Top 3 DIY Alcohol Stoves

hey everybody this is Eno and welcome I'm actually excited about this video today get to do something I actually really like to do this time of year comes to like late winter early spring I like to make alcohol stoves for the year I do a lot of camping backpacking hiking all that sort of stuff and I love to use alcohol stoves as my primary means of cooking food boiling water so on and so forth and alcohol stoves are in my opinion the cheapest and easiest way to do that they're super lightweight they take up very little room they use really inexpensive fuel and they're dirt cheap to make yourself why waste money on expensive stoves and fuel cans and all that crap when you can have something that is way lighter way easier to use it's less expensive to maintain and run and it's dirt cheap to make yourself at home and it's a cool DIY project and it's an excellent purpose skill for everybody out there to have so these are commonly called can stoves or soda can stoves one of the can stole excuse me when the stoves are to be looking at it's called a cat can stove I have split this up into my top three favorite alcohol stoves that you can make at home today probably from stuff you just have laying around the house and you're gonna have some pretty nice stoves that you can put in your bug out bag or use camping or hiking or whatever so the first stove that we're gonna do and I'm gonna build all three of these for you here today this might be a long video this morning is going to be the double walled soda-can stove which I have one there you can make it out of a regular 12 ounce soda can you're gonna need two of them like that if you want a little bit larger fuel capacity you can make them out of the 24 ounce beer cans that results in a slightly larger stove so if you're looking for something has a little bit more fuel capacity that's the way to go we're also going to do the penny stove and my third one is going to be the cat can stove so three stoves that we're gonna make for you today so without further ado let's get into this all right I am going to put some Kevlar gloves not that I'm accident-prone but I don't want to make an ass of myself on a video okay so here we go the first stove we're gonna make is the double walled stove and to do that we're going to need two cans they don't have to be pint cans like this they can just be regular soda cans I typically will start saving cans around the house for a few weeks before I want to do this and by the time I get around to doing this I'll have you know pile of cans and and we'll make probably a half dozen stoves or so of different types and we'll use them throughout the year and loan them out to people my wife uses them and so on and so forth so we're going to need two cans I'm gonna try to do this with is simply and easily as you possibly can so I don't want to have a lot of really complex tools going on here so I got a marker oops I got a scissors knife an extra blade and a roll tape that's pretty much all we're gonna need so you need to have okay so the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna turn these upside down see which one I like better this one has good bottom pushpin so I like to do this before I start cutting the can apart just because right now the can has the most structural integrity so it's just easier to do this before you start cutting it apart so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to actually punch the holes in the top of the can that the flame will come out of so we're just gonna use a pushpin and I'm going to start just randomly doesn't matter there we go and then I'm gonna do one straight across from it split that in half okay now I'm gonna split these four in half it doesn't have to be perfect it's okay if they're a little bit off if they're not quite equidistant trust me it'll work just fine fact that's kind of the beauty of these things is they're really simple and homemade and okay so now we're gonna break each one of those in half so we're coming up with if I'm doing my math correctly I think we're coming up with about 30 tools in total after you get down to the end here that pushpin is a little blunt that tip and it's a little harder to push through if you wanna switch to a new one but one more and we're done anyway yeah okay so now we've made all of our fuel holes along the side there again they're not perfect I didn't measure them I didn't mark them out you don't need to okay so the next thing we're going to do is we're gonna cut the inner part of the bottom out and we're gonna go right along this little Ridge on the bottom of the can and to do that we're gonna use our utility knife and I'm barely applying any pressure to the knife at this point I'm just gonna score a line along that Ridge and then moving the can not the knife so I'm just gonna score a line there okay now we're on to I'm gonna apply a little bit more pressure to the blade and now we're on three I'm gonna actually put a decent amount of pressure on this blade at some point in time I'm going to break through when you break through your knife will stop right there that happens reposition there we go we're almost done here again there we go usually about three or four times around will result in the desired effect so you see I broke through again you just push it through and I'm just gonna leave it in there so there it is this first thing I grab is 220-grit that's a pretty jagged edge right there okay now we're gonna go ahead and cut these ready to cut so both cans right side up I'm going to take a roll of tape this is the inch and a quarter inch and a half inch and a half thick tape it's just painters tape and a blade and I'm just going to set the blade right on top of the roll of tape and just score line all the way around again moving a can not the blade and just like with the bottom you're gonna make a couple of rotations around and you eventually break through broke through right there and we're gonna do the exact same thing to the other one this is the one that we haven't done anything to what we're gonna do is cut the bottom off this is going to be the bottom of our stove so it's important to know this height that we're using and it's the reason why I like to use the roll of tape because we know that this roll of tape is an inch and a half thick because when we make our inner wall that air wall has to be a quarter inch longer than this measurement that we're using here so you have to know this measurement if you cut it arbitrarily you would have to measure it and then figure where you're at so you know what the next one is so if it moves you to use something of a known dimension for this there we go so now we have our top and their bottom I'm going to grab some paper towel I rinse these out for earlier so there's a little bit of water in there good idea to rinse these out just so you don't have beer or soda or whatever okay there we go so the next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna take one of the cans doesn't matter which one and we're gonna cut the middle like that and then we're gonna cut a strip just like that you can use that you can trim that down and use this snuffer hold onto that so now we have this piece and again we know that this role was an inch and a half wide so we want to add a quarter inch which would be ancients reporter oops just all over the place here no yeah we're gonna go ahead and mark inch and 3/4 ready 3/4 there there connect those two and now we're gonna cut that up all right there you go I'm gonna take the end of it and I'm gonna snip off about a half inch okay so now I'm going to take the bottom and if you notice there's a small Ridge right along the bottom of the can and I'm going to match this inner wall to fall right into that little groove and what it does is it creates an inner and outer wall with a little space between it okay so to do that we're going to doesn't have to be super tight just sort of in the ballpark there and then where the two overlap right in the middle I'm gonna make a mark on each side just like that then I'm going to take and cut halfway up on each one of those marks one mark there's the other mark now I'm going to overlap these so the two tails go in the inside No and that creates our inner wall so that drops on there just like that okay before we put this together we have to trim a couple of little notches in the inside I like to trim three just a little not just just like that so the fuel when you put it in has a way to get from the inner wall to the outer wall so from the inner area to the outer area otherwise you're still don't work okay so I cut three little notches in the bottom the notches go down just like that and now again as I mentioned before you can put insulation in there if you want some people use cotton batting I've seen some people use steel wool which doesn't wick really well but you can use it in my opinion it's unnecessary so I get along just fine without it and what we're going to do is I'm going to slip the top into the bottom and it's really hard to do this without sort of deforming it and that's okay okay so I'm going to kind of Bend this around get it to fit yeah and if you notice it kind of gets bent up there that's okay just stick your finger in the inside just push it back up with your finger there we go okay and now I'm just gonna slide this down and what we're gonna do is we're gonna push this down so that inner wall that we put in there goes up into this raised lip here which is why the inner wall is taller than the stove itself or at least the two sides that we cut so push this down and that creates the seal between the inner part and the outer part and there it is now the first time you like this and run this and heats up this paint along the outside will actually start to melt and it will help seal the whole thing up so you won't get any leaks around that seam right there and that's it right there we're all done that's a double-walled stove isn't that easy easy peasy double walled stove let's move on to the penny stove alright so for our second stove we're going to make a penny stove and this stove is gonna be a little bit smaller and slightly different construction but we're still going to use two cans the construction process is similar to the double walled stove but it's a little bit more simplistic so the first thing we're going to do is exactly how we started the first one so let me grab another start with a fresh one and we're gonna do the same thing we did on the first one okay so here we are got all our holes punched next thing we're going to do is we're going to take a nail and we're going to instead of cutting the bottom out like we did on the last one we're going to put a kind of a bigger hole right in the center of the top grab a hammer here take a nail right down the center there we go doesn't have to be perfect as long as it's somewhere in the center there we go again perfect no work yes okay now we're going to cut our bottoms off just like we did with the last two although this time I'm going to use just a regular roll of tape so this is about an inch thick as opposed to the last one we use to a tourism image and a half so this is gonna be a slightly shorter stove which I'll show you why in a little bit okay so same process here diets squirt usually pick them up from working stuff okay top that up a little bit so in the bottom one which is the one we didn't poke any holes in I'm going to take a needle nose pliers I'm just going to do a little bit of crimping along the rim so not much just a little bit so you can see we crimp the top edge and now what we're gonna do is just put the top on this is going to fit pretty easily but you want to be careful because you don't want to like collapse the whole thing you just want to bring it down equal distance all the way around and be careful with this one the reason why we can crimp this one or the reason why we have to crimp this one is because I can't stick my finger in it like I did with the last one and you know pop out any dents or anything like that that we put into trying to get it on we have to get this right the first time and it's got to work so we're gonna bring the lip of the first load the top part almost all the way down to where the paint ends on the bottom one okay and again the first time we like this and we fired a sucker up that paint is gonna melt a little bit and it will help to seal this all up you just want to go slow here and be careful don't apply too much pressure or you're just gonna push that bottom right up into the top and it's not the end of the world all you have to do is stick your nail back into that hole and push it back out again but if you can avoid doing that in the first place that's a good thing okay that looks pretty good and there we go that's our penny stove all done all right let's go on to our last stove okay the the final stove that is quite possibly my favorite and I'll demonstrate all three of these in just a second is the cat can stove there it's done do that I opened it and took the label off and remove the content this was actually this actually wasn't cat food this was actually tuna and it just had a pull top pulled it right off you know consumed the tuna and then pulled the label off cleaned it all out and it is now a stove filled full alcohol and it's ready to go you don't need to do anything more than just this it's the easiest alcohol stove in the world and this is actually the stove that I tend to use more than the other two that I just demonstrated for you but let's go ahead and fire all three of them up and show you how I use them and then that way you can see my three favorite stoves and maybe from these three favorite stoves that I have you'll pick one that you might want to try okay so we have our three stoves out here we have our double walled stove that we made the penny stove that we made and our cat can stove this is how I use these three stoves now you can't just take your your vessel that you're going to boil water in or whatever and just stick it on top of the stove you'll snuff it out you have to have something that surrounds the stove that allows you to lift whatever you're having your whatever your cooking vessel is off and be exposed to the flame without snuffing it and also these are pretty small fine on the tabletop here but if you get them on uneven ground you set them on the ground they can tip really easily so it's important to understand that you've got fuel in there and it's on fire and you can't just turn it off if the thing collapses falls over or whatever so you got to be a little bit careful with it so the first thing that you can do with the catkins stove and the penny stove the reason why I like them is because you can actually use them with a Nesbitt stove and this is how I use these two stoves so I've taken typical esbit stove with me I throw out the crappy fuel tabs that are totally pointless and I just put the alcohol container right in the center of the stove like that the cat cans stove you just just stick it in there put a couple ounces of or however much fuel you need into the cat can't stove light it and you've got a little platform here that you can put your container on top of to cook whatever you're gonna cook same is true with Peggy stove and it's the reason why we made it as thin as we did is because it will fit into a Nesbitt stove just like that so it's a really lightweight system that that a lighter a container of alcohol and that is all the weight you have it is minimalist super ultra lightweight type of system so with this stove it's a little bit taller it's not going to fit into a esmad stove but there are a couple other things that you can do with it some people will construct wind guards for these windshields and will double as something that you can pop your your your copper or pot on top of other people will use some chicken wire and construct a little contraption that you can sort of grate over the top of it some wire over the top of work - one of my favorite things to do is to use a food can this actually was a peach can I believe and I cut a hole out of the side of it and the rest of is just regular can took the label off and this axis both my windshield and also as the something that I can put my pot on top of so I can take my my stove fill full of fuel dump it down in there just like that I have a little window on the side that I can light the stove with and then I can just put my pot or my vessel right on top of that and go ahead and cook it's going to add a little bit of weight but it still is a very lightweight system if you were to compare this to you know a typical gas you know white gas and stove setup it's definitely much lighter weight than that you can put all your cooking utensils paraphernalia and stuff like that in this pot with it I definitely is a nice way to go so and if something ever happens to it if something breaks or it wears out or whatever you buy a couple cans of soda you buy a can of peaches you consume the soda you eat the peaches and you got yourself a new setup ready to go a little bit of construction in you're ready to roll so let's go ahead and light these up okay so I'm gonna do this on a brick just in case all hell breaks loose so there's our double walled stove there is our penny stove and of course our cat can stove so let's get a little bit of alcohol and will fill each one of these up you don't need a lot of alcohol in these stoves so those penny stuff can sometimes be a little bit of a pain in the butt so all you're doing oops dripped a little these you're just pouring the fuel right on the top there and it just seeps down into that little hole that we cut and that's all it needs okay and then the cat food it's all she is okay let's get my fuel out of here so there we are and then we're gonna go ahead and do that one two and then what we're gonna do is just drop right on there our double-walled stove is on the end there and it is priming at the moment so you'll see the vents along the side coming on pretty soon takes about 30 seconds for that to prime and then our cat can stove on the end there it's just a can full of fuel all right well you can hear the fuel boiling now all three stoves are rolling our penny stove is in the middle now if you'll notice I'll try to zoom in here all right so all three stoves are going they're all primed and rolling along here so there's our cat can stove puts out a lot of heat those things do and very simple and easy to use the center one there is our penny stove the reason why they call it a penny stove as you can tell in the center there I threw a coin and the coin is used to cover up that hole that we popped through the top there that we use to pour the fuel in so that all the fuel is forced to go through the holes around the side that we popped in so it creates a little bit more of a traditional burner effect the last one there actually fuels getting a little low there I can tell I didn't put a lot of fuel in these so they're gonna they're gonna burn out pretty quick here and so that is our double walled stove definitely probably the most active of the three a lot of heat coming out of that one they're really really efficient stoves they do burn through the fuel a little quicker but it is a hot flame you will definitely boil whatever you're boiling a lot quicker with those guys and so yeah it's getting down to the end there it's almost see it's definitely it's gonna get ready to burn out here in just a second it's going it's going I did not put the equal amount of fuel in these so don't take that into consideration but those double walled stoves do tend to blow through fuel a little bit quicker they are a more efficient stove and they definitely burn hot so the hotter the stove burns the the faster it will burn because it will actually boil the fuel and then the more you boil the fuel or penny stove a start and starting to get on its last leg there the flames start jumping around like that you know it's about ready to go so as you boil the fuel it actually will create more vapor and the vapor is actually what burns not the fuel itself yeah the can still was about ready to go here it's dying out so the the more it burns the hotter the fuel gets the more vaporizes the more the vapor burns the hotter the fuel gets some of it so it's kind of a vicious cycle so the more efficient a stove is to you know usually the more fuel it will consume so there we go those are our three let's turn our light back on let's recap all right that can'tcan't stoves actually still going so I'm gonna snuff it out here there we go so all three are now out we saw have a little bit of fuel left in our cat can stove you can see they're all gonna be pretty hot right now so I'm not going to touch them but the nice thing about an alcohol stove is they do cool down very very quickly so within really just a few minutes they're cool enough to handle so in fact yeah that's not too bad that's cool enough to handle there this way you can see our coin we will get our Fanny back there so that for our next burn can stove is still pretty warm so there you go my three favorite DIY stoves thanks for watching

Channel: Dynamic Prepper

Views: 285,602

Rating: 4.8311529 out of 5

Keywords: prepper, prepping, alcohol stoves, camping stoves, backpacking, hiking, guns, firearms, glock, DIY, soda can

Id: stj-uqIxnYQ

Length: 31min 42sec (1902 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 29 2016