This is my first venture into MYOG land (I think I picked an easy one).

I decided to make my own Caldera Cone for a SP-900. So far it looks great (I'll be honest I modified the dimensions from my Trail Designs SP-700) and it looks like it will work very well.

The tin snips that I used to cut the aluminum flashing left a serrated edge (for lack of a better description)along the cut ends. I'm a bit worried that this will be sharp and I'll cut myself on it when I'm not paying attention. Any recommendations on how to get the sharp edges not so sharp? I was thinking about a rotary tool, but that may be overkill.

Thanks,

Mike

Aluminum oxide or silica sandpaper, fine grit.

Next time, cut with a utility knife on a flat and hard surface. ;)

Thanks Javan - a little sandpaper worked great. I would have thought the edges would have cut right through but they are smooth as can be now.

It went so good that I made another for my SP 1400.

It was a fun project, but I doubt I'll ever use them, if I need pots that big I'll take a canister stove.

Mike

My wife and I use a 1.3L on a Cone, get 1 liter boiling in under an ounce of alcohol, and IIR in about 12 minutes.

It is a quiet, though slower, contender.

Yeah - I was playing around with the big boy today and got 5 cups of water to boil in 12.5 minutes. I don't think performance will be an issue, I was pretty happy with that - I put 40 ml of fuel in and had between 5 - 10 ml left over after a boil was reached.

Packing that big honken thing will be my problem. I like self contained cooking kits. If I could figure out how to get the Cone to store inside of the pot I would be all over it.

I saw a thread about a prototype that Trail Designs scratched called the Caldera Fissure. I'll probably try and make something like that - I did buy a roll of 14" x 25' flashing, so I have plenty of material to play around with.

Regardless it was fun "I can't leave the house" weekend project.

Edited by mlebwill on 05/02/2010 21:48:38 MDT.

"Packing that big honken thing will be my problem. I like self contained cooking kits. If I could figure out how to get the Cone to store inside of the pot I would be all over it."

Yep, that is always the challenge. I found a 2-cup graduated mug at Wally world. (We use them for drinks or soup while dinner is soaking.) By cutting the priming pan off of the stove I cut get it to nest in the Cone, in the mug.


The blue stuff sack holds everything together.

And there have been a number of other solutions posted as well.

Greg wrote:
"By cutting the priming pan off of the stove I cut get it to nest in the Cone, in the mug."

If you want a substitute metal priming pan that folds, use an aluminum muffin cup liner (not the paper liners).

--B.G.--

Michael, do you know how thick your aluminium flashing is?

Edited by dfranzen on 05/03/2010 03:40:26 MDT.

Greg - yeah, I thought about picking up one of the Caldera Caddy's or something like that... But I'll still end up using a canister that I nest in the pot.

David - I'm not sure how thick the flashing is. It is thicker than the material used by Trail Designs and too thick to cut with a utility knife but thin enough to roll up.

Mike

Aluminum flashing metal varies widely in thickness. I have seen some as thin as 0.014" and some as thick as 0.092". It is hard to know what you have unless you use calipers to measure it.
--B.G.--

Bob, aluminium flashing varies even wider in thickness. There is a German supplier supplying it from 0.002" (0.05 mm) thickness in 0.002"-steps (0.002", 0.004", 0.006",...)

I find 1mm (0.04") way too thick. No chance of rolling it up
My guess is that 0.014" is the upper limit of thickness the flashing should be. Steven Evans sells 0.003" titanium sheets. But well, that's titanium.

Mike, do you have a chance of weighing the rest of your roll and guesstimate how many feet are still on it?

Edited by dfranzen on 05/03/2010 22:50:51 MDT.

I just received some 0.005" thick titanium foil, and it seems pretty decent. I can cut it with scissors, and I can punch it with an ordinary paper punch. However, after cutting and punching quite a bit, I noticed that my ordinary tools are very dull. Titanium is interesting stuff to work with, a little more challenging than aluminum.

--B.G.--

I've developed a bit of PostScript that will create templates for Caldera Clones, including my spin on the split version; the Caldera Flissure... You just edit the text file to change the parameters to suit your pan and burner setup, and print the template.

Have a look at this bpl thread or the original OM thread. I've included the print thread version of the latter, as it's quite long, and paging gets a little tedious.

PM me for a copy of the script.

Kevin - Thanks for the links about the Fissure. Those pictures really help, very similar to what I was thinking. I guess I'll have to get some poster board and make a mock up and play around with it this weekend (if it rains).

Thanks,

Mike

Michael,

I know the OM thread is long, but it's probably worth getting to (or scrolling to) the bottom, to get an idea of what the Clone looks like these days. In particular, the clarification of how the latest Flissure joint works (V-slotted interlaced fingers vs. old castellated joint).

There are a few BPL users of the script so far, with some notable examples posted on the OM thread.

I'm printing out templates for a Trangia 27 pan, a 930ml pot (very like the Coleman set) and an Alpkit MyTiMug tonight, finally getting around to using up a stack of roasting trays...

I just made two cones using .0092" Amerimax flashing. The advantage of that brand is they actually put the thickness on their product! If not, the store should be able to look it up.

Seems just the right thickness to me, though I've never seen a real Caldera Cone in person. Got advice on the thickness and much else at Kevin/Captain Paranoia's thread at outdoorsmagic.com (mentioned above). Check it out.

Also, I have pictures at whiteblaze:

http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php?t=50705&highlight=caldera

And I ended up using kitchen scissors to cut the flashing. Actually easier to control than the sheet metal snips I have. And it didn't seem to harm the scissors!

Edited by sierraDoug on 08/21/2010 13:47:39 MDT.

> My wife and I use a 1.3L on a Cone, get 1 liter boiling in under an ounce of alcohol, and IIR in about 12 minutes.


Greg, do you really boil 1 liter of water with 1 ounce of denatured alcohol? I use 3/4 ounce of alcohol to boil 1 1/2 cups of water with a Redbull stove, windscreen, and Evernew 0.9 liter Ti pot.

Casey,
"Greg, do you really boil 1 liter of water with 1 ounce of denatured alcohol?"

Usually under an ounce of 85% ethanol for a liter of water.

We recently got back from 2 5-day trips and had fuel left over on each one. Temps were in the 50's and the water was probably around 40°. A couple of the nights were windy, but most were not. We shut down the burner as soon as the water starts to roll, then recover any fuel left in the stove.

(On a subsequent 7 day solo trip I used 14 grams a day to boil 2 cups of water in a Keg-H under similar conditions.)

Edit: Corrected bad procedure for the solo trip usage value. I initially divided by 7 instead of 6.

Edited by greg23 on 08/23/2010 12:00:40 MDT.

> Greg, do you really boil 1 liter of water with 1 ounce of denatured alcohol?

I regularly achieve a boil & a bit with 15ml of 95/5 ethanol/methanol denatured alcohol, for 500ml in an 850ml MSR Titan kettle. Using a Clone and a conic-walled, inward-facing jet ring, open-cup (i.e. trangia-style) red bull burner. So 1 litre on one ounce sounds right.

[an image paints a thousand words]


Here's a Flissure for the Alpkit MyTiMug:

Edited by captain_paranoia on 08/23/2010 11:19:00 MDT.