Penny stoves make budget camping comfortable. For little more than the cost of a bottle of fuel and the time it takes to find two used soda cans, you can have an instant heat source, useful for cooking, sterilizing water, and keeping warm.
Penny stoves are built using the bottom ends of two soda cans, slotted together to provide a closed container. One end of the container is perforated to allow fumes to escape from the container, with a slightly larger hole in the center of the same end, used to fill the container with fuel. A penny is placed in this hole after the fuel is added to the penny stove, thus regulating the pressure and giving us the name: Penny Stove.
Although simple in principle, penny stoves can be quite difficult for the inexperienced user to light. Follow these steps to instantly light your penny stove every time:
- Use the correct fuel: Denatured alcohol, the technical name, is the optimal fuel for your penny stove. The term “denatured” means that the alcohol has been poisoned, both to avoid taxes/duties on the liquor (thereby keeping costs down) and to prevent people from drinking it. Denatured alcohol burns cleanly and gives off a strong vapor. It is also less prone to explosive combustion (unlike oil). You can find denatured alcohol almost anywhere: at your supermarket, local hardware store, convenience store, or gas station.
- Properly space the burner ports: The size and frequency of the burner holes on your penny stove will dictate how easily you can light it, along with the size of the flame (and therefore the amount of heat it will put out) and the amount of time the fuel will remain. latest. There is no hard and fast rule about how many holes your penny stove should have, although the more holes you have, the finer and hotter the jets of steam will be. Burner ports should be no larger than a thumbtack, to allow the maximum amount of pressure to build up in the stove as the fumes escape to ignite.
- Protect the flame from the wind: Lighting the penny stove outside without wind protection is difficult in all but the calmest conditions. Install a physical block around the stove to prevent any turbulence from affecting the stove or the ignition flame (match, lighter, etc.). Keep in mind that in daylight the stove flame will be nearly invisible, so you may have a stove on without realizing it. To create an affordable and portable windbreak, place your stove in an old tin can that is slightly larger and taller than the dimensions of the stove. This will also help…
- Stove priming: Although denatured alcohol gives off a lot of fumes, it can be very difficult to light. To help light the stove, you will need to prime it by using a small amount of your fuel around the base of the stove, outside of it. If you used the can from step 3, for a small amount of fuel (you could almost clean it) and put the stove back in the can. Light the fuel in the can (not the stove). You will shortly hear the fuel in the penny stove start to sizzle and boil. This increases the amount of fumes you put out, and the primer fuel flames, if timed correctly, will expire just when they have the height to ignite the fumes from the top of the can.
But above all, practice! If you plan to use your penny stove for an upcoming camping trip, be sure to practice lighting and cooking with it as much as possible before you leave.