Small Camp Stove Follow Up

Today in the News:  It was a good Christmas with good friends.  Hope yours was great.

Link of the Day:  I'm too tired for a link of the day. :{  How about a drink of the day? Pinot Noir.  That'll do it.

Small Camp Stove Follow Up


You can read the article on how to build this stove here.

So I got a few comments on the camp stove with some people wondering how long it would last.  Today I had some time and decided to clock it.

Here is the stove.  I put it on the grill because it is still really dry out and I'm paranoid about starting a forest fire.  And, frankly, if for some reason the stove failed structurally, it would be easy to control.

The egg timer.  Fun toy for morons like me.

6:30 - Can not too hot to touch.

This is a bad picture, but it is cool, the smoke just sort of resides in between the cardboad inside the can.

23:55 - Can still not hot to the touch.

40:53 - Can has become warm to the touch and I'm flippin' board.  Boredom and I don't mix.

So I decided to see if it would boil a kettle.

You can't see it, but I can......STEAM!

This happened about 8 minutes after I put the kettle on.

Again, hard to see, but at 63:00, we got a rolling boil.  So about 13 minutes in windy conditions.

After the tea boiled, the boredom returned and I had to get to other things.  This stove is by no means burnt out.  I could still use it.  Mind you, it is a small can with a diameter Of about 3-4 inches.  Not bad - I'm guessing a burn time of 1 1/2 to 2 hours.  maybe more.

Cardboard charred, but intact.



As you can see, the wax and cardboard left a lot of residue on the kettle.  Washes off easily.

Okay, so this is going to be longer than I thought.  The next morning I had a chance to get outside, so I lit it up again.  I'll try to keep this as brief as possible.

The flame got really low at about 12 minutes in.  I thought we were done

 I scraped off the top char and lit it again.  This is where I got surprised.

 It went back to a full size flame.

 The egg timer resets at 100 minutes.

 At almost exactly 100 minutes, it burned out again.

 I took the out the core.  As you can see, there is still a lot of unburned carboard.  Unfortunately, most the wax had burned off.  I think if I could've added more wax, I could have gotten much more life out of it.

 So I flipped the core over to the unburnt side and lit it again.

 At 100 minutes, we were done, at least for my purposes.

Still usable cardboard left, but no wax.

 And I can use the can again!

Total burn time:  4.5 hours. I will remind you that this is smaller than a normal sized peanut can. About 3 inches in diameter.  I'm very pleased with the burn time and the ability to boil my kettle. Hope you enjoyed this.

BTW - The can does become too hot to touch at about the 30 minute mark. Just an FYI.

Pax Domini Sit Semper Vobiscum,

Mike, Oscar, Hotel.....out.