I recently made my first Supercat too, and performance was not as great as I had expected. I conducted my test on the basis of boiling three cups of cold water, enough for two commercial freeze-dried boil-bag meals (no solo hiking or cooking for me... yet). Using 1.3oz of denatured, a windscreen and an open 2qt aluminum pot, I got 12 minutes to boil and 16 minutes total runtime on a cold January day. Still perfectly acceptable, just not spectacular. I covered the pot and boiled 5 cups (for hot drinks/cereal for breakfast for a few people) and got a boil in 14 minutes.

But back to the question at hand, windscreens. I too got the aluminum flashing at my local Home Depot, as the thinner aluminum options don't seem bombproof to me (my screen weighs in at 1oz). My paper punch, used to make the Supercat, was not up to the task of punching flashing so I cut vents with tinsnips -- ugly but effective. I don't flatten and roll, I keep it rolled up inside the pot.

I cut slots/tabs to make it stable after assembly.

The interesting thing about the flashing was nothing happened for like 3 pots worth of boiling, then suddenly on the fourth it turned brown around the edges. Weird huh?


I also use an overturned 5oz catfood can to raise the Supercat up off the cold ground and provide an excellent priming pan (10 seconds or less until the alcohol starts to boil). It's a heavy 0.6oz, but with it I can blow the stove out before all the fuel is consumed and use the bigger can as a dump receptacle. From there, I can then pour the extra fuel back in the bottle -- I used a triangle file to make a notch in the place where the pop-top lid used to be, to form a pour point.

Some Supercat folks say you can't/shouldn't blow out an alcohol stove, but so far I've had 100% success. Just make sure you're blowing straight down and centered so your stove doesn't go flying. A quick strong puff does the trick.