Cat can with felt wick and ti pot stand

[Gary Dunckel]

Hi all. I decided to try my hand at making a cone for my MSR Titan kettle. It turned out pretty much OK. Then I played around with some carbon felt to make a pot stand that would precisely fit the cone. I don't think I actually invented this stove design, thinking I'd seen something similiar once. After using it for awhile, marvelling at its efficiency (especially with the cone),and showing it to others, I thought maybe someone would like to acquire the parts needed to have their very own. Here's what it looks like. A ring of carbon felt lines the cat can, and a strip of .004" titanium foil fits inside the felt. The complete setup with can, felt and titanium is 0.55 Oz. (16 g.)

This shows the carbon felt liner in place, without the titanium strip:

The three components, unassembled:

Here's a fuzzy photo of a BPL Firelite 550 pot sitting atop the stove. The flames are dancing due to no windscreen. This stove seems to work better with a wider pot diameter, where the flames pretty much stay at the bottom of the pot, and not try to creep up the sides. I used this smaller pot for the photo, as the Titan kettle would hide the stove from view.

This shows the flame pattern. Without a pot in place, there will be flames coming from alcohol burning in the center. With pot in place, the flames can only come from alcohol burning at the wick, like a super cat stove.

This is how I employ the cat can felt stand: I wet the felt with alcohol all around at the top, leaving maybe 20% to pour into the center of the can. I light the center, put the windscreen in place, and let things heat up for 5 seconds or so before setting the pot on the titanium foil stand. The flames will slowly begin to go out through the top of the felt, gradually increasing in intensity until the felt is fully saturated by wicking the extra alcohol from below. With my cone clone, I get consistant boil times of 6-6.5 minutes, and 7-8 minutes with a simple windscreen, with .75 oz. alcohol. Total burn time is about 10 minutes. These times seem to hold true for ambient air temperatures of 25*F to 50*F. Not too bad, in my opinion.

So here's the deal–I have some extra carbon felt and titanium foil. If anyone wants to buy the two pre-cut liner components, and also a titanium base plate to insulate the can from the cold ground, I will send them for $13, which includes shipping. The cat food can is not included, since it's unlikely it would survive the USPS trip without a few dings and creases. If you really, really want me to include an empty Fancy Feast can, I'll buy one, feed the neighbor's cat a treat, clean it and send it along. But you must agree to accept the condition it arrives in. And you will add $1 to the price ($14 total). By the way, if you don't like the taste of cat food, Libby's Potted Meat Food Product comes in the exact same can, but it might not be as tasty, or as nutritious, as Fancy Feast on toast! By the way, the default height of the titanium foil places the pot exactly 1.0" above the rim of the can. If you want, I'll make it a bit taller for you.

For Canadians, and all other international customers, you might be priced out of this market, since I'll have to ask $5 USD extra for the hideous postage surcharge.

If you want to try this setup, shoot me an e-mail–drzooz (at) aol (dot) com

(Edit– to include the titanium base plate)

[Duane Klinge]

I also made a Cat can wick stove similar to yours called TomCat made with tomato paste can. It extends about 1/2" above cat can top and I cut V notches at bottom of Tomato Can.

[Gary Dunckel]

That looks pretty cool, Duane. The V notches are at the bottom? Is that to allow the alcohol to more quickly get to the wicking felt? How thick is your carbon felt?

[Duane Klinge]

Hi Gary,

The V notches help with alcohol dispensing and pressurizing. I squirt fuel at top of felt around circumference of can.

Here is link to the wicking felt I use:

http://www.menards.com/main/plumbing/rough-plumbing/soldering/flame-protector/p-1456784-c-8533.htm

All items stay together. I light felt and put pot on top about 10secs later. Fully primes in 1 min. Fairly stable pot support and felt minimizes spill hazard.

[Gary Dunckel]

Good stuff, Duane. I made mine with a rim-to-pot space of 1", mainly because that's what I had to do to make them work perfectly with my cones, and also because I think that's the concensus minimal space for normal alcohol burners. Do you think in this case that a 0.5" space is optimal? I'm already convinced that this design is better than anything else I've tried, and tweaking it is the proper geeky thing to do, right? Thanks much for your input.

By the way, the only reason that I've offered to sell these components is because most people don't happen to have any carbon felt and titanium foil lying around in their work room, and I have some scraps available.

[Duane Klinge]

I found .5 " to be optimal for this design. It takes about 5 burns to burn off the inner coating on tomato paste can. I noticed a little oxidation on inner upper part of can. Long term will see if that causes issues on longevity. This is probably one of the simplest and functional stoves and cheap to make except for felt.
I found if you use much over 1oz fuel it starts to boil over fuel which could be a safety hazard. I can just about get 3 cups of water to rolling boil with 1oz. It starts to create a number of small bubbles before extinguishing.

[Gary Dunckel]

Folks, I had brain-lock and didn't think to add a titanium insulating base plate to the package. I think this is a critical component, so I changed the original post to reflect this. It will add $1 to the kit price, so $13 for the full package (sans cat can).

And a heads up to John and Jeff–your setup will be mailed today, and I threw in a free base plate for you. Hope you enjoy this stove concept.

Anyone else pining for one of these kits?

[jeff soliven]

thanks gary! can't wait to try this out.

[John Mc]

Thanks….I'm looking forward to seeing how this works out.

[Gary Dunckel]

James, I mailed your kit this afternoon.

Any other takers for these components to make a great cat can stove?

[Gary Dunckel]

They're in the mail, Seth. Thanks again for your purchase.

[Nicholas Pappas]

Hi Gary,
Would you be willing to send a 3in x 14in piece of titanium foil instead? I am looking to make a windscreen/pot support for my mini trangia and would like to spare the expense of buying a larger titanium sheet.
Thanks,
Nick

[Gary Dunckel]

PM sent, Nick–I'm not really flush with titanium foil, to tell you the truth.

[DAN-Y]

Old thread but I want to know how the carbon felt is working in well used stoves. Have you noticed a difference in flame output compared to when the stove was new?

[Gary Dunckel]

Hi Dan. I have done 20+ burns with several of these felt/ti stoves, and the last one was about the same as the first. No noticeable deterioration of the felt, really. I occasionally will swap out the carbon felt to make it look prettier, but it doesn’t seem to be required very often. I know that you aren’t much of a fan of a carbon felt wick, but they have served me quite well.

Mine performs about the same as your Fancee Feest that I recently purchased, but the difference is that yours will support a much heavier load than mine with your stainless steel pot stand. I use mine mostly with MYOG cones, so the stove doesn’t have to support the pot (the cone does that). For grins, though, I made one that employed one of the steel tomato paste cans as mentioned above, and that sucker will easily support a load of one liter. When I recently did the snow melt tests with your Mega Starlyte for your daughter, I also did the same test with the tomato paste can version. They performed about the same, as far as liters melted per fl. oz. of alcohol, and time per liter. The big difference is that your Mega Starlyte will hold 4 fl. oz., and mine only 2 fl. oz. So one doesn’t need to reload your stove very often. That is one burly snow-melting alcohol burner, Dan.

[DAN-Y]

Thanks for your input Gary. I’m just looking for info related to the degradation of carbon felt at flame fronts.

I’ll be using the Mega to dry bake today, 1st time try at dry method. I found the right size steel washer to place on top of the burner to reduce power output, we’ll see how it works out.

 

[Gary Dunckel]

Dan, Hopefully some of the others will report of the ‘degradability’ of their carbon felt after considerable use.  2013 was nearly 5 years ago, so maybe they have moved on, away from BPL. By the way, did Bridget pass my Mega snow-melt test findings on to you? I don’t find it appropriate to post them here, as this was just for her information (and yours).

It will be interesting to see how the Mega does at dry baking. Why not show us your setup for that?

[DAN-Y]

She did forward a copy of the results to me. Thanks for doing that for her, she is really helpful and is becoming addicted to stove making and testing heh heh, a chip off the old block :-)

I’ll be using the Ti Keith multipurpose cooker, a dual purpose, robust silicone bowl/cup of sorts, stainless pot support and the Mega Burner. I’ll post results after a few failures in the DIY forum.

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