 http://www.epinions.com/content_3914899588 I think that I might well have found the answer here at this link for Charles, to the fuel question he posed earlier on in this thread! Which had become a rather a bit of a Holy Grail quest for me over this last week gone by! 
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 Thank you Trevor. I've been getting a few pops and spittings testing Penny stoves. Although I would expect that to happen less frequently with experience, I'm coming to the conclusion that I don't want to use one when I'm sitting in the tent with the stove in the tent entrance. Any comments/suggestions. I'm partly influenced by the success of the two open jet stoves I completed last night - or rather the JB Weld was cured by then. For anyone not familiar with the description it covers stoves like the Trangia burner. They are more fiddly than the Penny to build, but no problems with using them.
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 To be honest - if I wanted to carry a trangia type burner, I'd probably carry my trangia burner. It works really well, and I'm less likely to injure myself with it, than I would be trying to build a copy of it.
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I'm coming to the conclusion that I don't want to use one when I'm sitting in the tent with the stove in the tent entrance. Any comments/suggestions. Wrote Frum. I am the wrong person maybe to ask that of really! As I am very much a cook outside of the tent, away from even the vestibule or porch even very often; having witnessed once someone in the past having a real bad nearby tent fire, but a hundred metres away from my little outdoors home from home! Once you see a bad one of those, with the person covered in burning nylon etc, then you get a bit over cautious by tendency-or at least I have since done!
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| Edited: 24/04/08 22:21 |
I've been getting a few pops and spittings testing Penny stoves. Wrote Frum. That seems to be a most common occurrence indeed from reading now the last week, quite such a lot upon the subject! The key advice seems to be patience, patience and more patience, in abundance, for certain! Also reading through, it appears to me to be quite amazing, just how many folks do seem to have a diy stove build disaster right at the final closing stages seemingly; so close near to finishing the full total design build. Is it that they work on too hard, trying to do too much of a build in one whole day there perhaps? Tiredness then causing mistakes to occur, a little slip here, or a tiny mistake there. Maybe it is best then to plan a build, spreading it out over a set number of days with each stage of the build pre-planned in, to reduce the risk of ultimate final build failiure maybe then?You comleted two stoves in one night btw! Wow! That's amazing, quite a production line! Did you the same night then though have the Penny stove failiures then maybe, perchance?
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| Edited: 24/04/08 22:32 |
Trevor. Stop speculating and get some service in. Make 3 meths stoves the come back and tell us about them. Good luck.
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Yeah, very soon now, I will do a build of my own for sure there Frum! At the moment though I am just building up a stock of tin cans and the other kit needed-tools and all. Plus I think I still need to read a bit more first, but then will commit myself to a couple of builds or three for definite, as I said this summertime. 
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Piece of advice Trevor. Have nothing to do with tin cans - just aluminium. Get a magnet and tour the supermarket aisles testing cans. If it sticks to the magnet reject it. If the store detectives ask you what you are doing don't tell them the truth, they will think you are a lunatic. They won't know you are just a stovie.
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Cheers there Ivo! I will have a good little look at that one then!
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Yeah, Frum, I do hear what you're saying there all about the merits of the Alu over the steel cans in general; but I want to mess about a bit with both, to make a hybrid as well too you see!
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| Edited: 25/04/08 00:16 |
 Steel drinks cans work okay, but they end up rusting. Aluminium drinks cans in my experience are more prone to tearing when you mate the two halves. I might try annealing the bottom one first in the gas stove next time... You don't need many tools; a pair of kitchen scissors or general purpose cutters and a 'pin tack'. And possibly a strong knife. It helps if you understand the basic principle of how the stoves are meant to work. You need to allow heat to get into the fuel to allow it to form vapour which then burns from the jets. If we can encourage the jets to form by keeping a pressure in the stove, it will burn better (it doesn't need much pressure, though). So it's good if you can make your stove relatively airtight in the 'vapour chamber' (between inner and outer wall in an open, Trangia-style burner, or between upper and lower halves in a 'penny' style burner). In a Trangia-style, open-centred burner, the fuel at the bottom forms a seal for the vapour chamber, but you need to keep a good seal on the inner wall and at the top. An overlapped inner wall will help, and a well-made inner wall, with straight, parallel sides, and top and bottom halves well mated should make a reasonably airtight seal for the rest. Since fuel must be allowed into the vapour chamber, you do need to make a few shallow nicks in the bottom of the inner wall. Inserting a little wicking material (e.g. glass fibre or mineral wool) into the vapour chamber may help to bring the fuel into contact with the hotter, upper part of the burner, so encouraging vapourisation. Pack in too much, though, and you'll probably stop fuel getting th the top.
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> trying to do too much of a build in one whole day there perhaps? I can build a stove in about 15 minutes or less. I made my first side-burner at night on a campsite in Wales after being in the pub, using just a penknife, and sitting on a bench, in the dark, drinking beer. Which provided the cans. It worked well enough. As Frum says; stop reading and speculating and just build a few. Cans are free; if you don't want to buy them, just pick up a few from in the street...
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 "If the store detectives ask you what you are doing don't tell them the truth, they will think you are a lunatic" why not just tell them you are a lunatic. avoids all that second guessing  or engage them in a conversation about rivets and cans provide the best mix of metals for home producing rivets for the hand built steam train you're constructing... <freeep! wibble wibble kerrrangah!>
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