a remnant of the pot handle that I remove. If I remove the tab it's likely to leave a pinhole in the metal that will leak. The upper one I take off because that is where I weld the bracket. My initial 3 tests were very positive with the stainless. Stainless is suppose to be better at heat conduction right?

[James DeGraaf]

Dan,
That's a nice ridge on the ti pot. That's what I had envisioned for my Lite Trail no-handled mug to correspond with a custom ti Caldera Cone. For the most part I dislike handled on my pots, with the exception of a bail handle on larger ones. I have dreams about a larger selection of ti pots w/o handles. My dream is to one day own a BPL Firelite 1100. I fear it will never happen. :( and no one will ever make one like it.
Sad,
James

[Dan Yeruski]

James, direct me to where I can purchase a dozen Ti pots without handles like the one you have. I'll put ridgelines on them and have TD make cones for them.

[Harald Hope]

"Stainless is suppose to be better at heat conduction right?"

That was the idea, but the reality didn't correspond to the idea. If I had to put numbers on it, I'd guess that the stainless pot is about 10-15% less efficient.

Where I'd get up to or over a 60 second rolling boil on 2 cups with ti pot, I'd get barely a boil with the ss, if I got a boil at all. I think my last screen with more airholes did get a weak boil out of the ss pot if I remember right, or a boil then out right away.

I had also assumed that ss being a being better conductor would mean more efficient, but this was not at all the result in my testing. In fact, ti was by far the best, this thin ss second best, and an old heavier but wider boyscout aluminum pot by far the worst. This testing actually finally convinced me that ti is not just a sort of overpriced ul thing, but actually has utility and superior characteristics for this task.

This assumption actually made me go down a wrong path re testing for quite a while, I simply could not figure out what had suddenly made my test setup less efficient when nothing had changed other than the allegedly more efficient ss pot, it took a fair number of tests before I realized that the ss was the problem, because magically the ti pot always got better boils. I was also fortunate that the ss and the ti pot are roughly the same diameter so I could discount pot width as a factor.

I speculated a bit as to why this would be the case, and what I guess is that the heat spreads all over the ss pot whereas the heat goes pretty much right from flame to ti pot to water with ti. Since the heat closest to the flame source is strongest and has least area to dissipate, the ti wins, whereas with ss and aluminum, the heat spreads out all over the pot, but also from there to the air, not the water. That's my guess, but I'm not attached to it, but it does make a crude sort of sense assuming my logic isn't based on a false premise. I have an alternate theory that wonders if the ss pot radiates out / back more heat to the burn chamber, making it hotter, making the alcohol boil off faster than it burns. Both theories can work together too.

By the way, I was going to suggest that welding the holes after taking off the spot welded part would yield a very good pot, albeit marked by the weld, but since most people don't have welders, I didn't mention it, but I would think about doing that if I were you, all my pots have distinct rust right inside at the point of the spot weld, and I don't believe those could be relied on over time, unless it's not rust and it's just some weird production glitch. But getting a leak in the bottom holes would not be fun on a longer trip, that's why I won't use mine on long trips.

[James DeGraaf]

I purchased the from Jhaura Wachsman at litetrail.com. They're the older version of his solid fuel cook kit. His new ones have…handles:( As far as I know, I have two, Chad from Sticks blog has one and Jhaura has one. There might be more floating around but I don't know where to get them. It's a Toaks brand pot if that helps at all. Maybe an email to Jhaura would help?
Thanks,
James

[Dan Yeruski]

James I registerd an account with Toaks website and will correspond with them to see if they can get more of the no handle pots like yours. I may have to order in quantity to get some brought in, which I will do. I'll also contact BPL to see if they can direct me to a wholesale source for Ti pots.

For now, send me yours and I'll put a ridgeline on it so it sits 2 inches off the ground and make a paper cone to simulate rolling it and storing it inside the pot. Send the lid also. There are many users of the StarLyte stoves that place their pots directly on the SS pot support and use the corrugated windscreen and get great results. I now make the StarLyte stoves with the Modified burner. Dan Durston can give you some insight on making a DIY cone. TD should be able to make a cone similar to the one they made for me to fit the SS pot.

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