Stoves Part III

Stoves Part III

Major Brand Production Stoves:

I have tried a wide variety of stoves and found every one to have it's advantages and its disadvantages. I'll try to share some things I've found with production stoves. These stoves must meet criteria not found in some of the smaller stoves I've written about. These stoves must adhere to certain safety requirements you probably won't know about if you're building a penny can stove. There's been many years of R&D in these stoves and I'm sure there are more lawyers who have had their say than engineers.

MSR Whisperlite 

When I worked at REI this was the stove I chose above everything else on the market. It was 1986 and I had just gotten out of the National Outdoor Leadership School. Because I worked at REI I was able to speak with stove manufacturers and test out their products. After 27 years I just went out and bought a new stove... Yup, you guessed it, the same exact model I bought in 1986. After all this time the MSR Whisperlite is still on the market because of it's size, power and reliability. This is the shaker model, because when you shake it there is a little pin which cleans the jet. If I'm going out for a long haul I bring a repair kit they sell and once I even had to use it. This stove is incredibly powerful. I had been doing a summit ascent on Mount Adams in Washington State and it was about five below when we set camp. As the sun was setting I boiled water and cooked pasta in about 10 minutes, as I was eating it ice crystals were forming on the food as I brought it up to my mouth. 

After trying various stoves by building them and experimenting with various manufacturers to try to cut weight I've come full circle and found myself back at the MSR Whisperlite. I can not recommend it highly enough. The only gripe I have is when it's folded up it's an awkward shape and you can never seem to get it to pack neatly in your backpack.

Pocket Rocket

The Pocket Rocket is one of the smallest and lightest stoves on the market. It works well and as long as you have a stable base it will support a pot easily. The only drawback to these stoves which use canisters of fuel is that they sometimes have problems in the extreme cold. I haven't tested these stoves in a long time and I've read that they are better in the extreme cold but I'm still apprehensive. Having said that if you're in a warm climate they could be a good choice for your 72 Hour Bag because you can throw a canister in the trunk of your can and not worry about fuel leaking.

Jetboil Zip Personal Cook System

My buddy and I went hiking between Christmas and New Year along the Sespe River. I had my Whisperlite stove and he had his Jet Boil system. I was impressed with how easily it lighted and how quickly it brought the cup to a boil. It was indeed faster than my Whisperlite and it packed into the cup very neatly making it very appealing for its simplicity.

Stoves Part II

Stoves Part II

Wood Stoves

Wood stoves are great because you don't have to pack fuel, which like water will become the heaviest thing you carry. They are light weight and pretty simple to use. The downside is if you are out in the rain you might not be able to get a fire going, this will be when you'll have to employ some good wilderness survival techniques at finding dry wood to burn AND get your fire going in a damp environment. In addition you should collect any fuel you will need before heading above the tree line. It would be a great idea to have experience with your stove before heading into an area such as that so you'll know how much you'll need for dinner that night AND breakfast the next morning... will you have to purify water using a boil technique? This should factor into your fuel collection as well.

Vargo Stove

I love this stove, it packs down to nothing and is flat in your pack, there's a little door you can open to feed the fire when the pot is on the top and it's design not only focuses the heat upward but when the flame is larger it flows through the cut out V's to surround your pot, heating up the water faster.

Solo Stove

The Solo stove is an excellent little stove which seems a little more efficient than the Vargo because it has a double wall and creates a vent to feed the fire with oxygen. there is a small opening in the collar at the top which acts as the pot stand allowing you to continually feed the fire. This stove comes with a little stuff sack and weighs very little. It's built pretty solid and if you can get a fire going, it's pretty fool proof. 

Kelly Kettle

The Kelly Kettle is a stove a buddy of mine has and while it is not the lightest weight cookset in the world its unique design makes it probably one of the fastest to boil times. The set comes complete with a lower portion where the fire goes and the upper portion which is the kettle. In addition, you can get an attachment which sits on top of the kettle and allows you to cook foods for longer periods of times. This kettle has a hollow section in the middle of the kettle which allows the fire below to flow up through the kettle, using the kettle as a chimney. By doing this the water in the kettle is heated from the entire inside out, not just the bottom like when heating a kettle on a regular stove. The only drawback from this cookset is the size and weight. It stands very tall so you have to make sure you are on a stable platform before beginning to cook. It's also very large and may not really pack in a 72 Hour Bag. It is worth mentioning here though because it is probably a perfect choice for your home earthquake kit or for when you take the family camping.

Below is a picture of the Kellykettle and a close up of the pot stand attachment.

Rocket Stove or Hobo Stove

There are two types of stoves you can build from found items like tin cans. They work best when you build them out of number 10 cans but they can be improvised out of any size can if need be. The principal is simple, there's an area for combustion, a way to get good air flow to feed the fire and a way of feeding the fire with fuel. They all should have a way of setting a pot on the top of the stove and be stable enough to support a pot or a cup with at least two cups of water. The Rocket stove is far more efficient but takes a bit more work to make, above the link will take you to a YouTube video on how to make the stove. There are also ways to make the stove using just 16 bricks and nothing else. Another advantage to the Rocket stove is it burns the fuel at a hotter temperature and there isn't as much smoke.

Below is the simpler Hobo stove. This stove can be made with nothing more than a knife and a can. It helps to have two tent stakes to run through holes at the top of the can which become the stand to set your pot. Anyone who has built a campfire and then wrestled with the riddle of how to get your pot over the fire and not spill the contents of the pot know having a pot stand built into your stove is invaluable. This stove is only slightly more efficient than an ordinary campfire because it uses vents in the wall of the can to feed the fire with oxygen. It also helps keep your fire contained and by having the one large door allows you to orient it into the wind which helps to keep the smoke down. Here's a sample image from practicalsurvivor.com.

Stoves, A Three Part Series

Three Part Series

Over the next three posts I'll cover SOME stoves available. There are a ton of stoves you can buy and a hundred times that many in designs on the web you can look up. I will cover home made and small production pressure stoves in Part I. In Part II I'll cover stoves which use found fuel such as wood and pinecones. In Part III I'll cover stoves made by major manufacturers and meet mountaineering safety guidelines. I'll try to fill you in on my experiences and what I like and don't like about their designs.

Part One:

Even if you only have emergency rations and MRE's with heaters you are still going to need a way to boil water to purify it. There are ways as I discussed in an earlier post on how to do this without boiling, but it is best to have the ability to cook food or boil water in your back pocket. If you are savvy and know how to build a campfire, then boil water you'll be good to go. If you don't you may want to look at getting a stove. There are some that are so light weight you'll never notice they are in your pack. Let me go through several I have built and others I own. I'll try to run down their pros and cons of each.

The penultimate resource for building your own stove is zenstoves.net there is every type of stove and how to build it imaginable on this site.

Pressure Stoves

Pressure stoves use liquid fuel. When the stove is heated up with some of the fuel used as a primer it turns to vapor creating pressure for the gas to escape through small holes. As the gas is released it ignites and continues the process until the fuel is expended. They are very efficient stoves and incredibly lightweight. You can make then out of two aluminum cans. When you get the hang of it you can turn one out in about 15 minutes.

Penny Can Stove

It's called a penny can stove because at the top of the stove you put a couple of holes. This is where you fill the stove up from, then you literally lay a penny over the holes then pour some fuel into the depressed area (normally the bottom of the can) and this becomes your primer bin.

Below is a picture of a penny can stove before I sealed it with engine sealer. You can see a little bit of the flame coming out from the middle right where the two cans overlap. After sealing it up this little guy ran for about 15 minutes and would bring two full cups of water to a boil in around eight minutes. It weighs virtually nothing and I've found the best fuel to pack in the trunk of your car is the yellow bottle of Heet Fuel additive. I like Heet because it's in a bottle that won't leak in the trunk of your car and this type of fuel is perfect for a penny can pressure stove. There is great debate over which gives you a faster boil time, alcohol or Heet. I've tested them and I can tell you - who cares, they're about the same. Use what's easiest for you to acquire and keep safely in your car.

There are issues with a stove like this. You need to create a separate pot stand and it only burns for a limited time so cooking pasta is out of the question.

Vargo Outdoors

I love this stove. It's a production model of the Penny Can Stove and has a couple of features making it worth the money. It allows you to put a pot right onto the little legs which unfold and make a base for the stove and your pot. It also has the ability to burn Esbit Solid Fuel Cubes tabs... A fuel I hate, but when push comes to shove, they'll save your life. The flaw in this stove is it can be a tab bit unstable if you're using a large pot. The maximum amount of water I put on here is two cups and if you learn to use it properly you can make it more stable. The bottom legs should be used as spikes and driven into the ground, not as legs. This makes an excellent platform. If you are on rock or wood, you can't do that and have to be careful. All in all I give this stove an A-.

Jet Coil Stove

These stoves are a little more complex to create but have a little better boil times than the pressure stoves. Technically they're still a pressure stove, when you heat the coil it turns the liquid fuel into gas and feeds it into the coil using a wick fed through the bent tubing. I had to build a jig to bend the tubing:

                                                            

The real trick is to fill the tubing with sand so it won't kink when you bend it on the jig. I've experimented with building different types of jet coil stoves and have had some good results with boil times. The draw back is having to build a pot stand to go with the stove. By the time I came up with a good windscreen and pot stand I came back to the Vargo above. I've built both the screw on lid style and the penny can/ jet coil hybrid pictured below. The best part of the hybrid is the cool screw fill spout.