Thank you Ed , most gracious . I just hung my leather apron behind my workbench as a background . Cheers Alastair
Some stoves in a personal collection stand out above others, and for a number of reasons… This Coleman 442 Exponent works just fine, and is otherwise unremarkable, but the pickup text message was priceless… Children waved at me through a window of the house…
1950 Primus 210 reporting for duty: This stove lives in my emergency kit in the car. It is true, I haven't ever needed it and it is unlikely I will require it with my present car (Isuzu Blade) but, if I was ever cut off by a freak snow fall, when the rescuers dig their way to me I want to offer them a hot meal and a brew. I purchased this little stove from a stall in Totnes market. It hasn't ever failed to fire up and must have covered a couple of hundred thousand miles!
Here's my Tula "export" stove. The interesting thing in this photo is that it's running on Diesel fuel! There's a guy on youtube who claims that the low-sulfur Diesel fuel in the United States is so close to kerosene that you can use it as a kerosene substitute. Personally, I felt he was crazy, as Diesel is clearly thicker and has a much more oily feel to it between the fingers. So I had to try it. I figured at worst, I'd carbon stuff up and make a mess. If any of my stoves would be capable of running on Diesel, I felt the Tula "export" would be the most likely to do it. It was a lot less drama getting it going than I thought it would be. Only a single pre-heating using my "soup can" wind screen and it lit up fine. I do admit I slowly and carefully added pressure until I got it going full beans as you see in the photo. Of course, with kerosene being just slightly more expensive than Diesel fuel here, I'll go back to kerosene for the long term. Thanks much, ben
Great photos and info Ben ! Never imagined it would be so simple to get such a good result . Thought you may have to experiment with jet diameters and other dark arts . Good to know that it runs on diesel in case of an emergency . I run all my stoves on BBQ charcoal lighter fluid . Its cheap ,works great and you can buy it in almost every store in town
Greetings @A A C - Thanks much! I was very surprised that it ran as well as it did! I was expecting absolute failure to be honest. I also would have thought that it would need a different jet or something else, but it ran very nicely in stock form. I'll have to try lighter fluid at some point - it is very easy to find and pretty inexpensive. thanks much, ben
As long as you use the non-bio fluid . The ones I use are described on the label as ‘containing Hydrocarbons C10-C13 .
I never even knew there were bio-based lighter fluids. Very interesting! I like the idea - one webpage I looked at noted that their bio-fluid is like putting "food on food." thanks, ben
Good morning all, I decided to repeat the test from yesterday on my Valor 55 - a silent burner stove. This is NOT one of my best running stoves - even on kerosene, it's a bit finicky, must be pre-heated extremely well, sometimes will spontaneously underburn, etc... Getting it going on diesel was difficult! Took two pre-heating cycles and five or six flare ups before it got going properly. For sure, the conditions were worse this morning. It was colder (just below freezing), there was some wind, and I do not have a "pre-heating chimney" made up for silent burner stoves like this. Once it was going, it burned fine: You can definitely see the soot accumulated on the top burner cap from the flare ups before it was going properly! I did heat up about 1.5 liters of water with my kettle with it to make pour-over coffee. The bottom of the kettle doesn't have any soot on it, so the burn is pretty clean. In the next photo, I used my headlamp (head mounted torch?) to shine light on the nipple and you can see the fuel vapor. I don't know if this is because it isn't hot enough to properly vaporize, or since its cold enough that I can see my breath, is the same thing happening with the diesel vapor? Not sure! Fore sure, one I drain the diesel out of this stove I will not run it on diesel again. It's really a bad idea to draw any conclusions on such a small sample size, but it may be that roarer burners are better suited for attempting to burn diesel than silent burners. As @kerophile says, "Aren't stoves fascinating?" Indeed. thanks much, ben
