The KAP-Arctic stove was manufactured by the small company KAP (Kiruna Arktiska Produkter) in Kiruna in northern Sweden. KAP was a one-man company run by mountaineer Gunnar Finn and KAP stove was the only product made. The manufacturing started in 1982 but have stopped as Gunnar have retired. The KAP-Arctic is basicaly a Trangia stove with a built-in kerosene burner and external fuel tank. The pump is located in the fuel bottle, and is connected to the burner by a flexible fuel hose. The burner is a standard Optimus "silent" type (or Patria burner in the later versions), and the flame can be regulated with high precision. Turning the valve beyond maximum will bring up a small needle that cleans the jet. The holder of the burner has a ignition groove provided with a wick for easy ignition when priming. When the stove is packed up the burner and the flame adjuster knob fits into the Trangia cookset. The fuel bottle is stored separately with the fuel hose winded around the pump. The pump is made of metal and is very robust. The piston is threaded so that it can be secured when the stove is stowed away. The preassure in the bottle is released by the brass air-valve. The pump is very similar to the Optimus Explorer/Nova pump, but as I understand Gunnar designed this 10 years before Optimus started with their design. The holder makes the burner fit nicely into the lower Trangia windshield. In the ignition groove to the right it is easy to poor a small volume of alcohol, and thanks to the wick it is also possible to ignite it here. The burner was maufactured by Optimnus or Patria in Portugal. The Trangia windshields and cookset are manufactured by the Swedish company Trangia. Best regards, Rickard S
more great photos today of pump and burner stoves. is there any background on Mr Finn and why with all the stoves out there he went ahead and made this very high quality one? how did the price compare with other stoves being made at the time?
There's several threads on here, about making a Kap-artic using an Opti 111 burner with an adapter plate. Somewhere...
Wonderful stove!!! I enjoyed seeing the pictures. The pump is ahead of its time and I like the air release screw idea. Thank you Rickard for sharing. I was able to order a kit from the guys. Link (Link also in the link page) I just sent him a message through ebay and ordered one through email and paypal. Works very well, no original but allows your nova or ommi pump to do double duty. Hard to believe it only took Optimus 10 years to come out with the 11 explorer. Cheers, Jeff
Jeff, Are they just selling the conversion kits? One would need to have one's own 111T or 111C burner and optimus or primus pump, yes? HJ
Thanks Rickard S I always thought the brass valve on the pump was a pressure release. Pity Optimus didn't copy that as well. Love to get my hands on one of those pumps...someday!!! Cheers Barra
The Finnish adapters do allow us to make a very good equivelent but it's only Gunnar Finn who made the real KAP Arctic. I wonder how many he made?
Hi Jim, Yes you need a burner and a pump... and a Trangia. One lucky stovie to have all that to make it. Cheers, Jeff
A Swedish web page about the Kap Arctic stove stated in 2004 that Gunnar Finn sold 5-6000 Kap Arctic stoves. Unfortunately this page is no longer available on the web.
As far as I know the development and sale of both the Kap-Artic and Optimus 11 Explorer were closely linked with the demand from the Swedish Defence Forces. My guess is that Finn had some kind of contact or might even been an employee of the army and managed to sell the Kap stove witch then set the standard. When it was time for the next contract Optimus came up with the Explorer. But they were reserved for the special forces stationed in the north so like most I had to make do with the 'snuskburken' Svea/Trangia alcohole stove.
No doubt some army base has 100's if not 1000's of them sitting on shelves. The US military isn't the only one that knows how to spend tax payers money. Cheers, Jeff
No, I don't think they'we been scrapped, and I'm sure the military didn't have lots of them although I imagine them being popular among the officers and men at I22 Jägarskolan in Kiruna. The simple answer is: by way of mouth they found buyers/users - who've simply kept them and seem reluctant to sell them on. I remember my own purchase: I stumbled over a demo KAP-Arctic standing in the Sports Department of the DOMUS store in Kiruna, the mining town in the north of Sweden where Gunnar Finn had his little cottage industry. This was back in 1988 and I was on a train trip to Abisko and Narvik and the train changing gave me a few hours in Kiruna. The store not only had a demo, they also had a couple of "Trangia Arctic" stoves on the shelf - I immediately bought one! I remember they were expensive, several times the cost of the oem Trangia 25... And Domus Sport had a deal with GF to sell the ones he didn't sell himself via mail order or other channels. Probably the only place in the country where you could buy one OTC without prior arrangement. I later read somewhere Trangia had snubbed him someway about calling the product a Trangia so he changed it to KAP-Arctic - and it's under that name they have become famous for their quality, design, silence, innovation and above all reliability.
The old web page mentioned in Post#148075 can actually still be found, buried deeply in a web dungeon somewhere: http://web.archive.org/web/20050228165731/http://www.ess.slu.se/peterask/fri/kok/arctic/main.htm Someone have been vise enought to store it for the future, before the original University server lost it... In it Peter tells the story of KAP and their stove (and it was all fact checkd by Gunnar Finn himself, so this is as genuine as it gets). Cheers,
The article is also reproduced here on CCS with permission. https://classiccampstoves.com/threads/14736
