In my BOB I carry a trioxine burner and a few bars, but the bars are hard to find around here unless you order them on-line and a bit expensive for regular use. They do work well in that they will boil about 2 cups or so of water in about 10 minutes or a little over. I use my kit to make lunch at work a lot of the time so I need something that will heat fairly quick but I don't want to spend much on it and it needs to be compact and light weight. So what are some of the methods the rest of you use for cooking or heating food on the go? Has anyone used the pop can stoves much? How long dose it take them to boil a small amount of water?
Pop can stove is just a homemade alcohol burner. My guess is that it would work in about the same amount of time (Roughly 10 minutes for 2 cups of H2O). If you want to be more efficient with your fuel, you need to control where the heat from the flame is going (windscreen), where the heat from the cup is going (lid on pot), or both. I've screwed around with an Esbit stove and some of the fuel bars that come with it. It does work, the question is how long does it take and how much fuel is used to boil a cup of water? In my kitchen it took 1 fuel bar to boil a 12 oz. cup of water. Not very efficient in my mind. I'm looking to add wind screens and a lid to make it faster and to use less fuel. What I like about the set up is that you could feed the fire with what ever you found around you that would burn. It also packs down small. All you need is an aluminum cup, and the Esbit which is about the size of a deck of cards. Slip the cup over a Nalgene bottle and you have the tree hugger version of a GI canteen & cook set. Add a spoon, and some instant soup and you get a hot meal. Just what I found that works...... phishi
Yeah I think the stoves I have for the trioxine bars are the same thing your talking about. I was kind of thinking about makeing a pop can stove that would fit in there under the pot to use in place of the fuel bars. While I keep it there in case of emergency, what it gets used for most is boiling water on the tailgate in a customers driveway so I can dump it in one of those cup 'o noodle type things thats kind of like fancy Ramen noodles and do up a couple of those as a lunch, so adding wood and such to it would leave it burning longer than needed for heating it and be a kind of bother, though generaly if it was an emergency situation I would probably be useing wood and such as much as possible to conserve fuel bars or alcohol or what ever as much as possible against times when I had no other option like severly bad weather or haveing to be back on the move ASAP. So Im mostly looking at something cheap and convenient for reagular use that can double as emergency stuff I suppose. May have to try that pop can stove since inside of the other one the little folding stove should work as a bit of a wind break.
Primary Kelly Kettle. No fuel necessary to carry or run out of. Fast, reliable, efficient. Secondary Ultralight backpacking stove with Piezo ignition and a single gas canister. Tertiary Coleman multi-fuel stove, manual hand pump and built-in fuel storage, runs with most fuels (including gasoline).
Alcohol burners offer good heat and the ability to snuff the flame when your water has boiled. Clean, soot free and with little to no odor, they offer a near invisible flame - I would think a real plus if on someones property (not your place) The soda pop can stove are easy to make - the pot holder / windscreen seems to be the biggest variable. I've had good luck with a Trangia burner and a Bushbox "stove" (a pot stand, really). The Bushbox folds flat when not in use, a plus for auto/truck carry I would think. I've used this with Esbit fuel and a Trangia burner. The thing will also work with wood, should it become necessary. AT 40 bucks, not cheap. A Sterno stove folds fairly flat, can use Sterno fuel and will hold a Trangia burner. In a pinch, it can used to burn wood and I seen them used as a kind of reflector oven, so a multi-use bit of kit - for $10 - hard to beat. This image shows a Sterno stove and military (Swede) Trangia. These, when burning 100% alcohol (like yellow bottle HEET) produce far more heat than the Sterno canned fuel. Good luck.
I'm planning on making one of those layers clay pot heaters that works of the tea candle and the like (or a twig fire in a dished out hole) for the next time we go camping/do living history. We got stuck in a bad spot were the temp dropped like 40 degrees, and nothing was available to keep us warm.
