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I have made and used various home-made alcohol stoves of on some of my backpacking trips instead of gas or propane stoves once I realized that 95% of my cooking while backpacking consisted of boiling a cup or two of water, dumping in some dehydrated food and waiting five or ten minutes before eating. My favorite was a modification of Don Johnston's Photon Stove. If you do short trips and want to save some pack weight, consider making your own stove, they weigh much less than commercial stoves and work fine if you are not planning any gourmet cooking.
My oldest son is going on some overnight and weekend trips and wants to carry his own stove. He has used my Photon and says they are OK, but that he wished it was smaller so that he could fit it all into his mess kit without having to leave the little plastic cup out. That sounded challenging to me, so I started thinking about it. I decided to try making a cross between Don Johnson's PHOTON STOVE and SGT ROCK'S TURBO V8 STOVE from the smaller juice cans and have had pretty good success with it. I call it my V8 PHOTON STOVE. It is probably as small as any other stove I've encountered, very light (under an ounce), and works OK if you only need to boil a few cups of water. This stove does have some drawbacks, very limited fuel quantity (barely holds one ounce), doesn't work as well with really small pots (like my 18 oz. mug) and it's not very stable, although not much more than some other backpacking stoves that I have used.
Since originally publishing this, I read on the internet that a few people have had problems with similar designs of stoves going boom (search TLB forums for Pepsi Stove go BOOM!!!! for details, sounds like the stove came apart, alcohol is not explosive). My son and a few other boys have tried to make V8 PHOTONS with limited success. Maybe I overestimated the complexity of the project for the youths. I HAVE DECIDED THAT THE V8 PHOTON IS PROBABLY NOT A GOOD STOVE FOR YOUNGER BOYS TO BE MAKING.
Somewhere I remember seeing instructions to make an ALTOID STOVE that is very simple to build, I lost the link to the instructions, so I made some more. It is a little heavier than the V8 PHOTON, but will hold a little more fuel, and seems a little more stable. It is probably better suited for the youths.
SOME GENERAL NOTES ON ALCOHOL STOVES:
FUEL:
I use denatured alcohol, available at hardware stores in the paint
section for about $10 per gallon. I usually carry the alcohol in an 8 oz.
peroxide bottle, this gives me more than enough fuel for a 2-3 day trip.
Isopropyl alcohol, available at drug stores does not burn as hot or as
clean, and will leave soot on your pans. Other stove sites mention the
successful use of alcohol based automotive fuel line cleaners, but I have
not tried any. WARNING: NEVER ATTEMPT TO USE
ANY TYPE OF PETROLEUM PRODUCT (GASOLINE, COLEMAN FUEL, ETC.) IN THESE STOVES.
STOVE STRENGTH:
During construction, you will notice that the some of the materials
are very flimsy, this concerned me too. Before taking one on a hike I heated
1.5 quarts of water in a 2 quart cast iron pot as a strength test just
to make sure the stoves would not collapse during use. This is more weight
than I will ever place on a stove while hiking, but I would test it with
your gear just to make sure. (P.S. the water did not reach a rolling boil,
but the bubbles were beginning to form on the bottom)
GENERAL USE:
These are not all purpose camp stoves, they are only designed to be
able to bring a pint of water to a boil. The stove gets a little too hot
and burns out too fast for most other cooking tasks. Some of the other
home-made stove sites make use of a "simmer option" which should increase
the flexibility of their stoves.
WIND SCREENS:
These stoves are fairly sensitive to the wind, I have never actually
had one blow out, but even a slight breeze will greatly lengthen cooking
time. I highly recommend the use of a windscreen, this can be as simple
as a piece of aluminum foil wrapped around the pan / stove, leaving room
for air flow. I use a piece cut from a disposable aluminum oven liner,
cut to a height of about 1" taller than the stove, with some holes punched
in the bottom to allow for air flow. The other stove pages I have referenced
below show some good, easy to make wind screens.
LIGHTING DIFFICULTY:
In cooler weather, the alcohol may be harder to light (the ALTOIDS
stove doesn't seem to have this problem), put a small amount of drier lint
or other type of tinder at the base to help heat the alcohol up.
Good luck and have fun. If you want to see more stoves, check out the
stove archive at
http://wings.interfree.it/,
SGT.
ROCKS page, STOVESTOMPERS
page , ZEN
Stoves or
The Lightweight Backpacker.