I've been collecting a few stoves here and there, as well as making a couple of my own.
Recycled stove...
I got bored and made this stove out of a pair of beer cans, with fibreglass used as wicking material. The pot stand is made out of coat hanger wire, and the windscreen is a recycled aluminum license plate. Here it is in use, and it is surprisingly effective at boiling water.
And another video while I field test (in my kitchen? kitchen test?) my MSR Stowaway 775ml pot:
The beer can alcohol stove is very effective for Boil and Burn cooking... ;)
This is a penny can stove variant that I purchased on eBay, the creator used a threaded pop rivet as opposed to the classic penny, but the principle is the same. There is fibreglass rope around the outside, as this stove needs to be preheated by soaking the outside with alcohol then setting it aflame. It is very efficient and burns for about twenty minutes, but there is only one heat output, full "Boil and Burn".
Penny can Stove
Sadly it gets far too hot to cook something more delicate like fried mushrooms and scrambled eggs as seen here.
And I get to put my new camp kitchen cleaning supplies to work to try to get the stuck egg off of the bottom of the pan.
5L collapsing sink
You really are only going to use about a litre of water for this. Preferably warm water with a bit of soap tossed in.
100% Homemade setup
One of my favourite stoves is my SVEA123R which crossed the Trans Labrador Highway with me in 2011, and since then has never let me down, but it did need a new set of seals as I damaged the original set which I sourced from the Fettlebox in the UK.
SVEA123R
My latest acquisition is a wee "China Stove" that looked very well built with few moving parts, and at about $9 shipped from AliExpress I went ahead and bought one as I really enjoyed the simplicity of cooking over butane gas last year when I toured from to Ontario and back out to Prince Edward Island. (I just bought another so I'll have two of these in a month or two).
I finally broke down and bought a gas cartridge to go along with this...
This gas mix is formulated with butane but liquid propane gas LPG is blended in to give it slightly better cold weather performance.
Woods Butane Propane 227g
Butane Canister Stove Winder Hack for these canisters:
I've also bought a gas adapter so I can refill these cartridges with the cheaper butane gas cans that I can buy three for $9.99, so I'll refill the expensive $7.99 canister with the $3.33 butane gas using something similar to the Lixada butane cartridge refill adapter
What they don't tell you is they are full of post manufacture glue or residue that will soot up your pots. Try washing them in alcohol first to remove the residue.
So I bought another pair of stoves in March... And they suck. Stainless steel bodies and they are really well built, but I have no clue what kind of wicking is used inside and they refuse to bloom into a full flame that a trangia will. It takes 25 minutes to heat two cups of water in a kitchen. :( I've burned it about six times now, on different days and it's not getting any better, sadly.
Comes complete with pot stand for $7 Cdn!
Stainless steel "Trangia" clone with changes
This stove does NOT have a threaded cap with a rubber O-ring nor does it come with a simmer ring, so it is "Boil and Burn" only as you see it here. It's made of stainless steel and included the pot stand, so as the price was so low, $7 each, I bought two of them, one each for Caroline and I. I thought they would fit well into our new titanium 750ml mugs, and be used for brewing up tea or wash water.
So I had this empty tin of tuna lying around, so I brought out my hole punch and turned it into a SuperCat alcohol stove. Let me tell you, for a Boil or Burn stove, this thing is awesome!!! I've been playing around with it in the kitchen to brew up for tea, and it's super simple to deploy and use. Just deploy it, fill it with alcohol, then light it and drop your pot or vessel on top of it.
I did cut my holes a bit too low so I can't use as much alcohol in it as I would need on a windy day, so I'll eat some more tuna and make another one that will hold more alcohol. I tell ya, if you are only worried about boiling water for tea and oatmeal, then make yourself one of these stoves and you problems of how to cook dinner are halfway solved.
You must have a windscreen for this type of stove, else strong wind moves the heat and flame out from the bottom of the pot, and you lose all your heating efficiency.
I tried a single row of holes... Don't bother, not enough O2.
Update: 2019-05-29
I thought I would ride the motorcycle to work today, and I thought I'd try out my Trangia clone along with my titanium trangia potstand/windscreen combo, similar to the Trangia Triangle, but at half the cost and weight.
Pot stand and windscreen
Lixada 750ml Ti mug
I tried this last year, and while the wind was much reduced I barely got a boil out of 2 ounces of alcohol before the trangia went out. The pot overflowed and that next picture? You are looking at 1/4 ounce of the finest Mr. Noodle Beef fuel that unfortunately doesn't burn nearly as well as methyl hydrate.
Mr. Noodle Beef - it's much harder to light than methyl hydrate!?
This setup really needs a windscreen, but it is very small and light to pack. The bulkiest part was the mug itself.
Tune in later when I test a new piece of gear on the company picnic table. ;)
Update: 2019-06-04
And it's time to try out the new ISO Butane LPG cartridge at lunch time today:
It was windy enough to need the windscreen
I couldn't see the flame, so had to adjust by sound rather than by sight, and 700ml of water seemed to take about ten or fifteen minutes to boil outside in the wind.
When it boiled over it put out the flame, so I was cautious afterwards to prevent it boiling over again
This is NOT a lightweight setup. The stainless steel pot, cartridge and accessories weigh in a bit, and I was surprised how much one litre of water and all the gear weighed. Plus I would have had to use more gas to boil up wash water for all this, and I'd only a cup of water left after making lunch for two people.
I'm going to try my SVEA123R out on the table tomorrow or the next day, with the old aluminum pots that have travelled with me for so long.
