Cyclebum

Impressive and the simplest to build I've seen.

Ekdog

Nice!

ak08820

This is good. However, there are many variations to be found on youtube. Some of the most sophisticated are by a guy named Tetkoba who seems to have a career in alcohol stove design. Also, the standard 12 oz. drink can makes a stove that may have a wider flame area for the smaller pots used by solo tourists. A stove made from smaller cans, e.g., from V8 juice or the smaller Red Bull energy drink cans may be more suitable for smaller pots and use the fuel more efficiently. I wish that it was just as easy to make a stove using gasoline as it is universally available and costs 3+ times less than alcohol but I know that it will never be possible.

nun

The video recommends to use rubbing alcohol which is not a good fuel as it is usually 70% isopropanol and 30% water.

The fuels to use are research grade ethanol or methanol, denatured alcohol or the yellow HEET (which is basically methanol)

Cyclebum

Never been a fan of alcohol stoves, but this one is so simple to build and puts out so much heat. Would be a good back up, or a second stove to speed the cooking. Not that I intend to do much cooking.

ak08820

I missed the "rubbing alcohol" part. In US the rubbing alcohol is not ethanol but isopropanol which will produce a lot of soot and is obviously not used in the video. It must be a slip by the video poster.

likebike23

From what I've read, denatured alcohol is the best fuel followed by methanol (heet). Home depot sells a particularly pure denatured alcohol (95% ethanol/%5 methanol). I forget the exact brand, but it's labeled as "green" denatured alcohol, it was around $6 for a quart. Expensive, but I like the smaller size, a gallon would be hanging around forever.

bikenh

It will produce soot unless you have the flame the correct distance from the pot. If you only have a 1/2" from the pot you won't soot the pot up. Study flatcatgear on youtube and you'll see what he did to make a quite successful rubbing alcohol stove. The rubbing alcohol is much cheaper and brings water to boil just as fast as methanol. It's also available in as many if not more locations, especially if you happen to be travelling overseas.

Again, the distance from the flame to pot is VERY critical. Anything more or less and you will soot up the pot. I've seen plenty of demonstrations with his and very similar stoves and they all work great and don't create soot as long as the gap is held constant.

ak08820

True, but in this case the very differently designed iso-clean stove was not used and so one cannot use rubbing alcohol as the video mentioned.

mtnbud

IMO the simplest alcohol stove out there is the cat can stove. I've compared it to many other designs and it has practically the same boil time and burn time as the more complicated stoves.

I've been using a design built using a small hair mousse can. It sits in the base of a little larger can. I pour about an ounce of fuel in the mousse can and a very small amount in the outer can. I put my filled water pot on top of the mousse can and then light the small amount in the outer can. The flame from the outer can heats the inner fuel to it's boiling point at which time the escaping gasses are lit by the flames of the outer can.

All alcohol stoves are greatly effected by wind so a wind screen is a good idea.

I do like appreciate Cyclebum sharing the posted design. What impresses me the most about it is that it could be easily made in the field with any old pop can found along side the road. Creasing the can rather than poking holes is genius.

nun

That's interesting, it looks like sooting can be avoided by control of the volume of air (O2) available to the flame.

Rubbing alcohol is often 30% water so I don't believe that it will heat water just as fast as the same volume of methanol or ethanol type fuels.

robow

+1
Improve your cat stove's efficiency by laying two wires on top of the stove before setting your pot on it which improves airflow

bikenh

When you watch the videos on youtube you'll see most guys are getting a boil in around 6 minutes. Some methanol stoves take longer than that. One guy that tests tons of alcohol stoves, both methanol and rubbing, is Hiram Cook https://www.youtube.com/user/MrHiramCook/videos

I know I fairly quickly made one of above stoves last night to toy with and then made a pot stand out of 1/2" welded wire mesh. When I tried it I had the best burn with the stove of any of the rubbing alcohol variations that I have tried thus far. I did have plenty of yellow flame but when I removed the pot from the pot stand and wiped the bottom of it with a clean rag the rag remained clean. I fess the pot I was using has been used a lot, with an age old Whisperlite, using gasoline which sooted up the bottom of the pan previously and I'm not sure what kind off effect I would have by having the bottom of the pot previously sooted up. The rag was completely clean and I rubbed my hand across it as well and nothing came off on my hand.