04 October 2008

Geekin' out with the kid...

Today I made a stove for camping with the rugrat.

Out of two soda cans!

No, seriously...



Tested it by boiling water for the kid and I for hot cocoa. Took 6 minutes to boil half a liter of water. I'd call it a success! By the way, it uses high-proof alcohol (70% or better, isopropyl, methanol, or drinking)for fuel.

Will build a bigger one shortly, as I've just reached the bottom of the second can of Foster's Lager...

Yes, I could have bought a whole messkit WITH a stove very similar, that is able to be capped and reclosed, for $30. I still may, for the ability to be able to stop and start the stove at will with fuel still inside. If interested, I believe they're called Trangia stoves.

This was mainly an intellectual exercise in figuring out how the thing works, if it works well, and to do something with my kid while instilling a thirst for knowledge and ability to reason through problems that might be encountered. Cost was really $0- I pulled the cans out of the trash.

Success, on all fronts, beyond measure. I'm gonna have to run this up the flagpole at the next Scout campout and see if they would like me to teach the boys how to do it (with adult help, of course).

2 comments:

Michael said...

Freaking cool! I'm going to have to try that! It obviously won't replace the propane Coleman that we take camping, but you know. Are there plans online or something?

JAFO said...

Holy crap, I have a second reader. :)

There's lots of plans, but lots of them seem to make it entirely too much like rocket science.

This is a pressurized stove. I made this one by following plans, and honestly I think it's overly complicated. I'm going to make another based on my understandings of it in a few minutes, and will take pics and do a mini-howto.