My housemates and their dinner guests drank a 24 pack of lagers yesterday.
What luck! After gleefully mangling a half dozen cans, I successfully constructed an ultralight back/bikepacking alcohol stove. This model is called the Hannah stove (PDF instructions here). This variation on the pressurized penny stove does not require any special equipment or glues — just a pair of scissors, a pin and a handful of soda or beer cans. The idea is simple: cut the bottoms off of two cans. Drill a hole in the top of one half — this is for filling the stove with alcohol. Insert the top piece into the other half. Poke twenty-four holes around the rim; these become the gas jets.
After crushing my first two versions, I came up with a strategy for fitting the top half into the bottom. I first softened the metal of the bottom piece by burning a bit of denatured alcohol in it. I then wiggled the bottom of another can into the piece to gently widen the rim diameter. The two pieces fitted easily together using this trick!
Beautiful and amazing! Still mystified as to how exactly it works, but that’s part of the fun.
Posted by contemporarycontempt | March 26, 2012, 12:18 am