More Stove Stuff

This is further discussion about stoves which was started here.

I picked up a Esbit pocket stove at Sail last weekend. It's a solid fuel stove, very lightweight and not very bulky. It folds into a rectangular box which can hold the fuel tabs. When I bought the stove, it was only $14.49 and came with 6 fuel cubes, I asked the sales associate if they carried more fuel tabs. He couldn't find any, but reassured me that they do stock them, they were just out at the moment.

What I'm really looking for is a stove that I can simmer at a lower heat to use for baking. When I got home, I took the stove out and set it up with my camping kettle filled with cold water. I put a single tea light in, lit it, and put a thermometer in the kettle to see how quickly it heated up. My results were painfully slow. After half an hour I added a second tea light. Still too slow. After an hour and a half, the water wasn't warm enough to make tea with.

Stove, fuel and camp kettle

Stove has two settings

It cooks both ways

I didn't try to use the stove with the fuel pellet. I would not light that in my kitchen. And I only have 6 pellets. I poked around the internet and found some videos about the Esbit stove. I watched someone boiling water with it. It seemed to flame up pretty high. This means that your cookware gets very sooty, not a desirable thing.

Before long, I tripped over videos by people that are making their own fuel tabs. In the original video I watched, he used 100% pure cotton balls, a wax candle and an ice cube tray. In a second video, this guy used an old egg carton instead of the ice cube tray. The person that posted the video was adamant that these are for fuel, not fire starters. I'm pretty sure they would serve both purposes. However a fire starter would probably not make a good fuel source for cooking.

I picked up the cotton balls and an unscented candle at the dollar store on my way home from work. I didn't use any of my pots to melt the candle directly, instead, I found a jar that was large enough to hold the candle and placed that in a pot with water.

My supplies

Each egg spot holds 2 cotton balls fluffed up

Melted candle - not the whole thing

Melted wax poured into the egg carton

I think that for the $5 it cost me to buy my supplies, I could easily make 50 fuel tabs.

I haven't broken up the egg carton into sections yet. I'm waiting for it to harden. Plus it's probably a better idea for storage to just leave it in one piece for now. Maybe this weekend I'll take it outside to the back step and see how high the homemade fuel pellets burn. I'll time how long it takes to boil water as well. 

On the stove package it states that one fuel pellet will boil one pint of water in 8 minutes. Each pellet burns for 12 minutes. Each fuel pellet comes in a waterproof package.

Tested

I was able to engage a lab assistant (my nephew, Logan) and we tested the stove using one of my homemade fuel pellets. The pellets that come with the stove will boil 1 pint of water in 8 minutes. We fired up the stove with the homemade fuel pellet with my kettle on it. However I did have 1 liter of water in the kettle, twice the amount of the baseline of 1 pint.

The flame is burning rather high

It was a very windy day so we put the stove onto my sister's barbecue to get some wind protection.

It took about 13 minutes to boil the water, however it didn't come to a rolling boil. I let the fuel continue burning. It was starting to lose heat and slowly stopped burning. Probably around 15 minutes. But for the last couple of minutes, it really wouldn't cook much. I would say, though, that the homemade pellets work very similar to the fuel pellets the stove comes with.

What was left at the end

I don't like how high it burns. It blackened my kettle a lot. It took a full SOS pad and lots of elbow grease to clean the kettle. Also while camping we'd have to pack the remains of the fuel left over into our garbage. Although we might be able to toss that into the fire pit.

In a pinch you could use the Esbit as a stick stove as well. I'm not sure how well it would perform.

Pros:

• It is extremely lightweight to carry. 
• The fuel is probably comparable with other fuel for weight.
• It's not an expensive stove.
• You can make your own fuel pellets quite cheaply.
• It takes up very little space.
• You could probably use it as a stick stove if you ran out of fuel.
• The fuel pellets are each individually stored in a waterproof package.

Cons:

• It burns very high making your cookware very sooty and dirty.
• It might be hard to find the fuel pellets.
• It has no temperature control and no real ability to adjust how high your pot is away from the flame.
• You can't turn the stove off, you have to let the fuel burn until it's done.
• It might not burn hot enough to get a good rolling boil, which you might want if you're boiling water to sanitize it.
• It has some pretty sharp edges. I've cut myself twice on it and have been careful, especially after the first slice.
• It doesn't really work with tea lights as the fuel source, it doesn't get hot enough to do anything.
• If it is being used for baking, you'd have to be baking something that only takes 15 minutes to bake. 

Crafty post - another pot cozy

A couple of years ago I made pot cozies for my 3 pots.  I also made circles that are used to both protect the pot bottoms when nested and as pot holders in the backcountry. We usually don't bring the largest pot and the bag that came with my pots is plenty big with the cozied pots in it. 

My pot cozies with pot "holders"

I used fabric designed for pot holders. The silver side can be exposed to heat so the white cotton fabric is on the outside. This fabric was very expensive, so I had to be careful when cutting it to ensure very little waste.

When I got the idea to do this, I had seen a couple of online sets of pot cozies that were made out of material you'd get at Home Depot, such as a metal/plastic type of wrap. I prefer to work with fabric and the pot cozies I have now have really stood up to repeated use very nicely.

Here's today's project:

Getting ready to sew!

LT only has 2 pots in his set, with 2 lids and a frypan. There are 3 circles in the picture above as 2 are for pot holders and one is going to be the bottom of the pot cozy I'm making for his bigger pot. He only wanted one cozy. I'm going to make a nylon bag with a drawstring to hold the set. I bought a couple of plastic toggles to tie off the drawstring with.

I've mentioned before that I'm not great with making my own patterns. I cut a pattern out in parchment paper first. My pots were completely cylindrical so no issue there. LT's pots are angled. Hmmmm. I marked a start point on the paper and as I rolled the pot along it on its side, I marked in pencil the shape. I tried the paper shape out against the circle for the bottom. It took a few tries to get the right size.

All sewn up!

I made the cozy a bit higher than the pot. It can be folded down if needed.

LT's full set of pots

And here's the final product in the drawstring bag.

Black nylon = doesn't show the dirt!

I'm going to make a confession here. I tried to extend the fabric from an angle to a straight, but ended up veering to one side. As the opening is just big enough to get everything in, I can't correct it. But it's just a bag and you'd never know unless you were laying the empty bag flat on a surface. 

I paid $2.80 for two toggles (used one), $6 for a remnant of black nylon and the rest of the items I had already (pot holder fabric, thread, shoelace for drawstring). This wasn't an expensive project because I already had the expensive fabric.

This was a fun afternoon project!

Crafty Camping Creations - Tree Table

When you're out on a camping trip, working around the campsite, setting up, taking down, cleaning up, cooking food, you often wonder if there's a better way to do things. We're constantly on the lookout for a better way, better tool. One of the things we discussed this past summer was having some sort of a table.

I did pick one up at Cabela's in Phoenix, Arizona. But it's a heavy one and if we're doing a long trip with a lot of portaging, we'll probably leave it behind.

I imagined a piece of fabric that would be suspended between two trees. Somewhat like some of the existing wooden tables built at some campsites.

It's really nice to get stuff off the ground. Things get dirty, stuff gets tipped over, foreign objects get dropped into things, especially if you're walking around.

I saw the fabric as being stretched in a way that would make it stable and have a pocket flap along one edge. The other edge could have a ribbon of hooks to hang things too. It would be lightweight, easy to pack.

Without further ado, here is the alpha prototype version. It didn't work quite as expected. I decided to stabilize the length of the table with my walking poles. I created a casing area to hold the poles, obviously this would only be one usage of the poles, not a permanent solution. I also haven't added the ribbon with hooks on the other side.

Basically the whole table is just a rectangular piece of fabric doubled up and folded in a way to get the pockets. I created two casings to hold my trekking poles, extended to the 125 cm length. I also ran a string of paracord through each of the 2 casings and tied loops on the ends. Then I took two bungee cords to suspend the table between two trees.

Here's a view from the other side without the pocket.

It also needs some way to prop it open as it tends to fold on itself, much like a hammock. In the photos above, taken in a local park, I found small sticks on the ground that I broke into the right length and stuffed at either end. Maybe we could whittle a couple of twigs into the role on the trip. Hmmmm.

I'll have to brainstorm a little more with LT. He hasn't seen it yet. 

Getting crafty with it!

How to make your own bug hat:

I searched and searched a couple of years ago for the perfect bug hat. I tried on various ones at MEC, LeBaron, Sail, etc. I didn't like any of them. Granted a bug hat is usually not on the cutting edge of fashion. And the bugs would much prefer you show up without one anyways. I was looking for one where the netting didn't touch my face. I decided to make my own and here's how I did it.

You'll need a sewing machine, thread, fabric, scissors, elastic, and a long shoelace. I went to Party City and purchased a witch's hat for about $5. My logic was that the witch's hat would have a very large brim, and it does. One downside is that these hats only come in witch black. I bought a couple of meters of black very tightly woven netted fabric at Fabricland. I also wanted to make a bug shirt with the same fabric.

This project shouldn't take too long. As long as you have all the necessary items, you could probably whip it up in under an hour.

I measured the circumference of the brim of the hat. I cut that amount of fabric plus an inch for seam allowance for the width. I cut it about 24 inches long as well. I had lots of fabric, no need to skimp. 

Because this is not a pretty item, I really didn't make much effort to do pretty seams. Also, I found the fabric tore fairly easy (on a tough trip going through multiple unmaintained portages), so I'd recommend doing a French seam where the fabric meets itself (not needed on the brim).

Here's where you can see what a French seam is: The Wiki Explanation

Once the side seam was sewn, I sewed the fabric onto the brim. Next I created a casing along the bottom of the "veil" where I inserted a shoe lace I had on hand. This allows you to tighten the bottom of the face screening.

Lastly, I sewed some elastic (black of course) on the hat so I could keep the hat on if a breeze blew up. 

Oh, and because paddling down a lake wear a witch's hat might be a tad bit frightening, I turned the hat inside out and tied a knot in the pointed top, which made it look like it has a rounded peak.

Here's a picture of the final product:

For effect, I have been known to cackle as I paddle down the lake wearing this. Or pretend I'm some Victorian widow while I break out in a very bad British accent.

I've taken a small netted bag meant for some other gear that I don't use it for and I'm able to put this hat into it. There is a wire in the brim and if you grab either side of the hat, twist in opposite directions and fold the two sides of your new "figure 8" on top of each other, it packs down quite nicely. It can go in the bag, or just in the side pack of my large backpack, which is where I usually keep it handy when travelling during bug season.

The black fabric works best for vision. However, I am most definitely NOT a vision while wearing this. Warning, the following photo is not a flattering one.

I am also modelling the homemade bug shirt