Stove?

How do you choose what type of stove to go with? The alcohol stoves and Esbits sound pretty neat but there are so many kinds. Which is the best?

My hike buddy mentioned zen stoves -
http://home.comcast.net/~agmann/stove

thoughts?

You may consider the following: Skill level, experience, purpose (just to boil water or cook a three-course meal? mountaineering vs. ultra-light), weight (car-camping vs. backpacking), bulk, liquid fuel vs. gas fuel, $cost, environmental cost,personal style, sex appeal...etc.

Personally, I use a white gas stove for mountaineering and winter camping, and I use Esbit (well... actually, Coghlan's brand) or alcohol in a tea-candle cup for all other backpacking trips. Enjoy your quest ;-)

...on what you're going to be using it for, and on what your criteria for "best" are. Best="ultralight" will yield very different answers than best="works at altitude" or best="good heat control."

So, what do you want to do with your stove? What qualities are important to you?

Yup, time to get off my lazy duff and create a decent FAQ section for the site...

"A stiff flour pudding boiled in a cloth bag" and your telling us you be lazing upon it?

Man - you got to get some new hobbies.

That's not exactly what I meant. But tomorrow I might go the the Maine Highland Games and eat haggis, which is much more tasty than duff.

nm = no message, but since you're here... for some strange reasons, this board attracts a lot of I've-bought-a-used-10-person-tent... real-cheap, it-didn't-come-with-any-instruction, and I-don't-know-the-brand-or-model kind of questions. These are tough problems with little useful information, and even with fewer practical solutions, other than buy-a-new-tent!

If you're fortunate enough to have a backpacking club in your local area, you may be able to try out some gear before you buy them. If not, REI, EMS, MEC, and most local backpacking stores do have good return-refund policies. You may also buy used gear on the web and re-sell them if they don't fit your need. Some good used gear sites are: MEC gear swap, backpacking.net, mtncommunity.org, and the marketplace on this board. Googling for reviews can also be very helpful.

Most old-timers have done all of the above, and most of us have refitted with new gear several times over in our backpacking career. Because of my change in style and interest, I renew my gear about every 5 years. There is no such thing as the "best" gear, but we weigh the pros and cons, and get the gear that "best" fit our need and style.

Since alcohol stoves and Esbit fuel are very popular in light-wt backpacking, you may find more info in the "Community>Homes" at this site: http://www.backpacking.net/index.html

Use your new stove safely and good luck :-)

If you think it's bad here, you should see some of the stuff that comes in elsewhere. There are a couple old threads that come up close to the top on Google searches for things like "Hillary tent", "Northwest Territory tent", etc. The thing that amazes me is a couple of the messages people reply to the most actually have the answer (e.g. NorthPole USA contact info). I'm constantly deleting messages from people who didn't bother to read what they're replying to.

And don't even get me started on the people who write to "feedback@trailspace.com" as if we were the company that makes the tent. And it always seems to be Hillary, Northwest Territory, and Ozark Trail. I've never seen somebody with a Bibler get confused like that. I wonder what that says... :-)

Why do you go with Esbit? I heard that they mess up your pot and smell. Is that true? What kind of setup do you use?

Les, talk about being timely (see above)-I guess it's "if you put up a lightning rod, don't be surprised if you get lightning". Would the answer be that once the first one of these posts went up, the search engines picked up on it and then the rest followed the bread crumbs, so to speak? Perhaps someone could turn this into a profitable little business-selling instructions for all of these apparently unbelievably complicated tents that are sold every day without any instructions or way to contact the maker or seller.

This is burried deep, very deep, in backpacking.net
This explain the key part of my set up. I used to carry my fondu fuel (ethanol) in used plastic bottles (e.g. those use for cough meds or Wild Turkey),but somehow the fuel makes fine cracks at where the cap screw onto the plastic bottle. The cracks never develop into a leak. But just in case, I like to carry half of my fuel in ethanol and half in Coghlan's tab.

Yes, Esbit or Coghlan's fuel tab is actually "odorless" but it burns with a fishy smell. I tolorate it very well in open air, but did try using it once in a quinzee. Been there, done that, NEVER AGAIN!!

I posted the following in backpacking.net last year. I'm reposting it here. I still check my mailbox below once every week or two. Happy Hopping
JackWabbit;-)

========

I've have been using a tea candle cup as my alcohol stove for about a year. In my research to modify it, I came across this website: http://200.32.84.216/ministove.htm

I've tried a crude version of this stove before I found this design. I hope you guys have a better luck than I did.
=======

Back to the tea candle cup stove... this set up has been field tested in week-long trips at the Wind River and at the Lk Superior Hiking Trail.

A used tea candle cup has a 10ml volume, and no modification is needed for this cup. It is just good enough to boil or heat 200ml of water. I use a Evernew Ti Sierra cup as a pot, and the pot stand is made from a cut-out Vienna sausage can (10 gm stand wt). Large windows or holes are cut on the side of the can, except on the side where I put my Sierra cup handle. Holes are also cut at the bottom to facitilate venting. Put the tea candle cup at the bottom of the sausage can, fill the cup with alcohol, and light it.

I also use a stand made from coat hanger (http://wings.interfree.it/html/GLKirby.html) together with just a tea candle cup. However, the coat hanger stand is about 10 gm heavier than the stand made from a Vienna sausage can.

In either case, the Ti sierra cup, stove stand, candle cup are wrap in a wind screen made from heavy duty Al foil, much like a MSR wind screen. I also made a lid for the cup using Al foil.

When using the Vienna sausage stand, instead of using candle cup and alcohol, I also use Coghlan's hexamine tabs. One tab is good enough to boil or heat 200ml of water. The tab is placed on a small bended wire mesh for complete combustion.

I've jpegs of the pot stand made from a small fruit cocktial can. Any can shorter than that, i.e. 2 inches, will not work well because of the optimal flame height.

The adventage of this stove is everything is in plain sight, I think one will have no problem packing the new parts in a check-in bag in a outbound flight. One should discard the used stove before your return flight, because it may trigger chemical detection alarm, especially if you have used hexamine as fuel. And of course, one should buy the fuel at the destination instead of packing it in your bag.

No special tools are needed to make this stove. An old fashion blade-type can opener (or a P38 can opener), a pair of pliers and a pair of EMT scissors are all the tools you need for this set up.

Email me at whitetailmec"at"yahoo.ca if you want to see the jpegs. I may post them here if I can figure out how to do it.

Good luck to all :-)
JackWabbit, whitetailmec"at" yahoo.ca

Tom D
I wonder what the legal implications are - liability etc, of writing instructions for usage of someone elses product not sanctioned by the mfgs legal staff. What if someones tent blows off a cliff with their baby in it and they were using say a SEARs tent and your instructions, which SEARs' lawyers argue is faulty and not official etc, etc...
Jim S (:->)

You can still play with your bab(y).

http://photos.yahoo.com/whitetailmec

You may have to lower your security and cookies settings to view the album. Email me at whitetailmec"at"yahoo.ca if you have problems.

Hey Jim, Interesting question. I'm not sure what the outcome would be. First of all, no one should take my comments as legal advice. You should consult your own attorney if you have questions regarding personal liability in such situations. Having said that, I can see a situation where a company gets sued and uses "unofficial" instructions as a defense. California has an "assumption of the risk" defense for many risky activities (check the back of your next lift ticket). I think most manufacturers have variously worded disclaimers about assumption of the risk, using the product only in an approved manner, not making modifications,etc. to protect themselves. My Nova stove has one-I just looked. Unfortunately, in too many cases, when someone gets hurt, they immediately blame everyone except themselves. My favorite is the guy who crashed on his bike, got hurt and then sued Bell Helmets because the helmet didn't have a warning that it was unsafe to hang the helmet from the handlebars while riding. Yes, the dope wasn't wearing it and yes, a dangling strap apparently caught on the front wheel and down he went. Giving people any kind of advice that could potentially put them in jeopardy if they act on it and something goes wrong, could be trouble. How much trouble would really be fact specific to the situation, but the basic argument would likely be that the person giving the advice was in some way negligent. I haven't heard of anyone being sued for giving peer to peer (non-pro) outdoor advice, but it could happen (and may have already somewhere). My feeling is that anyone who doesn't know how to put up their tent or can't figure out how to track down the manufacturer for instructions, probably shouldn't be wandering around in the woods in the first place.

There is a great history of the P-38 can opener at www.dogtagsrus.com - once there select history and information then select P38 can openers. Just thought it might interest some readers.