EJR,
I've always been interested in reducing my load but one day it struck me as I was putting my pot and stove back into my backpack, "Why can't I make things smaller too?"
I had seen pots that nested with a
1qt. Nalgene bottle and thought that would be a great start. Almost every backpack ever made has a pocket that fits a Nalgene bottle so it was a no brainer that the pot could ride in that pocket without adding anything in the way of volume. I ended up at
REI stuffing bottles into pots. I like some more than others and ended up settling on the
GSI Halulite Minimalist. I really like the cozy that came with it and how it turned into a coffee cup too. One less piece of gear to carry!
The next challenge was the stove... I got thinking about how I keep my 'get home' bag in my truck and how heated I would be if it got stolen with one of my nice stoves in it. I've had a bad run of luck with buying backpacking stoves when they are new to the market and most expencive. I couldn't figure out how much fuel to take with me either. From work it's around 20 mile home and 50-60 miles from the big city. So anywhere from one day of pushing hard to a week of keeping my eyes open. At the time I was thinking that I would have to boil all my water too. I solved that problem by throwing a chunk of pool shock into a 2oz bottle to make bleach out of but I still didn't know how much or little fuel I would need for a stove that I really didn't want to live in my truck bag anyhow.
I had seen the
Emberlit Stove and the
Honey Stove. While I agree with the Gents at
ITSTactical that the Honey Stove really is the Bee's knees I couldn't justify the cost... I was right back where I started.
Until I pulled up my man panties and desided that I could make my own. I tried to make one out of some 30gauge aluminum flashing that I had laying around thinking that it could fit between the pot and the bottle.. who would have guessed that it couldn't stand the heat.
I was in a store again but this time I was stuffing pots into things and found that a 4" take off duct fit just right.
That led to the
Multi-fuel Stove but while working on making more I got tired of pulling my layout over a round idem and ended up at the hardware store again. A 4" stove pipe clicks together and can be laid flat for layout and what not. So that is where I am at now...
