Canned Fuel stoves?

Posted by: cheap

Canned Fuel stoves? - 01/13/08 08:25 PM

Wondering if anyone has an information on canned fuel stoves?
Such as coglahn's camp heat, sterno, jellied fuel tins?
coglahns heat is a wick based alcohol tin, sterno is wood alcohol and jellied fuel, well, is jellied fuel.
Wondering if they are any good.
Posted by: oldranger

Re: Canned Fuel stoves? - 01/13/08 08:32 PM

I have seen Sterno used for fire starting, but mostly for keeping the fondue, well, fondue like. I don't think they are of much use as a stove for significant cooking or water boiling. The cans I have bought also tend to leak <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />
Posted by: Pika

Re: Canned Fuel stoves? - 01/14/08 05:24 AM

Quote:
Wondering if they are any good.

In my limited experience, no. For the heat you get, they are heavy. And, you don't get that much heat. You would be better off using Esbit; at least it doesn't come in a can.
Posted by: finallyME

Re: Canned Fuel stoves? - 01/14/08 08:57 AM

check out zenstoves.net. They talk about these stoves, and a bunch others. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />
Posted by: cfiles

Re: Canned Fuel stoves? - 01/14/08 12:04 PM

Quote:
I have seen Sterno used for fire starting, but mostly for keeping the fondue, well, fondue like. I don't think they are of much use as a stove for significant cooking or water boiling. The cans I have bought also tend to leak <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />


While not optimal, sterno will boil water. I use to carry stero as my only source (other than raw fire) for cooking. If you do use it you need a good windscreen and a pot that sits on top of the screen. I used a large peach can that fit around the sterno.

The setup was heavy (relatively) and took ~8 minutes to boil a cup of water, if I remember correctly. I moved on to using a Jetboil and have never looked back.

There are a hundreds of better options but it works. Like Pika said, Esbit is a better option.
Posted by: dla

Re: Canned Fuel stoves? - 01/15/08 12:29 PM

Sterno works - but it is slow compared to other stove options. My first backpacking stove was sterno and I used it to fry fish and boil noodles. The sterno setup was much cheaper for the occasional backpacker.

The cheapest setups today are Alcohol stoves. The liquid Alcohol can be burned much faster than the gelled Alcohol in Sterno. I've attached an example of a Sterno stove with a Trangia burner to show another way of using the folding sterno stove.