I've been playing around with alcohol stoves for a while, and have come up with this design. The normal tea light was to small for me, but I found some party candles with a bigger cup. It holds 1 and a half oz fuel. Here it is compared to a regular tea light:
I made a pot stand for it out of 0.5 mm aluminum sheet:
I designed a windscreen out aluminum baking tray to use with my MSR Titan pot:
The burner weighs 2 grams, the stand 5 grams, and the windscreen 9 grams, for a total weight of 15 grams. I was able to boil 2 cups of water with 1/2 oz of fuel in 10 minutes. I've calculated the efficiency at 56%. Here's a couple pictures of it in action:
The thing I really like about the tea light stove is it requires no priming, and it's easy to pour excess fuel back into my fuel bottle. The one thing i need to make though is a snuffing cover. Please leave your thoughts and comments, I'd love to hear some input.

-Sam

I compared the performance of an open container type alcohol stove such as yours with other types. I found you can increase your stove's power output to make it nearly the same as the other stoves (of similar size) by adding a wad of fiberglass insulation. It doesn't add much weight and it retains the alcohol in the event of a tip.

As for the snuffer, why not make the pot stand so you can move it out of the way? Then you could snuff it by setting the pot on it momentarily without adding the weight of a snuffer to your kitchen.

H

Edited by herman666 on 01/13/2009 07:04:25 MST.

Nice setup and great efficiency figures Sam.

Have you tried it outdoors in a breeze yet?

I've tried it in a light breeze,and it seems to do just fine. It seems to just burn a little bit faster when the wind hits it. I'm waiting for a particularly windy day to see how it does then.