How to make Meths Stoves Q&A

Other recent threads have shown a lot of interest in drink can stoves, with posts from both people who make or have made them and others interested in doing so.   This thread is intended as a place to ask and answer questions.  Ideally it will be all about 'how' and not about 'why'.

Ok, Ive made a few different stoves and am generally pleased with them. One thing Id like to do though is make them more efficient. What effect does jet size have on this?

The stoves Ive made are all pressurised jet stoves, the smallest drill bit Ive got is 1mm. If I made this smaller would the stove burn hotter? I.E. quicker boil time?

But why would you want to.... (joke )

Penny Stove

Zen Stoves

for starters 

BBF,  Jay Ham from Backpackinglight.com. wrote "For those who don't follow politics but like to debate, the number and size of jets for an alcohol stove might be a suitable topic.  Different theories abound ........... . There are tradeoffs with different combinations .......... . In general we have found that more jets and/or larger jets result in slightly faster boil times with greater fuel waste......... ."

My answer is that I haven't even made up my own mind on that one.  Has anyone done any tests of otherwise identical stoves with different hole arrangements?

I have jeted a tealight stove....

But you refuse to believe it works Frum. It did.

Fossil Bluff wrote (see)

I have jeted a tealight stove....

But you refuse to believe it works Frum. It did.

No I don't.  I just think it was a mistake to make a side-burner out of something not strong enough to take the weight of the pot, and then have to hold the pot just above it while it heated up.  That's the sort of behaviour that gets you burnt hands.

I made a pot stand

The design Im using at the moment is an extremely simple one. Its just a Vaseline lip balm tin with the jets (24 I think) drilled around the top.

As there isnt really any construction involved maybe I should get a number of the tins and experiment with different jet patterns/numbers/size? As the the  Tins are all the same size, shape and volume I suppose the only variable would be the jets.

I just wondered if anybody knew the answer before I went and spent time and money experimenting. I shall report my findings back here. (probably wont get a chance till Im back on night shift in a few weeks)

As well as an answer you should get very soft lips BBF

Because the UK Heineken cans are different from the US ones, Mark Drury's (Mr.Penny stove) original instructions don't work.  Of the two ways round the problem the first is described by David Elder at the UK penny stove site quoted by Roger above. In essence it consists of filling in the gap with J.B.Weld, an epoxy which can stand high temperatures. The second is to use other cans, which is what Charles the Kiwi did when he made his Penny Stove.

In principle there is no problem with using Coke cans.  The barrel shape and ridges of a Heinekin can make them stronger than coke cans, but that extra strength is not needed here and a coke can is certainly strong enough for the job.  In practice Mark Drury found he had problems 'tuning' the design to other cans, but as he had solved the problems using US Heinekin cans he didn't need to look further.

Over to Charles the Kiwi - did you have problems, and how did you solve them?

Frum you may like these I made earlier this year ...

This one was made using a mini coke can, you can get them in most supermarkets, they are like mixer sized little cans. The key with them is to simplify the process by instead of making an inner wall instead just make one big hole in the top then make a strip of the aluminium to use as wall as seen below, I just thought of this technique one night while playing around with them and no one I know of has ever done this so I was proud to see it work really well, I used this at the OM meet last year in Killin to cook with and also used it at altitude to make hot chocolates on Lingmoor Fell..

I also made a 50g pot stand/ wind shield / ground protecter using a large fruit tin...

The normal size and beer size can stoves were slightyl more effective but only slighty. However as they only weigh 4g more than the tiny one I think personally I'd go with the normal sized ones as they slightly better permorfmers. I made this one out of Guinness cans, I tried the closed top ones but the priming is a pain the backside and messy, although they do perform better I'd rather go with the trangia type design thats easier to light...

P.S. To cut up the cans I always used a Gerber LST Microlight knife, they are amazing little things and only weigh 10 grams!

"I'm waiting for this to go pop under too much pressure" yeah I stood well clear when I was making this type, mainly after hearing about Morphs first prototypes nearly blowing his garage up!

I used a drawing pin for making my holes, perfect sized holes and easy to get out once you've punctured the hole.

"the technique of just creating a score around the cans and then going down to the score and bending back the can creates a brilliantly smooth cut around the cans"

could you explain a bit more please jamie.