Stoves: cheap comparison

[leftpoole]

The liquid (non gel) Bio Ethanol is excellent. Ignites very easily, no smell, clean burning with very little soot , in fact almost no soot at all.

Hello,
I am happy with Meths and I have many 5 litre bottles stored in a brick built outbuilding. I purchased wholesale when I discovered that meths was changing.
I will not need another purchase in my lifetime!
Regards,
John

http://www.pbase.com/leftpoole/stoves

[rualexander]

The liquid (non gel) Bio Ethanol is excellent. Ignites very easily, no smell, clean burning with very little soot , in fact almost no soot at all.

Don't accidentally get any in your cooking pot or kettle though, the denatonium benzoate is one of the bitterest substances known and can make your pans unuseable for days.
I accidentally got a small amount in my trangia kettle and then poured the water into my flask, the resulting tea was foul and I couldn't use the kettle or flask for the rest of my holiday.
It had gone by the next holiday though.

[Heltor Chasca]

The liquid (non gel) Bio Ethanol is excellent. Ignites very easily, no smell, clean burning with very little soot , in fact almost no soot at all.

Don't accidentally get any in your cooking pot or kettle though, the denatonium benzoate is one of the bitterest substances known and can make your pans unuseable for days.
I accidentally got a small amount in my trangia kettle and then poured the water into my flask, the resulting tea was foul and I couldn't use the kettle or flask for the rest of my holiday.
It had gone by the next holiday though.

Advice is to strain through a loaf of bread with the end crusts removed. It removes the purple colouring which is bitter. Makes it much more drinkable.

EDIT: mucho sarcasm. Don't try this at home or on tour.

[Weimarunner]

Using and loving the MySolo meths stove and its £30 cheaper than the Evernew which is equally great .
Here's an article comparing the two - http://www.cycletourstore.co.uk/evernew ... hol-stove/

[Bmblbzzz]

Interesting thread. I have a little gas cannister-top stove which I bought almost 20 years ago when backpacking round NZ. It just screws on to the top of the cannister. It was great for backpacking because it's so light and small (the arms fold parallel so it's even smaller) but the disadvantage is it really suffers in winds. I ought to get a windshield! Preferably before next weekend...

However, I do sometimes feel that gas cannisters are "philosophically" unsatisfactory. They're easily available in most places I'm likely to go, and not even expensive if you catch them cheap at Wilko's, but they run out unpredictably and then there's the problem of disposing of the empty cannister. I'm pretty sure they're not recyclable.

[andrew_s]

and then there's the problem of disposing of the empty cannister. I'm pretty sure they're not recyclable.

They recycle the same as tin cans, but you have to bash a hole in to let the residual gas out first.
You can get widgets to make the hole if you've nothing else handy : http://www.jetboil.com/Accessories/CrunchIt/

[Bmblbzzz]

I thought you were supposed to avoid puncturing them precisely due to the residual gas even when 'empty'?

[psmiffy]

I thought you were supposed to avoid puncturing them precisely due to the residual gas even when 'empty'?

I always puncture the empties before shoving them in the recycle bin - sharp knife and somewhere well ventilated and away from an ignition source - takes ages for them to fully "degas" even when they are effectively empty for the purposes of cooking - having worked on landfills and seen the odd one go off it is to my mind it is much better to do that and then stick them in the recycling

[Sweep]

Interesting thread. I have a little gas cannister-top stove which I bought almost 20 years ago when backpacking round NZ. It just screws on to the top of the cannister. It was great for backpacking because it's so light and small (the arms fold parallel so it's even smaller) but the disadvantage is it really suffers in winds. I ought to get a windshield! Preferably before next weekend...
.

Yes, do get windshield. After 20 years .

I well remember waiting waiting for my pasta before i bought one. Seem to remembrr that one shoddy pasta meal looked like it was going to use an entire canister .

Mine cost about £8 20 years ago, now i think they are about a fiver.

[nez]

A funnel full of cat litter (fullers earth) works on diesel dye. Border smugglers used to use it in Ireland.

[Slowroad]

Years ago I bought some 'alcool a bruler' for my Trangia while travelling in France as they didn't seem to have meths - much better and no soot. Keep meaning to get more when I visit!

[andrew_s]

There's a new EU standard for denatured alcohol, so it may no longer be the case that French is better than British. The names probably won't change though.
UK meths used to be 5% methanol (which is fairly poisonous), but it's now got isopropyl alcohol instead, a different foul tasting additive, and the purple dye is optional.

[hufty]

It may be less poisonous than methanol but isopropyl alcohol is still poisonous. That's why they add it to the ethanol surely.

[leftpoole]

So.... There's a topic in this sub-forum called "starting out" or something similar, about buying a camping stove for touring. I read with interest, and ordered a Karrimor alpine gas stove, and a Trangia copy made by Karrimor. Both from SportsDirect, and each costing £17. I only really bought the Trangia copy for the small kettle and the pans.
I'd never used, or even handled, a Trangia previously so I read on websites, and watched YouTube on how to use them. It seems that the Karrimor version is a pretty accurate copy. I also wondered why I'd bought the gas stove too.

I decided to test both stoves, and then decided to be a bit scientific about it and actually consider time and cost for boiling the same amount of water and starting with a cold kettle and cold water (outside tap!) each time.

For the Karrimor-Trangia, by the time I'd lit it, boiled 300ml of water, and put it out, it used 17g of meths. (I diluted the as-bought meths by ~7.5% with water first). I worked out the cost as 8.8p.

For the Karrimor Alpine, by the time I had connected the gas canister, boiled 300ml of water, and disconnected the gas cannister (some gas loss at connection and disconnection which I decided made the comparison fair) the gas used was 9g. I worked out the cost as 13.9p.

The big difference was in time taken.
The Karrimor-Trangia took 13 mins and 35 seconds to boil the water.
The Karrimor alpine took just 2 mins and 35 seconds.

Fwiw, weights and volumes worked out from the boss's digital baking scales (she was out), and density of meths is assumed to be 0.79. Tests done out of the wind, in the (cold) garage.

The Trangia copy is so slow! Maybe I'm not using it correctly:
Any comment from the Trangia fans? Is there something I'm missing here?

Hello to an old question thread!
In my experience the Trangia stove has air vents to let wind breeze invigorate the flame. So testing in a cold garage with still conditions does not do your copy Trangia justice.
Try again outdoors?
Regards,
John

[pjclinch]

Trangias are not known for speed, for good reason. On the other hand, they are known for their stability and safety.

On one occasion as a pal and I were finishing setting up tents on a mountainside somewhere he was connecting up his pressure stove and laughing at my Trangia for being so slow, I challenged him to a first-to-tea race, and of course he accepted... and lost immediately afterwards, because my tea had been simmering happily to itself while we'd put the tents up and was already done before he'd even set about priming.

People like boil times because it's a quantitative thing and they can compare it to something else, but whether it makes a real difference to your cycle camping tour is more about your particular modus operandi and timetable. If you'll be relying on snowmelt, Trangias suck for that, but otherwise does it make much difference if you wait whole extra minutes until tea? Typically not, at least for me. And don't forget that more than pretty much any other stove, you can do something else and leave a Trangia to its own devices.

Pete.