Taking no chances with the worktop this time, eh...?
I notice you only take the lower can half way up the side. I find that I get a better seal if I take the lower can all the way up, and shorten the inner. My argument is that it's the stronger shoulder on the inner can, pressing out against the wall of the lower can. With the short lower and full length upper, you don't get the same degree of interference fit.
What I have noticed is that with all the burners I've made this way (all of which are pretty similar, being based around a common conic section wall design), they all have a single pucker/buckle in the outer wall, about 5mm below the upper shoulder. You can feel/hear it go 'pop' as you're pressing the cans together.
No I had to tell big porky pies to my boss when asked about the burnt ring, I said someone must've left one of the biscuit die elements on too long when testing or something like that? was'nt me though.... lol
What you say about the interference fit makes sense, I'll change the design of my next batch of stoves.
I wish I hadn't got back into reading this thread now, as I'm getting "re-hooked" into mini stove stuff LOL.
Please see one of my early model red bull stoves, next to my smallest pressure stove.
The little pressure stove is a fully functioning model, with a good flame (approx 12cm high), and although it has a hotter flame than a red bull or coke/pepsi stove, it only has an endurance of 4.5 mins.
Back to being serious. A lot of the pics I've seen in this thread, are of side burner design (with the burner holes VERY VERY low down, as per WBS), Almost all the stoves I make, have the burner holes on the concave lip of the can (base).
The red bull (mini G, in U.S. parlance), shown (sorry for blurry pic) has 17 1mm holes, wheras my pepsi/coke stoves have 24 1mm holes.
Personally, I tend to use coke, or ginger beer cans, as they are aluminium, rather than steel pepsi cans, which I find fiddly and tougher to cut and work with.
Why not just buy one ready made? It's fun messing around with tin cans - but these guys have the things on the shelf. I've bought a side burning stainless steel version and an aluminium one too. They're works of art.. Check out here: http://www.justroaming.com/stove/index.htm
At £4.50 for the Stainless model it's worth not cutting your fingers for !
Hi Bog trotter. I don't know if you actually have the gear mentioned in your link, but having looked at it a few things struck me. Firstly (and only for me personally) I would rather spend 7 minutes of my own time building a stove than pay anyone else to do it!, plus knowing how to actually build one for myself means that I can do it at any time while I am out walking, if the need for an extra cooker should arise.
The more serious point is that the design of the pot stand in the link is a classic example of messing with something that isn't broken and thus didnt need fixing. The stand in the link had 11 "stays" sticking out horizontally around its upper edge, Now although these are curled back at their ends possibly to avoid snagging, they still take up extra space, and would catch on other gear in your cup/pack, or yourself. Also as these stays would get very very hot during stove use (and thus weaker), they would not really offer any useful support for a pot that was intent on tipping (assuming that your pot was willfully intent on spoiling your day of course LOL). Now if the stand in the link had been made the traditional way, it could have been two "squares" wider around its circumference for only the addition of the equivalent of 6 of these stays. Thus it would have been lighter, more stable, stronger, less fiddly, more easy to store, and less prone to "damage" costly pots (during storage) with rust marks. As CP mentions above somewhere, there is no point getting too obsessed with exact instructions on building, but then there is no point in doing something different, just to stand out.
Reading my above comments, they sound rantish, but thats not my intent, maybe it was because the above was all "pre morning espresso".
> What did you make that tiny pressure stove from Ray?
Judging by my continuing mission to find materials for stoves, I suspect it's made from mini aerosol cans, as used for room fresheners. Glade, Air-Wick and the like. Or medicine aerosols, such as Beconase, Ventolin, etc. I was thinking about using these atr the weekend, but couldn't find any empties lying around (used to suffer hayfever, and Beconase was what I used of the time).
I'm almost ashamed to say that I bought a tiny aluminium bottle in my 99p store. It was a handbag-sized manual pump-action 'Femfresh' spray. It looks perfect for making a tiny White Box stove. I'm tempted to nickname it the Fresh Box stove...
I was tinkering with ideas for a pressure burner with a narrow head, and a rootle through my 'bits and bobs box' revealed an aluminium cigar tube. So I've made one with the screw-top end inserted into a red bull base. It produces a fairly large ring of flame, but is a bit sooty. I may investigate with hole size. I'm also working out a way of using the rounded end of the cigar tube, and making a way of allowing it to be removed for filling.
It's a secret BBF!. Plus I wont tell you, as you will only make one yourself, and to be honest, if you made one of these (as I did), then you would need to take a long look at yourself to figure out why you manufactured something so impractical, and fiddly, .....just because you could LOL. Sice building this I had to enroll in AA (alcohol stovers anonimous)
But to be serious, although it was fun to do, it is totally impractical, as it needs a screwdriver to undo the mini screw, plus a syringe to fill it.
Although, in the pic below, the flame does look quite "cool". Specification wise it's 21mm high by 22mm wide, and has 8 x 1mm burner holes.
When (and if) I build the next mini stove, which will be less than a quarter the size of this one, I will post a pic of it.
> Almost all the stoves I make, have the burner holes on the concave lip of the can
That's interesting, Ray, and I could easily try this by operating one of my 'open' burners in side-burning mode and see how it goes.
I adopted a fairly large gap between the top rim and the jet ring with a view to allowing the fuel to mix with air, and to keep a burner gap between jet and pan. It's less than it is on a Trangia.
> As CP mentions above somewhere, there is no point getting too obsessed with exact instructions on building
The only time I'd follow instructions carefully is if a stove was shown to give better efficiency if made a certain way; number of holes, hole diameter, hole position wrt burner top or pan, etc. But I'd want to see tests results (or at least some mention of this process) for a design. Having spent a while on Friday watching YouTube videos, it's clear that there are a lot of people out there building stoves in a haphazard manner, rather than performing even rudimentary analytical burn tests before finalising design details.
Okay, the pictures of the cigar tube red bull burner
The three parts; no inner wall required on this one.
Parts assembled into burner, before I made the burner jet holes.
Burner running. Considering that the whole idea of the cigar tube was to create a narrow flame ring, it actually produces a rather wide ring, and burnt rather sooty with 8 pricked holes. With 16 1mm drilled holes, the ring was a bit smaller, and the flame less yellow.
Oh, and here's an idea for a simmer ring system for open burners with jets around the rim. The idea is that you adjust the position of the two rings to change to size of the hole, thus controlling the flame.
I think that answers Bog Trotter's question better than any answer. "Because I can..." (pun intended).
> I really should get out more!!!
I have to confess that I'm becoming obsessive about collecting cans. I made an attachment for my walking pole on Friday that is a can scoop (made, of course, from recycled 2 pint plastic milk bottles, a couple of drawing pins, a rubber band and some cord), and allows me to rescue cans from deep in bushes/over fences...
Then there was the temptation to empty a big wheelie bin full of red bull cans outside a pub... I think I'll end up going into my local and asking for red bull empties; at least they won't have chav spittle around the rim... I might have to make up some excuse about running an activity for a Scout troop... Trouble is, I seem to prefer the base of the 20p 'Cola' cans from my local Premier store to the Red Bull can...
ps. Welcome to the thread, Ray; I hoped you might bring your experience along...
In my above pic are a lotus flower made from seven up, coke and ginger beer cans.
On the right is an essensial oil burner (pat maybe pending).
The oil burners require three cans to complete, and work very well (for gram-counters they weigh 23g). Although the oil burners could have a walking/travel use, in that naural essential oils far out perform any commercial insect reppelents, the reason I have shown this pic is to highlight a different construction method for stoves.
I sometimes make (but have no pic) meths stoves for cold wether/snow use, and use a similar method of construction as the burner above.
The idea is that by placing three can sections (like having two bases, but spaced out, and one (usual top section)) that the meths vat/reservoir is kept up from the ground, and thus improves flame size/effect and reduces priming problems.
I test these snow stoves against ordinary coke can stoves by placing them in the freezer for thirty minutes (with an equal amount of meths in each stove), once they are removed, I place them on a similarly frozen surface. The main problem with all stoves is that they can be very hard to light (but much easier than gas or petrol) and can require a flint and steel, as the meths refuse to co-operate with matches. But once going the insulated types work much better (better still if on the hill you could keep the fuel warmer in a coat or something). So far the coldest condition I have used these snow stoves, was on Pen Y Fan at minus 5c, and they worked fine (although I did use a vaude folding windshield, as my folding coke can windshields would have blown away).
Both the oil burner, and the snow stoves are fairly simple to make, with the most difficult part (for me anyway) being putting the lower second section inside of the main body without it buckling or creasing.
The oil burner above is one whole coke can with a suitable tea light hole cut out. a standard coke can base in the bottom (upside down) to hold the tea light. and another in the top (right way up) to store the water/oil.
The only other advice I have right now, is something someone said to me once
"dogs are not just for christmas.......................they are good for Friday nights too... as long as they dont have sharp claws, and pay half the bill!"
How do you pierce a pressurised can? Serious question - Do you have to push the fanny deoderiser button until all of the 'fragranced water' comes out and doesnt come out any more, and then sort of stab the tin?
I hope you wore gloves if that tin was picked out of a hedgerow, I mean it was probably last handled by manky fanny fingers...
It's not pressurised, in this case, as it includes a manual pump squirter mechanism. I had to slice that sideways to get it off the bottle. I bought it new, in the packet, from the 99p Store...
However, for other products that are pressurised, I'd probably wait until they were naturally empty from use (hence looking for old Beconase units), or else I'd take the thing outside and puncture a small hole in the side and ignite the fast-venting gas.
KIDS! Don't try this at home, or else you may end up with a butane/propane grenade...
I once opened a can of shaving gel that was very empty, by removing the little rubber plug at the bottom (to allow it to be recycled). It wasn't; lots of gas came out. And even after that had shut up, and I punctured damned great holes in the thing, I thought it would be empty, and thought "I'll just burn off what's left to make it safe"
Hmmmmmmmm I think I shall give this a wide swerve... But thanks for sharing that info with me CP. Do try to keep you face and hands in one piece wont you....
Ignition is optional, of course. But CO2 is a far less damaging greenhouse gas than propane or butane... And burning would probably get rid of most of the pong (I'm assuming you're thinking of deodorant cans).
, I said someone must've left one of the biscuit die elements on too long when testing or something like that? was'nt me though.... lol
