The Squeezebox Files

Glad you like it.  I'l try to put up some pictures of the latest version, with improvements such as folded edges, etc.  All of which make it more robust.  Oh, and with holes punched in the right place before I folded it up...

If I could make them, I'd sell them.  But it's the manufacture that's the problem...  All those folds are rather tedious to form by hand, but the end result is certainly worth it.

Unlike the Caldera Clone, I can't provide an automatic design tool, as the design requires a numerical solution, which I can't do in PostScript.

Include me to the list with potential buyers. This thing seems to offer everything you need from a windscreen: windprotection, heat exchanger function, easily storable, it's stable, ... And while you intended tit for a meth stove, I see no reason why it couldn't be adapted to any other type of stove.

I am pretty clumsy but if you're not able to massproduce them, I want to try it myself.

I'd like to give it a go but I must admit it takes some understanding based on your description. It's quite a design process you went through, all the best garden shed designers probably go through the same trial and error. Will you be publishing a step guide or template?

I got a AGG cookset with a stiff foil windshield and have never been too impressed with it but your design seems to solve the problems I've found with the usual can type meths burners with simple foil shield. My shield was a Primus one as I didn't have the foil when I needed it to make a custom one.

If you can give a more precise description of the final design with dimensions I am sure people will make it. That's assuming you don't want to make and sell them yourself. In which case I will probably place an order. I too am clumsy.

Got anymore projects planned?

Superb!  I love home made gear.  I’ve been using a sidewall burning red bull burner with a Alpkit MyTiMug balanced on top of it.  A great combination but really unstable unless you’ve got really flat ground.  This windshield potholder is the perfect solution.  I’d be interested in a PDF or whatever you’ve got so I could try and adapt it to the Alpkit and similar sized mugs.

I notice on the article you had a penny stove as well as a Red Bull Burner, is there any difference in efficiency between the two when using the windscreen?  I’ve just been using foil folded into four thicknesses.  My Red Bull burner boils loads faster but uses more fuel than a standard top burning non pressurised pop can stove.

Excellent stuff, CP.

I have neither the patience nor the skill for the process that you have gone through - but I do have the background to appreciate the majesty of your crown-stove! (as that's what it looks like to me).

Have you considered circulating your design with the US lightweight backpacking community? I think you'll get a standing ovation...

If you were to commercialise the idea, I'd say the best way to do it would be to sell it in combination with a well-designed pot & burner as a one-stop product. You could scale it to a few different pot dimensions to give some consumer choice. And if you want to patent the idea, the US uses a first to file system so get to it before someone else whisks this up and becomes a household name like Coleman!

And yes, I'd certainly be a potential customer...

A follow on from what JB said, you could try to interest someone like AGG in it as they sell a cookset with a meths burner but no windshield support system. A Ligthweight system like yours could be sized to fit their cooksets that come bundled with a very light non-stick pan, cosy, neoprene case, measuring cup, meths container with pour spout, can stove and a plastic cup (or tupperware) that fits together in the cosy and case. It would be more like an all in one system, kind of like a caldera cone stove with cosy and pan that all comes out of a case less than 8" diameter. I don't think anyone does an all in one system that goes into a package little bigger than a 1L pan. Afterall it is not just weight but packability that is important.

One more thing at last we all know the real name of another OM personality, Kevin.

Ah...

but Cap'n Kev has left his identity open for years to anyone who cared to look at UKC...

The 'patent or not to patent' issue caused me some anguish.  In the end, I decided that the potential market is probably fairly small, and probably not worth the effort.  I might submit it for Alpkit's CoLab09 competition, though, just for a bit of fun.  I have other ideas that I'm still musing on patenting, as the market is much larger, I know how to make them, and there'd be a healthy profit margin.  Naturally, I'm staying schtumm...

It's possible that someone in the US snaps the idea up, but good luck to them if they can find a way to make them; I thought of all sorts of Heath Robinson contraptions to do it, but the dual fold is a rather nasty thing.  I'm sure someone with a packaging background (e.g. folded card) could do it.

Given the generally positive response here, from some fellow stovies/lightweight/gear freaks, it looks like I may have to write another article; 'How to Make the Squeezebox Stove'.

I've got a rough PDF that shows just the basic plan of cuts and folds, but not the best sequence, or the tedious method of forming the folds.

The latest version is a one-piece effort, to test the top & bottom and pan support reinforcement folding.  It no longer fits in the pan, but that wasn't its purpose...

> It would be more like an all in one system

Like this, you mean...?

;-)

Bravo CP. Completely over my head but I admire the work you put into these projects.

Does that sound sarcastic? It's not meant to; I never can tell.  Seriously impressed

> perhaps Mr Burley could launch it into space.....

Funnily enough, there is a link between the Squeezebox and rockets; in pondering how to make the thing, I remembered the corrugated sides of the Saturn V sections.  Admittedly, they only had single-level folds.  And I look at corrugated aluminium sidings on warehouses, etc...