Backpacking Wood Stove for Alpine/Snow Camping, Part 4: Dream Becomes Reality

[Timothy Clarke]

Companion forum thread to: Backpacking Wood Stove for Alpine/Snow Camping, Part 4: Dream Becomes Reality

This series explores the use of a Backpacking Wood Stove for warmth in the winter. Part 4 covers using the Micro Snow Stove in the field.

[Timothy Clarke]

Hi YungBen, I will try to make some videos and post them on youtube.
Tim

[Timothy Clarke]

Hi Anthony, I got the fuzed quartz glass from China, but it is not easy to get in small quantities. You don’t need the glass to make the stove as it is just a nice extra, but it will work just fine with a stainless steel fuel tube going all the way down to the stove box. I make the refractory render myself from very simple available houshold chemicals. The reaction it is a bit dangerous, if you are not very careful (but I am an experienced chemist). Again you can make the stove without this render, but it will not last as long with the render. If you get your stove made I could possibly send you a little ‘pill-bottle’ of render if it is allowed in the post. Alternatively I could give you details of the render by PM if you would like to send me a PM through BPL.
Tim

[Anthony Meaney]

Thanks Tim – I failed chemistry in University so I dare not try to make my own render!!!

[Timothy Clarke]

Hi Anthony, I had an ‘overnight thought’ that if I could find the original youtube posting with the sodium silicate preparatin instructions I could post that (then it would not be on my head if it all went wrong). I make the sodium silicate (very carefully!) in bulk quanities in the most concentrated form (with the least water added). It should be a clear liquid and it has the consistency of honey when cooled. Now comes the safe bit. Then to small quantities of the sodium silicate stock I add various refractory minerals and metal oxides to make the render. My best formula so far is sodium silicate stock 100g, talcum powder 10g, Iron oxide 10g. After mixing these together well I add a little extra water ~40g to give the mix a thinner consistency for painting as a thin layer. I apply the render with an old tooth brush and use a hard scrubbing action to work the render onto the surface and, at this stage for first coats, I add a little aluminium oxide powder to the work surface and scrubbbing this helps to abraide the metal surface to make the render bond to it. When I do a second coat or maintence coatings of render or repairs I usually leave out the auminium oxide as the coating can be much thinner and have a smoother finish.

Regarding the fuzed quartz tube, you could try pyrex or borosilicate glass. It will not be as resistant to heat shock and will devitrify (oxidize and go opaque), but it should work with care. One of my new experimental stove is made of fused quarts and is already showng signs of devitrification in the hottest parts, but light comes though quite well. Also I should remind you that with any glass component (quartz or borosilicate) that any rigid stainless steel component put tightly inside the glass will crack the glass when heated and also any ss component put tightly around the outside of the glass that that is allowed to become tight when hot can crush the glass when cooling. I have many broken glass tubes and ss tubes with stretch marks resulting from from this differential expansion and contraction.
Hope this helps.
Tim

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Tim

Would a chem labs spatula work to spread the render? Just wondering – sounds about the right consistency.

I have many broken glass tubes and ss tubes with stretch marks resulting from from this differential expansion and contraction.
Having a smashing time, wish you were here … Much fun.

Cheers

[Timothy Clarke]

Hi Roger, Good to hear from you. My skiing is just about over. No I don’t think a spatula would woud be appropriate, I probably have given you the impression that the coating is plastered on by calling it a ‘render’. I used this name so that I would not the term ‘paint’, as this would be mixed up with fire resistant paint that I also tried (and failed). The render in my case is very thin and it seems to work better if it is put on as a thin layer with a brush and it can be topped up with extra layers if a thicker coating is required. An old tooth brush does a good job and I use boiling water to soften the neck of the handle to put an offset angle on the brush head. The stiff bristles act on the aluminium oxide abrasive to give a lovely cutting action to make the sodium silicate ‘wet’ the ss or titanium surface where it may have got contaminated with oil from contact with my skin.
I have some ss tubes that have got a bit skewed on the fused quartz tube during cooling of the stove and the stretch marks are so detailed that I can see the bulge of the fire polishing on the end of the glass tube. In these cases the only way to get the glass out was to start a fire in the stove to heat it up again.
Tim

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Tim

Yeah, I was thinking ‘cement render’. No worries.

Cheers

 

[Anthony Meaney]

Tim:

Would love to see a you tube video. When I read your explanations I feel like I’m Jesse Pinkman and you’re Walter White….

 

 

 

[Timothy Clarke]

Hi Anthony, I will start doing a video this weekend. I have a youtube chanel (thingy) and have put some slide shows of my gear on there plus a few skiing videos, and am not sure about puting the links into my BPL posts etc, so you may feel like reversing the two characters when it comes to me using this technology. You may be able to help me in this regard (I have only crawled out from under a rock recently with regard to world wide web!)
Tim

[Anthony Meaney]

Tim:

When you are writing a forum post there are some letters and symbols just above your text box: B I  etc. Third from the right is one that looks like a paper clip. Click on that and paste the url from your youtube video there. To find the url just look up at the address bar on your browser when the vid is playing on youtube.

Or if you have a youtube channel just let us know the name of the channel or your youtube user name that should allow us to browse the videos you’ve posted there.

 

[Timothy Clarke]

Hi Anthony and YungBen,
I have made the first video and published to youtube. Hope it works! I will make the rest in the series when time permits ( roll up flue deployment, stove deployment, start up, flame out recovery and cooking—–it should get easier)
Regarding posting the url, I don’t see a paper clip. the third box in from the right has what looks like ‘LI’.

I will just try typing in the url

or
My youtube channel (I think) is:
Tim Telemark

or

searching on youtube home page for ‘micro snow stove’ brings it up (second from the top of the list)

I am posting another vidoeo of my ‘multistove2 unpacking’. you may be interested in it.

Let me know if anything works.

I am off for another ski trip (last for the season, but expect a big snow dump), so will be unable to reply for a bit.
Tim

[Richard Nisley]

Great video but it would be better if the sound was much louder. At full volume I couldn’t hear some of your words.

[Timothy Clarke]

Hi Richard, Thanks for your comments. I don’t know what to do about the audio being so low. I am using a gopro and it only seems to pck up my voice well when I am almost on top of the camera.
Tim

[David Thomas]

“I cut multiple sheets of newspaper into strips . . .  an old saucepan . . . saturated with wax. . . remove the paper slowly. . . quickly peal the layers apart. . . spread the individual strips. .  . .bundle up. . . make the finished waxies.”

While I have also made my own waxed-soaked fire starters, this seems like a lot of work.  Any green grocer is happy to part with a waxed, corrugated cardboard box which provides years worth of fire starters in any size you wish to cut.

P.S. a 10 cm x 10 cm or 15 cm x 15 cm square makes a nice base for a canister stove on unstable ground and doubles as a fire starter if needed.  Especially recommended on a snow-camping trip.  And it’s free.

For vegan backpackers there are these:

But more common in my town, if you don’t hew to closely to Leviticus:

[Timothy Clarke]

Hi David, It sounds as though you have got it all covered with your way of making waxies.
I have used such corrugated cardboard, but for my little stove my thin waxies are a lot more efficient to carry and I can afford to carry more of individual waxies on a long trip. Also it is not much trouble to make them, it is a case of “easier done than said”.
Tim

[Roger Caffin]

David

At the risk of seeming stupid, what IS in that box????

Cheers

 

[James Marco]

Crabs

[David Thomas]

As James knows, crabs  It’s a low-res pic, but Dungeness, I’m pretty sure.  One of 5 species harvested commercially in Alaska.  We use large waxed-cardboard boxes to move frozen moose, caribou, salmon, and halibut meat around.  The tourists think you need the boxes with a styrofoam liner and an unwaxed cardboard outer box, but 50 or 70 pounds of anything, frozen, stays frozen for a long time like 24-48 hours as airline luggage.  I’ve seen a sports fisherman checking 6 x 70-pound boxes at the ticket counter in Anchorage.  It takes a LONG time to get through that much seafood.  My family of 4 is set for the year with 30 sockeye salmon and 4-5 halibut in the freeze – maybe 160 pounds of fillets.

Roger, do Australians say “fill-it” like Brits and South Africans or “fa-lay” like the French?  American usage is fa-lay for food and fill-it for laying weld material into a junction.

Tim: MYOW (make your own waxies), of course.  I cut the waxed corrugated cardboard into 1″x1″ or 1″x2″ pieces and if I don’t need as much firestarter, peal the three layers apart for a thinner piece.

[Roger Caffin]

That’s a LOT of frozen fish!

Oz – close to ‘fill-it’, or maybe closer to  ‘fill-et’, for both meat and weld. Most of us would easily recognise the French pronunciation as well.

Cheers

 

[Timothy Clarke]

Hi David, Re MYOWs, I used to do the same thing striping them apart, but my newspaper waxies are already stripped and I can carry 100-200 for a long trip and they are very compact and ready for immediate use in a flame-out recovery that will be demonstrated in a future video.
Tim

[Timothy Clarke]

Hi YungBen and others, Back from my last (probably) ski trip for the Aussie season. Please see my latest video upload about the unpacking of the roll up flue pipe and the use of the titanium ‘snail-tail-rolley’ for the efficient and safe management of the flue pipe. I hope the audio is improved. Probably, removing the GoPro from the water proof housing will help, but it meant that I needed to get the welder going to build another tripod connector for the inner GoPro. At least I learned how to weld a 1/4″ SS BSP nut to SS foil! I am still working on the stove set up, start up and flame out recovery and cooking. it has taken all night plus some more to upload a 4 min video. Is this normal?

Has anyone looked at my Multistove2 video? What do you think of this little stove (not the quality of my beginers video)? Tim
flue pipe

and Multistove unpacking

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Tim

SS foil or Ti foil for chimney?

I am going to guess SS foil for the rest if you are welding to it.

Cheers

 

[Timothy Clarke]

Hi Roger,
Interesting question. The simple answer is both SS & Ti. Since the thin foil makes them so light the weight advantage of the Ti is very small. I have used both and they work well and have a similar heat memory for holding the flue pipe shape after heat conditioning. The pipe in the video is SS. I think the SS is superior with regard to resistance to chemical attack at high temperatures and it is certainly cheaper to purchase and lastly I have more stock of SS than Ti. Your question also seems to imply that you expect Ti not to weld as well as SS does? Well in my case the welding of SS and Ti is equivalent ie most welds are very good and occasionally I get a dud and I can usually find the reason for the fault if the machine adjustments are not quite right or the electrodes have not been adequately cleaned and ‘tuned’. Have I understood your meaning correctly?
Tim

[Timothy Clarke]

Hi Roger, Regarding welding I thought you might like this. In my desperation to get more audio volume from my GoaPro videos I needed to have some way of mounting the ‘inner’ GoPro on my tripod. So after a few failures I can weld a 1/4″ BSW nut to 0.15 mm SS foil to make a lovely little camera mount that weighs in at only 4.8g. Tim

https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=339EAC4F57A66D43&id=339EAC4F57A66D43%21467&parId=339EAC4F57A66D43%21387&o=OneUp

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