Caldera Cone and Starlyte stove
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James, I wanted to point out something that Conrad said about the placement of the silicone band on his Heineken pot. He said it’s below the 2 cup mark that is shown above the star. The cone is located approximately at the center of the Heineken pot. Half the pot is exposed to the air.
Conrad said he gets his best efficiency with the StarLyte at that location. From the bottom of the band to the bottom of the pot is approx. 2.750 and it’s the same to the top of the pot.
Conrad said:
After much experimenting, I found that the band set at the height in the picture resulted in the best boil times using only .5oz of alky. I was getting rolling boils at 9.5mins, and effective burnouts around 12.5 mins (the flame would trickle on until past 14 mins, but it wasn't hot enough to do anything). The key is to leave the lid on and not check it unti you hear it boiling. Premature checking cut down my efficiency a lot and I would only getting bubbling boils before burnout.
An old saying: A watched pot will never boil.
Conrad pointed this out to us in his statement: The key is to leave the lid on and not check it unti you hear it boiling. Premature checking cut down my efficiency a lot and I would only getting bubbling boils before burnout.
When I had TD make a custom cone for my SS pot the ridgeline was placed below the center of the pot. More than half the pot is exposed and yet my first 3 tests using 1/2 ounce denatured alcohol boil 2 cups. I feel positive that we'll be able to make your Ti pot work in the same way.
I'll do some testing with your Ti pot and the 4 gram esbits. I burned a box full on Sunday watching water boil :-) I'll use my new gram burning stove and see if I can squeeze the pot into my Ti Cone.
I did some testing/playing around with Zelph's new pot using the ridgeline idea to connect it with the cone. The ridgeline idea is awesome – it's lighter than a silicone band and there's no possibility of it moving around on you.
With the Starlyte stove I get excellent performance – virtually the same great results as I do with my other Starlyte/Cone/Evernew 750ml setup. What I was eager to try with this setup is wood, as I was hesitant to get my main pot all sooty and I wanted to try top down burning with Zelph's ring. I was curious if one could really use wood without constant refilling/attention.
I grabbed a few small branches, broke the wood into short pieces and filled the ring:
I put a little firestarter and kindling on top, lit it and blew once. Then I tossed the pot on and sat back to see if it would work without further attention.
11 minutes later my water (2 cups) was boiling. It was impressed that I didn't have to maintain the blaze at all. After using a BushBuddy, it was a welcome change. I made some cowboy coffee and sat back to drink it while the fire continued to burn.
The stove system delivered a nice steady burn that chugged away. I was amazed how consistently and long it burned. Finally after 32 min I had to get moving so I disassembled things and kicked the ashes into the river. I presume a few blows early on would ramp up the blaze for faster boils if one desired.
Coals after 32 min:
I was also pleased to see very little soot on the pot. I gave it a quick wipe with some nearby moss & grass and achieved this:
In summary, this is an awesome cook system because it excels at both alcohol and wood. It's rare to find a system that isn't a comprise between these options. This is perhaps the best alcohol system on the market, and it also happens to burn wood like a champ. I've got to figure out a little better pot support, as my aluminum flashing first attempt wilted under the heat. I also recommend getting a proper cone from Trail Designs, as a MYOG cone doesn't have the sweet dove tail closure.
Brian: The cone is a home brew prototype. I have several legit cones from Trail Designs for other pots and I prefer the TD cones (for the excellent dove tail closure amongst other attributes), but I whipped this one up to give the concept a test. It's aluminum flashing (cheap at Home Depot) and you can find video's on youtube on how to make 'em.
This is a committing move, but what you should do is cut your cone so it's just tall enough to fit in your pot. Then you can use a silicone band to suspend the pot at the correct height for a Starlyte, add new bottom vent holes and grab yourself a sweet Starlyte stove to achieve something like this (this is my other Starlyte setup, depicted to show how the band works if you don't have a ridge in your pot):
The Starlyte works excellent in a cone (Trail Designs is even offering them now) and you can grab a ti loop from Zelph to give wood a go as well. The other less committing but more expensive option is to grab one of Zelph's sweet new pots with the ridge, and get a cone, Starlyte and wood loop for that. This is the ideal option, but it requires more new stuff.
Bob: The idea is to achieve a top down burn so that it burns longer/steady. On a normal fire, the firestarter/kindling would go on the bottom. I'm pretty sure you'd never get a +32min burn lighting this little bit of wood at the bottom.
Dan D, Thank you for the excellent explanation. I have two Caldera Cones already, an SP 700, and a MLD 850 Kettle. I also have two StarLyte stoves and a StarLyte burner. So maybe I'm close to being able to try what you have there. I did not realize that the aluminum flashing would hold up to that kind of heat. Interesting.
Dan Y, PM incoming. I'm getting one of your pots and a Ti ring if they are available and I haven't missed the proverbial boat. Really looking forward to trying the ring set up out. If I put my 850 on my Ti grill in a cone, I'll be most of the way there. But I want – as opposed to need – the pot too.
Here's my other option, an SP700 Tri-Ti "Fusion" TD built for me. Doesn't look like your ring would fit inside this one. Oh well, the 850 isn't too much heavier.
Dan Yeruski and I have been working together to try and put together a compact, light weight, and simple. it started as a Lite Trail 550 solid fuel cook kit. The kit originally came with a ti-wing stove, windscreen, paper clips (to keep the windscreen together), and 550ml ti pot. I was hoping to simplify this kit with a Caldera Cone and replace the ti-wing stove and windscreen with a Caldera Cone that fit in the pot. Because the 550ml ti pot doesn't have the squatty dimensions getting this to work would be a challenge.
This is where communication with Dan Y came in. I contacted him about putting ridges on ti pots which he was able to do quite magnificently. Some simple testing with a home made Cone seemed to indicate proof of concept. link to video The ridge on the pot could support the pot on a cone, and a cone could be made to fit in the pot.
Time for pictures!
Here we have the pot with the ridge appropriately placed to support it off the ground for use with Esbit.
The cone in the pot.
Things are going good so far so I get two cups of cold tap water in the pot, Dan Y's new Esbitlite stove, and the cone.
Then came the rather disappointing realization that the cone wasn't completed at the top, which meant I would have to use ti stakes to support the pot. I don't know if I miss-communicated with Rand at trail designs or he misunderstood what I wanted. Either way the ridge now proved to be a useless modification. Ti stakes were added and tested proceeded.
All things considered the testing went well. The Esbitlite stove worked well to heat the water without leaving a bunch of gunk on the bottom of the pot. It was easy to wipe off. It's too bad about the misunderstanding between what I wanted and what I got in terms of the caldera cone and the its inability to be used with the ridge. The whole package does pack up nicely and everything I want still fits in the pot; the cone, the stove and a few tabs of esbit.
Until next time,
James
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