RE: [pct-l] Nifty Stove

[Ronald Moak <ronm@fallingwater.com>]

I'd like to thank everyone for their ideas and suggestions on the stove.
Over the next few weeks I'll be looking into them. I'm pretty happy with the
stoves performance with the Esbit fuel. In my limited test, it performs
better than the Esbit stove in similar setups. 

I was able to shave a couple of minutes off the boil time for the alcohol
burner. However, I'm not sure what target I'm aiming for. In all the pages
for other alcohol stoves, boil times were approximately 5 minutes for 2
pints of room temperature water. What exactly is room temperature? In my
test the starting and ending water temps were 60 and 220 degrees
respectively. I was using good old tap water.

Even as it is, I'm still able to cook a Lipton's meal on a single teaspoon
of fuel. At less than a quarter ounce that's not half bad.

Obviously the starting temperature of the water is a factor in boil times.
Also I'd like to know what type of alcohol was use in the 5 minute test. The
alcohol I used was the brand in the web picture. I do know that different
forms of alcohol have different burning properties. I recall a page that had
the relative burn times for the different types of alcohol listed. Somewhere
along the line I've lost my bookmark.

Roy wanted to know more about my initial stove meltdown.  Well that was due
to ignoring the KISS principle from the beginning. I started by make the
stove too complex with an attached windscreen / pot holder that was attached
to the main stove via some struts. There were also a few screws in the wrong
places that punctured the main fuel burner - I'm referring to screws in the
stove that is, my own loose screws are another matter. Needless to say I had
quite a mess. 

In the mean time, I'm waiting on some fabrics for a few sewing projects to
be completed first. If I make any further break enhancements I'll let you
know.

Thanks,

Ron "Fallingwater" Moak
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