“Wow, it’ll burn any kind of fuel and work at any altitude. How great is that?”
Well save for the cost, and the weight, and the bulk. Oh yeah, and the realization that I’ll never be climbing mountains in Pakistan.
After discovering that I could make my own alcohol stoves out of what most people regard as garbage, I’ve never looked back. For all the things that I do, these stoves are more than sufficient.
Besides the simplicity, the light weight, the lack of bulk, the enjoyment of doing it myself, and the cost, or lack thereof, the fuel that powers the stoves is simple methyl hydrate, aka methylated alcohol, aka methanol. One of the benefits is that it can be carried in a plastic bottle, further reducing weight and bulk.
I carry it in a variety of scrounged bottles, depending on the duration of the trip.
My only worry about using a plastic water bottle, with a clear liquid in it is that it might be mistaken for water. I know what’s in the bottle, and most of the people I trip with know what’s in the bottle. But as we all get a little bit older and we start having kids, and they start coming out with us, I fear that they won’t realize it’s not a bottle of water. A gulp of methanol can cause blindness at best, and be fatal at worst.
To let everyone know that this is both flammable and toxic, I pulled up some images out of my clip art files, and put it together in Illustrator. I set them up in a 7 page PDF file, in a variety of lengths to go around several different size bottles.
If you want a copy, send me an email ( exploriment at gmail dot com ) and I’ll send you the PDF.
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