Question for Trangia owners
 

How big a distance do you need to have between the base of your recepticle (kettle, pan, etc) and the lip of the meths cannister in order to get the most heat into your food?

I have recently bought a folding wood stove, but drilled holes on two sides could allow me to make a Trangia fuel cannister holder/adaptor and allow cooking over a fuel flame rather than a wood flame, if wood is scarce, for example.

Your information on the above, or indeed suggestions on how to make my idea work would be gratefully received!!

hi warthog,
what sort of woodburning stove? the right type could work well with a meths burner but with the trangia its the enclosed sides that funnel all the heat past the sides of the pan which are important, the height above the burner varies. i dont know if you know the trangia design very well, the pans sit right inside the windshield about 50mm above the burner, but the frying pan sits on top and must be at least 100mm above the burner but the heat still gets to it fine, in fact my frying pan still has half of my thumb skin melted onto it
:oops2:
i guess 50mm would be a good start point, experiment with different heights before making anything permanent. i know lower than that starts sooting up the bottom of the pan and a good windshield is important meths blows all over the place

I bought one of these, a fire spout 100:
http://www.occuk.co.uk/outdoor/image...0/open-100.jpg

On the larger of the two you can see four drilled holes in pairs. Ther are another 4 on the opposite side. I'd use the upper or lower pair, to secure a home-made support plate for a meths burner.

Looking back, had I kown, I'd have probably bought a Honey Stove, although nowhere near as robust as the FS100 above, as this seems has many nice features already taken into account.

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_8BZqOcjsG20/SR...umb%5B2%5D.jpg


Looking at the design, do you think the meths burner would work in my FS100? Using the two top holes, the meths burner would sit about 7cm below what ever pan is on top. Worst case is I buy a meths burner and try different designs....

In my eperience - and I use a similar setup - the most important factor is not so much the height but the enclosure or the windshield round your stove. In the end meth/alcohol has not that much heating power, I think a trangia is supposed to put out around 300 watts, so if the heat can escape round the pan or through the sides of the wood stove you have a problem.

I have a similar wood stove and frying something with the trangia in it is almost impossible even on a day without wind, since the stove as just too many holes in it.

Intersting.

So would you say that this is a pointless exercise?
I am happy to play around and experiment with heights for the meths burner, but if it is doomed to fail, perhaps I should not bother!!:(

Assuming it has potential, I will ask this: As you can kind of see from the grainy photo of the FS, the far side has a lower edge. It is about the sme gap as the port at the bottom on the side you can see. This is to allow a through current of air for the wood to burn without being choked by what ever is sat on top. Am I to understand that this area would need to be blocked off for the meths to heat something effectively?

I am also going to think about making a grill plate!!

If all these alternatives work, I would have a mainly woodburning system with the option of meths for higher, more sparce or wetter locations. I could leave my multifuel at home altogether!!
:thumbup1:

Your proposed system will work for a frying pan .
But for regular pots it will be slow .
If you could fit a narrow tall pot inside the FS 100 it would be better .

Have a look at a Swedish Army Trangia mess kit ,you can burn wood inside those as well .They are very cheap on eBay , in fact you can get one for the same price as the civilian Trangia burner alone .

I made a small woodstove out of a food can and placed a Trangia burner inside it but apparently the trangia in its oridinal design is cooled by inflowing air, but my cooling of the Trangia burner wasn't enough so the spirits heated up and the gasses started burning with a big fire as a result. I had to throw a fireblanket over the can, to extinguish it.
I was on the phone while testing it indoors :-))

Ebay: bit of a pain to organise from here: some users don't like sending out here, I've no cheque book and don't like paypal much!!

However, I can buy a new meths burner for about €13. So, I'll get that and then start playing with heights using my "Jenga" blocks.

Once I have found a height that seems effective for a pan, I can make an adaptor from some ally sheet I have lying around. Then I can try and see with a pot sitting on top of the FS.

The FS is not huge so getting a pot to fit inside would be quite hard. I'll play around with blocking off the side port to keep heat under the pot, rather than escaping out of the side. But you don't want to starve the fuel of air, either...

I guess there is only one way to find out if this will work and having an extinguisher/escape route may be advisable!

Cheers for the pointers and keep them coming if ideas spring to mind. Once I have results, I'll let you all know.

I used this Brasslite burner when I toured the west coast.


http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/b...o2DEnlarge.jpg

As you can see the pot is designed to sit on the mesh on top. The height above the flame is 1 inch. It worked quite well as long as the windbreak was close to the pot and air can get in from below. Didn't like altitude though, it took ages to cook anything.

got this pic from the trangia website, it clearly shows the convection of cool air coming up past the burner, and hot air going closely past the sides of the pan and being held in by the lid

Thanks for that. It's food for thought, excuse the pun.

My problem will be that all the heat from the meths burner will only hit the base of the kettle or pot. The FS is too narrow to have either pot fit inside it. Best case is that it works as normal, or just takes a bit longer. Worst case is that the water only goes up by 2 degrees...

It's a case of suck it and see. If I get some good results, (or bad), I'll post.

Balls....

I've just realised my plan has one glaring flaw!!

A trangia meths burner is about 3 inches in diameter, IIRR. My set up will already have it operating at less than optimal output. At the top of the trangia burner is a screw-on cap that has a disc that you can occlude the flame port to varying degrees.

My FS100, with a rectangular cross-section of 130mm by 135mm, may not be wide enough to allow the burner to be fully opened...:censored:

If it is not (and I'll measure up in a shop first), then it is hobo stove time, hoping that one of those coke-can stoves will work instead.

On the bright side it would be a lot cheaper, but without the convenience/safety of having a screw shut top to my eventual burner.

May be the Honey Stove after all!!

Despite your shocking slur on my honeystove, I'll just point out that it has a couple of trangia burner setting heights, that they say you can put any sort of meths burner in it so height can't matter much, and that a small pot may sit inside the sides and therefore lower than a bigger pot.
The site that sells the honeystove has a couple of ti mug type things that might fit inside your terribly shoddy hinged attempt at a stove thingy ;)

Also, when you have a wood fire in it, what height does that burn at exactly? A bigger variation than an inch of meths burner variation??

Believe it or not, any look I give the Honey Stove is quite covetous!!

The hinged thingy is a bit basic in comparison, but it's my hinged thingy and I like it.... :blush:

With wood in it, the FS does lap the edges of my kettle, so it is nice and strong! But I would like the meths alternative thrown into the mix!...just not at the same time.... That would boil my kettle and my eye brows in about 0.2 seconds :innocent:

The Trangia burner has a screw on cap ,which seals the burner and keeps any unburnt fuel inside .
The cap that you describe is the simmer ring ,an optional extra .
If you just want to boil water ,you don't use the simmer ring.
You can make a "narrow " simmer ring quite simply by cutting a hole out of the bottom of a pop can.
You just drop it over the flame.

[Low tech and not Touratwatish --but it works . ]

Not touratwatish?!?
Right, that's it: I'm not interested!!:innocent:

Actually, based on what you describe, that is good news: it means a sealable container is still an option.

I've since realised that the simmer ring is still possible, assuming that the optimum height for heating matches the height of the single lower sidewall of the FS design (which is 5 cm lower than the other 3 sides)...
:thumbup1:

A couple of simple height settings would surely be enough? Nothing elaborate - just a few holes drilled to poke some wire across would do it. Easily customized along the way. Same goes for windshields - some heavy 'pie dish' foil and a few of those giant paperclips. Just a thought.

Spirit (Meths) Burner

I didn't think the simmer ring was optional? In any case, it does two things.
If you don't have it on there are flames from the central pool and from the small ring of perimeter holes so lots of heat.
The simmer ring on and open cuts off the perimeter holes but leaves the centre clear, so less heat straight away.
You can then slide the adjustable bit over the fuel pool to cut back the flame further.
So if your particularly poorly constructed stove ;) hasn't room for the sliding plate in open position, you could just cut that plate off, or trim a can perhaps, to blank off the outer holes only giving at least a degree of adjustability?

Well, I have the burner and, using a Jenga set, I tested out varying heights earlier this evening.

In short it works. It is not as hot as my Omnifuel, predictably, nor is it as hot as the wood fire but it works, boiling 250ml of water in about 2 mins 40 secs.

Quite a while but when wood is not available or is wet, it is a vialbe alternative!

So now for making my holder. I have ally sheet that I will cut to size and some 7mm diameter ally rod that I will use to make the supports. To make these I need to bend the rods and right-angles 4 times each.

Any suggestion for bending ally?
Should I use heat the way I might with steel? Or just bend with a lever of some sort? (Ally seems a little more prone to metal fatigue than steel...)

Thanks!!
 

Well, a big thanks to everyone who gave me pointers. Mission accomplished!

I ditched the ally bending idea and just made two support bars and a platform that would sit on them. The platform has rivets in it to stop the burner shifting as well as fitting into holes I drilled in the supports for stability: i would not want the burner to tip hot alcohol all over the floor!!

Here are some pics:

The complete assembly, boiling the kettle, the individual parts, where the bars go, and finally how all my stove stuff packs down!

Also, using this set up, I can also lower the height further meaning the frying pan could be used. I also found out that the FS could make a sturdy windshield as a cannister and gas stove can easily fit inside it!!

Complete kit weighs just over 1kg (without any pots or pans:eek3:)!! So quite heavy, but very easy to pack.

All-in-all: Chuffed!:thumbup1: