Although I'm a great fan of the trangia burners, along with the Swiss Army Trangia set, the civi version, the volcano cooker etc, I do enjoy playing with home-made coke cans etc - youtube has some great tutorials and even a mechanical moron like me can make a stab at them.
There were three things I was trying to achieve - one being a mini-burner that I could use in a Crusader set-up instead of esbit tabs. The second was one that could provide a fairly long "simmer" burn, and the third was a hot burner that would boil water very rapidly. I'm enclosing some photos of my attempts at all three.
The first is a version of the penny stove - I've shown two - with and without a preheat wick stuck on the side. The problem here is to get a stove that is small enough to fit below the support bar of the Crusader burner support set, as if a full cup directly touches the burner, it tends to draw heat away from it and it goes out. The ones shown both work well, heating 500ml of cold water in the s/s crusader cup in about 10 minutes - this without any windshield in a slight breeze. Ambient temp about 7C. It goes on to burn for about 25-30 minutes - enough to cook rice for example. So it also meets the second criteria for a decent burn time.
The third one is really easy to make from one coke can - basically cut the bottom off, cut a hole in the top after trimming to size and bend it with your fingers to get the shape shown. Insert top into bottom, pour in meths and light - job done! This heated 250ml of water in a s/s SAT lid - without cover - inside the house in under 3 minutes. Even more impressively, I rested a kettle on it outside, and it boiled 1.4 litres of water in 10 minutes despite the slight breeze and with no windshield!
There were three things I was trying to achieve - one being a mini-burner that I could use in a Crusader set-up instead of esbit tabs. The second was one that could provide a fairly long "simmer" burn, and the third was a hot burner that would boil water very rapidly. I'm enclosing some photos of my attempts at all three.
The first is a version of the penny stove - I've shown two - with and without a preheat wick stuck on the side. The problem here is to get a stove that is small enough to fit below the support bar of the Crusader burner support set, as if a full cup directly touches the burner, it tends to draw heat away from it and it goes out. The ones shown both work well, heating 500ml of cold water in the s/s crusader cup in about 10 minutes - this without any windshield in a slight breeze. Ambient temp about 7C. It goes on to burn for about 25-30 minutes - enough to cook rice for example. So it also meets the second criteria for a decent burn time.
The third one is really easy to make from one coke can - basically cut the bottom off, cut a hole in the top after trimming to size and bend it with your fingers to get the shape shown. Insert top into bottom, pour in meths and light - job done! This heated 250ml of water in a s/s SAT lid - without cover - inside the house in under 3 minutes. Even more impressively, I rested a kettle on it outside, and it boiled 1.4 litres of water in 10 minutes despite the slight breeze and with no windshield!
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