 Has anyone used Hexi Stoves? I'm looking for a cheap, compact, light cooking stove. The hexi stoves come in at about £4, which seems stupidly cheap and makes me very wary.
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 This is probably one for our esteemed former armed forces contingent!
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 Dont know about esteemed. Hexamine gives me a headache. No control, heavy, blackens everything, not really reusable - certainly not for confined space use, stinks and sets the grass alight. There I think I got everything Some folk like them though. . Edit: and dont mistake it for Kendal mint cake.
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| Edited: 07/01/08 21:01 |
 Pretty much the only things they have going for them are cheapness (of initial purchase) and compact size. That said, I still have a soft spot for them, maybe because it's been ten years since I last used one!
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| Edited: 07/01/08 21:03 |
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I think I'd go with the suggestion of a gas burner of some sort for a first stove. One of the ones I've known people rave about for being good and reasonably priced was the something or other "thermatec?" The advantage of that one being that it works better in the cold and the burner is floorstanding and connected to the gas canister via a tube. This means the pan is closer to the floor and more stable rather than being balanced on top of burner on canister.
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 Hexy burners are messy, dangerous on moorland and fells, once lit will burn on water and make a hell of a mess of your mess tins. I always carried a gas burner when on exercise and always binned the hexy blocks and never drew the burner from the Q marks out of ten 3
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 Get the F1 Lite here for £19.99 post paid Or you could try the Greenheat Eco stove. You can get the Trangia 27 for £29.99 from the above link. It is about 850 grams but that does include your pots and things. You can also get a Greenheat fuel cell for it from the same place again.
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| Edited: 07/01/08 21:51 |
 Your other option would be a trangia in some guise or another. They can be had at sensible prices and will last a lifetime (mine is at least 20 years old). They are simple dependable but not the lightest or cheapest to run. The floor standing burner stoves tend to cost more money, probably getting on for double that of a screw on canister stove.
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The Trangia looks great. Did a search and found a 'how to' video tution on using one. But £29.00!! Why did no one tell me you need to take out a second mortgage to fund this outdoor living habit?
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 Trangias come with two pans and a frying pan and kettle if you pick the right model, due to "no moving parts" will last a very long time.... Two pans works for feeding two people, or cooking next dish whilst consuming last. The lid is useful so avoid putting grassy pans back over the flame, and the lid keeps grass+flies out of what you've just cooked. As such it's a total "solution" in a neat package. You can make a two-course dish (e.g. chicken curry + rice) begin the 1st course in the larger pan, then keep it warm (or steaming) as you cook another disk on the smaller pan underneath. Not particularly good for toast mind you, but I have speared a bun and held it over flame to toast-esque. Fuel is about 40pence/day if you count cooking as tea+porridge for breakfast, then coffee+stew type meal in evening. About 1pint for 5 days. If it at all sways you, Trangia are very stable and tolerable of wind, you can stick them 20 feet away begin to make some tea whilst you erect the tent and get your bed sorted and you can leave it to cool your porridge whilst you roll your bed and start de-pegging your tent. They are not fast (to begin, they get faster as the meths warm up) so it suits cooking in parallel to doing something else or simply when you got lots of time. Seeing as you're posting in winter, when you've finished cooking, let the burner cool, then fill it (not too high, about 2/3rds full) and loosely place lid on the burner and place on cold surface til its cold, then tighten lid, place in a sealable bag and have it handy to insert in a fleece pocket before its needed, to warm the meths, that will make lighting and quicker cooking when you're freezing having stopped hiking and need a quicker cook. There needs to be more Trangia cooking courses, how to use the simmer ring for example. Those of us with practiced Trangia skills love walking those wobbly gas burners being fiddled with t'other side of the field....
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 I think you are ready to be introduced to the joys and cheapness of making your own meths stoves out of empty drinks cans. See http://zenstoves.net/ Just remember that when the Americans say 'alcohol' they mean what we call 'meths'.
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The GoSsytem Trail Classic stove is a very good cylinder mounted gas burner. It's pretty light, easy to use, has good flame control, pretty effective pan supports and can be had for around £10 from a few outlets on the net. Might not be quite as good as, say, the MSR pocket rocket, but it's a third of the price and will do the job. Really cheap alu pans can be got from Blacks, Millets etc., giving you a really cheap cooking package.
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 toast-esque - I love it!
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 do a search on ebay, you can pick up an msr (gas) style stove for about £15 very good actually, lightweight with a quick boil time
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 Frum beat me to it, If you are considering Meths as a way of cooking it can cost buttons to make your own. The zen stoves site is good I got a lot of great info there and also just by picking the brains of a few OM members (dont forget google). Ive got a great solo cook system consisting of an Alpkit Mytimug. I use the foil from a disposable barbeque for a wind shield. The lid from an old Laphroaig tin as a priming pan. The burner itself is a vaseline intensive care lip balm tin with holes drilled in the lid. The fuel bottle is one that held hair die, rescued just as girlfriend was binning it (40ml I think). A small bic lighter which I will probably replace with a firesteel. The pot stand I made in work using 5mm stainless rod and some M5 nuts, this probably the hardest thing to replicate unless you have access to a workshop. There are way lighter ways to make a pot stand though just google it. Only £17 for the mug and everything else more or less was recycled for a complete solo cookset, which is so light I often carry it on day hikes for a brew. Il post some pics if you like? All that said there are some great wee gas burners out there too. Coleman F1 lite, MSR pocket rocket and the ones on backpackinglight.co.uk spring to mind.
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BC - I used ex MOD hexi stoves for three weeks in the Atlas Mountains about 4 years ago. Worked fine, with no probs with airlines. Agree to some extent with comments above, but we cooked outside, under the stars - would hate to use them in a tent. Billies were a little black but managable. I like the way you have so little to bring back at the end, assuming correct fuel budget. On the second trip, we used a multi-fuel stove. Calculations for that trip showed gas as the best re weight, but probs getting hold of the stuff in Morocco and we did not have time to faff around. Paraffin and hexis started about the same weight for the three weeks but one still has quite a bit of weight with an empty stove, so hexi would have been better after a while. I think that if it's for UK camping, gas would be my preferred choice, perhaps with a multifuel if you need large amounts of heat in the winter. Good luck with whatever you get!
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Lidl do a trangia clone from time to time and they usually sell for about £11 or so, so keep an eye on their website. They are around the same size and slightly heavier than the trangia 25. If you do find one of these check the burner straight away, they sometimes leak. BTW, £29.99 is a good price for a Trangia 27. If all this is too pricey You could always make your own Just remember that when the Americans say alcohol they are referring to a range of alcohol based fuels including what we call methylated spirit.
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| Edited: 08/01/08 16:34 |
RE. TRANGIA STOVES. HAYDEN SAID: "They are simple dependable but not the lightest or cheapest to run."
But surely the only additional cost is the meths? Or is there more to these stoves that I understand?
Also, thanks to Nigel for the price break-down.
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 A bit (very!) concerned about Rob Dixon's line about hexy burners not being an issue on airlines. I would disagree. I am sure they and all other inflammable products (lighter fuel etc. etc.) are specifically banned from hold luggage. They appear on their photo boards as items not to take. Aside from any future issues about making check in staff even more twitchy when they see backpacks turn up, there is the very serious personal responsibility about putting quantity of dangerous cargo in an airplane! Please don't.
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