[pct-l] Alcohol Stoves

[jthoreso@juno.com (John S Thoreson)]

Hi Margo,

This is in response to your question on alcohol stoves.  Although I have
not had direct experience with the stove you are describing, I did make
and use with great success an alcohol stove for 2000 miles on the PCT
last summer.

I used the bottom of a 40 oz. beer can to hold the alcohol and made my
pot stand out of some 1/8" diameter welding rod, essentially making a
cross and bending the legs down.  For a windscreen I used some doubled
over heavy-duty aluminum foil.  My pot stood about 3 inches above my fuel
container and using ~1 oz. of fuel would give me an approxiamate 5 min
burn time (enough to boil around 2 cups of water which was good for 6-8
ozs. of pasta).  This whole apparatus weighed in at 2.75 ozs.  Also, my
stove fit inside my 2 qt. pot; a nice convience.

For fuel I used denatured alcohol (ethanol denatured with methanol) found
at a hardware store.  The flames were rather large (coming up and over my
pot at times) and were sooty too.  This was not a big deal though; a
sooty pot is not the end of the world!  I met a few other guys on the
trail using MSR alcohol stoves and they were using gas line anti-freeze
for fuel (which is just methanol) found at any automotive store.  They
were having NO suit problems along with smaller flames.  I met another
guy who said that a mixture of ~10% water and ~90% denatured alcohol goes
a long way to reducing soot; I haven't tried this yet.  The methanol
seems the way to go.  For a fuel bottle, I used small water bottles (I
think they were the 12 oz. size).  These are virtually indestructable,
lightweight, and cheap.

I highly recommend alcohol stoves seeing as they are cheap to make and
operate, pretty much fool proof, compact, and LIGHTWEIGHT!!!   Also,
there is just about nothing that can go wrong with them (no gaskets,
pumps, valves, etc. can fail!).  The stove I made served me well from
Canada to S. California and I would definitley take it again!

I hope this information of use to you.  If you have any questions, feel
free to ask away.

john thoreson (aka:  arnold)
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