I've read and heard about some folks wrapping the valve stem of their Svea with a high temp wick material and wire to capture more alcohol (or gas) for priming. Can anybody point me to a tutorial or share their experiences? Trying to ween myself off of priming paste, which is easy but not the easiest to pack for backpacking. Trying to decide between using gas with an eye dropper or alcohol carried in a small squeeze bottle. I'm finding that gas works well but is sooty (just like paste) but alcohol burns cooler and doesn't prime as consistently. Wondering if wrapping the valve stem in a wick would help boost the performance of alcohol as a primer. Can a wick also be used when priming with gas?
Take a look at @kerophile ’s post HERE Yes, no problem. MSR and other makes of ‘bottle’ white gasoline stoves have wicks (fireproof felt pads) intended for such use. In fact, if you purchase one of those felt pads, cutting a radial slit from the outer circumference to the inner hole would enable you to slip it into place around the burner riser stem. You might want to teduce the diameter of the pad to match that of the spirit cup/indentation on the Svea.
Primus Omnifuel/Trangia Multifuel even use that pad for direct lighting/preheating with diesel or kerosene - I put a slice of a similar wick from a table top alcohol furnace between the tubes on a Radius 21 burner with both ends down in the priming cup, an incomplete and quite shitty stove bought as scrap. Tested with crappy diesel and it worked very fine to light and preheat just as Omnifuel, pump a couple of strokes and then release pressure when cup become wet, light, preheat and pessurize, guess I had it running about a half hour - and it still works since I put kerosene in it again.
