Monkey Boy stove mods

[peaks]

Hi,
I've been very impressed with the Monkey Boy stove (brill idea), and when I started to play I came up with the following :

- use fibre glass rope (the sort used for sealing log burning stoves) coiled into the tin, completely filling it instead of loft insulation. This has the advantage of fewer loose fibres and no need for a metal mesh covering. It also enables the stove to take a spark easier from a firesteel.

- the vaseline tin sits really well on a titanium folding esbit stove (this sort http://www.backpackinglight.co.uk/product104.asp) giving a really small and lightweight potstand + multi fuel option when used with a foil windshield

 

[mountainm]

Pictures or it never happened

 

[Rod Paradise]

I like the idea of the rope - although I'm not sure if it'll wick well enough coiled (only 1 way to find out).

Using a piece of welder's mat on top of the loft insulation can help reduce the loose fibres & it wicks fine.

The mesh just looks good (I got a big sheet of copper modellers mesh of Amazon for a few quid).

The improvement I made (and others suggested it first on the original thread) as a screwtop tin, allowing a fill to be kept in the stove for when just out a daywalk.

 

[peaks]

Pictorial evidence not available m'lud, the jury will have to visualise ..........

 

[peaks]

I suspect that there are lots of variations on this simple and very effective idea. Using the rope doesn't seem to make a lot of difference to the boil times. There might be differences depending on the thickness of the rope?

I used a airgun pellet tin (.177) with similar results some time ago in the Crusader - and Crosman pellets come in a screw top tin............(I didn't have any Crosmans!)

 

[ateallthepies]

Pellet tins are my favourite thing for making stoves as I have loads of empty ones in all sizes. This is my version of the Monkey Boy stove...

Steve.

 

[peaks]

Very neat!

On a similar theme..

I added some fibreglass rope to my Vargo Triad XE stove which I'd bought a while back and given up on, thinking it was rubbish. I had tried loft insulation in it but it did'nt help.
The fibreglass rope has made a significant improvement and increased the burn time from 7-10 mins (if lucky) to up to 15-20 mins. Admittedly its not going full blast for all that time but it still cooks....and the burner fits in the crusader well.
Its still not as good as the monkey boy version though!

 

[oldtimer]

I'm glad I read this today. After reading the original article, I made up a monkey boy stove but lacked the tea-strainer bit and couldn't find one anywhere. No one seems to stock them now tea bags are so popular. I was going to use some wire mesh, but the fibre glass rope trick looks to be a good option. I once made something similar using a coiled lampwick inside a suitable tin. It worked well and caught a spark effectively but didn't last long. I too use an esbit stove as it fits my Optimus cookpot and have had to tailor pepsi can stoves to fit. The ones that work best don't fit and the ones that fit don't work well. It's fun trying though.