"12 boxes of the 12 packs"

That sounds downright Gross.

--B.G.--

> Hey, wait a minute? This stuff goes stale?


No. I'm pretty sure it lasts for decades.

I used some five-year-old Esbit tablets that had been stored my cool basement, original packaging, inside Ziploc bags, inside sealed buckets.

These old tablets popped many times, sort of like popcorn, and threw tiny chunks of burning Esbit around. They boiled water OK, but I worried about starting fires or melting holes in expensive gear.

Now I buy just the Esbit I need, when I need it.

I use Weber lighter cubes, which are sold by Weber for lighting their charcoal grills.
Sold in places like Lowe's Hardware.
24 individually packaged cubes for around $6, the last time I checked.
The individual cubes might not remain airtight after you cut them out of the main pack, so take care to ensure that they are in a ziplock or something. I have had some in a ziplock for over a year, and they still work fine.

Anyway, they appear to be a lower cost version of WetFire. They actually burn a little bit longer.
They are cheaper.

To avoid issues with residue, I just use the cubes for lighting a little fire of twigs, and then I use that for cooking.
I guess some people don't like that, and so they can use the cubes alone.

It wasn't a sale, but I did find and purchase a 12 pack of the Bleuet solid fuel tablets at a local Academy Sports and Outdoors. The price was $4.99 / 12. After sales tax I was out the door minus $5.43. So every time I fire up a $.45 solid fuel tablet I can amuse myself by thinking how much cheaper it is to heat up my water this way than using my alcohol stove and Everclear!

I still have other options such as Heet, 91% Isopropyl and 151 Everclear for alcohol fuels. But now I get to entertain myself by constructing a solid fuel burner / stove for these fuel tabs. I've finally found a use for that SS water bottle that I was gifted with at work. ;-)

Party On,

Newton

"12 pack of the Bleuet"

Those are the pink cubes in the blue box, I think.

Pretty soon we will have to run down to the store for a 12-pack of Bleuet and a 12-pack of Bud.

--B.G.--

Bob you're up way early this morning or are you just up way late? LOL

"Pretty soon we will have to run down to the store for a 12-pack of Bleuet and a 12-pack of Bud".

You've got an Academy that sells "Bud"? Now if we could just get them to stock dehydrated Yak dung we'd be in business. ;-)

Party On,

Newton

"You've got an Academy that sells "Bud"?"

I've never heard of that store in Northern California.

"Now if we could just get them to stock dehydrated Yak dung we'd be in business."

Nahh, you have to get the fresh stuff and dehydrate it yourself.

Seriously, though, sun-dried yak patties are a standard fuel in Nepal. If it is burned in a well-designed stove, you would never smell anything odd.

--B.G.--

http://zenstoves.net/StoveChoices.htm

Zen stoves has a great graph of starting weight of a stove vs time. Esbit is meaurably lighter for tips around a week in length. So for a week long trip you can save between 2 and 4 ounces. Which doesnt sound like much but we pay about $15 per ounce or more to lighten our load in other places.

Edited by GregF on 09/19/2012 19:06:35 MDT.

One big advantage of esbit is you can mail it , you cant mail alcohol or cannisters. Important for people doing food/fuel drops or resupply on long hikes.

My alcohol setup uses as little alcohol, as would esbit by wt. Max savings is the wt of a fuel bottle, which for a short hike would be 0.6 oz .

Small price to pay for not dealing with a sticky yucky pot. Much easier to light too. Dont need to fiddle with small crusty residues and save for later.

You can make all kind of comparisons that mean nothing. Efficiency all depends on wind screen and stove/pot/windscreen setup. It is easy (and common) when comparing to be more optimized for one fuel, or stove, but not another being evaluated.

A good Esbit cooking system will boil 3 cups of water using a 14 gram block of Esbit. An outstanding System will boil 4 cups of water (very rare). A good alcohol system will boil 2 cups of water using 15 ml.

(15 ml)*(.78 s.g.) = 11.7 grams of alcohol to boil 2 cups

11.7 grams (3 cups/ 2cups) = 17.55 grams of alcohol to boil 3 cups of water

14 grams of Esbit / 17.55 grams of alcohol = 0.7977 Therefore Esbit wins

I hope this makes sense. My 2 cents - Jon

You can mail canisters, I have done it (legally). The box must be labeled so that it is ground only transport. Don't know about alcohol, I haven't had to send any yet! Sorry for the thread drift, wanted to get the record straight.

You can mail alcohol also...


http://www.e-nrg.com/shipping-faq/

Hazardous flammable materials (HAZMAT) require special handling, so please remember that your delivery will take just a little longer than normal deliveries.

In accordance with regulations, all deliveries must be via ground only (air transport is not permitted).

@ Bob and

@ Jon and

Thanks to Brian Green

I've found a reason for me personally to make the switch and scratched my MYOG itch at the same time.



Thanks to the generosity of Brian Green posting a link to a pdf of a template for this stove on his backpacking blog I had an easy job of constructing this stove.



I used common aluminum flashing for the construction of this trial run. Bob may have been right about my scale needing to show milligrams because it couldn't make up its mind whether to show 1 or 2 grams on the display. I erred on the side of caution and snapped the picture while it was showing 2 grams. ;-)

I figure it this way. If the number of boils that I can achieve per ounce of fuel is about equal I will have saved weight by reducing my "stove" weight by 9 grams as compared to my Mini Fancee Feest clone.

Take as a given for a second that the windscreen used with my alcohol stove can be used with the MYOG Esbit Stove and keeps that weight as "even".

My next challenge is to construct a pot stand that is less than or equal to 9 grams and keeps the cook pot the correct height above the stove.

Can anyone clue me in on what the distance from the burning Esbit/Bleuet tablet should be using this kind of stove?

Party On,

Newton

Edited to repair broken link and to add this hint. When printing out the pdf template un-check the box that says fit to page or your template will be too small.

Newton

Edited by Newton on 09/23/2012 16:32:20 MDT.

Wow, that's some exceptionally clean folding. Did you do it in the steps Brian Green wrote, or did you find a better way?

I've made 3 now (backups), and while it's a piece of cake, it's never really gorgeous like that.




Love the tray though. I'm getting 8-9m boils consistently and up to 15m usable burn, 18ish minutes total.

Andrew,

Thanks.

Finding the proper width straightedges and some rather strong and long thumbnails helped to produce the bends. The creases got sharpened up with common pliers. The edges got cleaned up with a "fine" file.

How high do you keep your cook pot above your stove's top and the burning fuel tab?

Thanks in advance.

Party On,

Newton

Edited to add some new found information.

After viewing this video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERtwfJPNGhY&feature=youtu.be

...where Hiram is testing out the Flat Cat Gear Epicurean stove using Esbit tabs I gathered this info on the height. The Epicurean base is a flat cup style burner that sits directly on the "surface" supporting the stove. Hiram states that the pot stand should place the cook pot 1.8" above the same surface supporting the stove. This measurement is mentioned at 1 minute and 14 seconds into the video.

The portion of this tray style stove that are best described as the legs add another .375" of height to this equation. So if I'm doing my math correctly my pot support needs to support the cook pot 2.175" above the same surface that supports the stove. For those of us who are still into fractions that is just a little less than 2 3/16".

Now I need to fabricate a combination windscreen and pot support for my 1 cup generic cook pot that I purchased from Zelph's. The goal is to have it weigh less than 18 grams. My current windscreen weighs 9 grams and this tray type stove weighs 9 grams less than my alcohol stove, hence the figure of less than 18 grams.

Wish me luck. ;-)

Newton

Edited by Newton on 09/23/2012 20:04:01 MDT.

Can I first say that I'm blown away to see others making my little Esbit tray stoves and using them. I created it as part of a journey that I was on to "rediscover" the beauty of solid fuel - a.k.a no other Esbit stoves were working for me. I gave Jon Fong permission to post my template on his site but didn't know that people were actually making them.

I'll check the exact height that I have my pot at above the stove when I use it, typically that's in combination with my Flat Cat Snow Leopard system so Jon could probably provide the exact heights off the top of his head - I'll need to measure. I've made these using titanium foil, aluminum flashing, and old Bud Light bottles and all have functioned well for me.

if you have suggestions for improvements feel free to let me know!

Edited by bfgreen on 09/23/2012 20:29:21 MDT.

Newton,

I found this graph at the following site:

http://thru-hiker.com/articles/esbit_stove_height.php






edit for spelling

Edited by kent on 09/24/2012 20:55:31 MDT.

@ Brian,

"Can I first say that I'm blown away to see others making my little Esbit tray stoves and using them. I created it as part of a journey that I was on to "rediscover" the beauty of solid fuel - a.k.a no other Esbit stoves were working for me".

Until this part of my "journey" I had never used a solid fuel stove fueled by Esbit or Bleuet fuel tablets. Thanks for blazing the trail with your sharing of the template.



@ Kent,

Thank you so much for that graphic table of cook pot heights. I seems that I was close in my "guesstimation" of the distance by looking at the third green bar in the graph. The second green bar seems pretty close to the distance Hiram quoted. It also seems just a touch quicker by about 27 seconds. Naturally the first bar in the graph is the quickest boil time.

Now I have another question. Hiram did a video using a Flat Cat Gear Epicurean Classic Stove in simmer mode. He never achieved a boil but there was no soot on the pot after the burn!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0AKSDzOMrs&feature=youtu.be

Now I'm wondering about how much air to allow in to the stove and a combination which of the three first heights together will give the cleanest and most efficient burn.

A clean cook pot is a happy cook pot and hiker! L O L

Party On,

Newton

I'm right around 1.25" from the top of a new esbit tab to the bottom of my pot.

I've noticed that if you clean off a pot, my first 2-3 burns actually have virtually zero soot/goop on the pot, but it accumulates after a while.


Here's a video of my system boiling 2c of water
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYDgTV8q5Cw