Brother, BRS-3000T Hornet Titanium Stove

Here’s quite an interesting little stove for all the lightweight gas stove backpackers.
The Brother, BRS-3000T Hornet Titanium Stove. Made in China.
It weighs just 25 grams on my scales and exactly what the specification says it should.
It comes in a tidy bag that weighs 2 grams.

This Photo showing thread connection and valve needle.

The stove fits onto common butane/propane/iso butane mixed canisters with the EN417 screw threaded self sealing safety valves.

The specification says Titanium and the majority of the stove is, except for the regulator and jet which i guess is brass, the regulator grip which is spring or stainless steel and the burner mesh cover which again looks steel or aluminium rather than titanium. So the weight of 25 grams is quite remarkable.

Power wise we are looking at 2700 watts, 140 grams of gas per hour, which for a small compact piece of kit is excellent. In comparison my Primus Express spider which is just 2000 watts and my Alpkit Kraku at 2600 watts.

I gave the stove a quick run out when the ambient temperature was  minus 2 degrees C and it boiled a 500ml cup of water in two and a half minutes with the regulator on full power.

The regulator is impressive and does simmer well.
For anyone interested in seeing how the flame performs, there is a YouTube video here.
https://youtu.be/WJb5arv76DA

One of the obvious things i noticed was that when used with the Primus wind screen the pot support is quite low down and so limits the useable pan width. The width of the screen is 111mm and so a pan width of 100mm is about as large as you want to go. Anything wider will cause oxygen starvation.

The Optimus screen has a larger diameter and would suit the stove better in my opinion.
Or you can MYOG to suit whatever pan you backpack with.

I bought this stove from Lixada on Amazon UK for £11.99 with free delivery. It took 5 days from order to delivery. I did expect a lot longer for delivery as the web page suggests but Lixada have a UK base and that made me a happy bunny.

Non spill lightweight backpacking stove.

My stove of choice for backpacking is the Trail Designs 12-10 stove. I paid for mine at Ultralight Outdoor gear. Just click on the link if you are new to the 12-10 stove. It weighs 14 grams. I have posted about it a number of times here on the blog.

Earlier this year whilst doing the TGO Challenge i got talking to a fellow walker (my apologies for not being able to recal your name) and although he was using the same Caldera cone as i was, he was using a SS Starlyte Ultralyte from Zelph or it may have been a copy, i’m not certain.

However i was impressed with the fact that it was tiny, ultralight, a bit more robust than the 12-10 and most of all that the meths content was not spillable. This meant that measuring the meths content quite accurately could be a thing of the past.

As the contents don’t leak or seep out it means that the stove doesn’t need to be allowed to burn dry like the 12-10 and can be easily extinguished with a dowser. You don’t need to pour the excess back into the bottle and as long as you seal the cooled stove in a sandwich bag the residue fuel will keep until next time.
The Starlyte stove is made in the USA and so if you want one then you have all the hassle of importing it and paying customs etc.

Then i checked out ebay to see if anyone was selling one and lo and behold someone has started making/selling a very similar stove right here in Durham UK. I ordered one.
It arrived quickly and with postage it was just under £6.

Weight. 12 grams

As is my usual thing, i tried it at home first to see if it is worth taking on a trip. I put 20ml of meths in the stove and it boiled 450ml of cold tap water in 6 minutes 20 seconds. I allowed the stove to burn out just to see how long 20ml of fuel would last and it burned for 12 minutes. The stove holds 40ml max.
It’s impressive.

 It will be joining me on my next trip.

The ADX stove

Being in post operation state and having caught an infection which was far more worrying than the actual operation, has given me lots of time to do nothing.
The Penicillin started to work on the infection in about 36 hours and improvement has been gradually improving. The biggest problem i have had is boredom.

I've read lots of your blogs old and new and come up with a number of ideas to try out in the future.
As readers will have gathered, i am not averse to making my own gear so when i read Gordon Green's post on his favourite Evernew DX stove it raised my spirits to find out more.

I knew i had enough materials in the shed to have a go at making a copy of the stove but i didn't know measurements and it would be made from aluminum and not titanium. Gordon kindly provided me with burn height and from a number of web sources including Evernew's own page i managed to put together a decent copy which i christened the ADX stove.

Having made it, which is pretty easy, i can see exactly why Gordon likes it. It's a neat design, the upper body fits inside the lower body and the stove fits inside too. Then all together it fits inside your pot and there's not much can go wrong with it.

So i came to try it out and was full of hope that it would prove to be better than my 12 - 10 stove with a cone windshield. Its always nice to make something yourself which proves to be at least as good as the shop bought.

Sadly it wasn't to be, i tried it with my trangi burner, my cat can and my 12-10 , all with and without a trivet. I used Evernew 600ml pan. The problem as far as i can tell is the loss of heat through the top slots of the upper windshield.
I found that it took approximately 30% more fuel and about the same 30% more time to boil 400ml of water than my 12-10 and cone windshield.

 My attempt at a DX stove, so much heat loss through the top slots, with or without a trivet.

I tried putting a secondary shield around the pan but it didn't have a positive effect, it just burned less efficient and generated more soot.

I was quite sad really after my effort to make the stove. I was hoping for better things. I suppose that if my backpacking trip was short or fuel readily available then i would use my version of the stove but i wouldn't take it on longer trips where you need to be as frugal as possible with fuel.

In the same vein as Gordon's post got my attention then so did Robin's post about Bio Gel alternative fuel. 

I became aware of Bio Gel fuels a little over a year ago when my local garden centre put on a demonstration of alternative house fires. They used bio gel and the brochure was highlighting things like, less soot, less smell, eco friendly etc.

I thought then about getting some and trying it in the trangia. However at the time i couldn't buy it in small quantities. I think it was something like 12L was the minimum purchase.

I checked the internet and this seemed to confirm the volume was not available in 500ml purchases or pouches as in Robin's post. I didn't pursue it any further but just kept the idea in the back of my mind. Then Robin rekindled that train of thought.

Lo and behold bio ethanol was now available in small quantities and i went for the liquid rather than the gel. I got it from Gardeco via Amazon. Price was reasonable at £2.49 for 500ml.

I have done just a quick test comparison with methylated spirits and the first impressions are good. They both boiled 400ml of tap water in about 5.5 minutes. But this was done in my kitchen and so i need to try it in the field to get more realistic results but for now i would say it has potential.

One thing i did notice though, was it still had a smell when burning and it wasn't too dissimilar to meths. I have a thought that it might require a little more oxygen, so i will make a second cone with more slots in. I don't want to corrupt my current cone as it works well with meths and the 12-10.

All good fun and reduces my boredom at having to stay indoors.

Stove test - amendment

I have taken a couple of photo’s of the Flat Cat type stove i made in the last post so that you can see the flame pattern.

 Even though the stove is basically an open well type stove you can see that the holes act like jets.

And then when a pot is put on the stove, notice that it uses the hottest part of the flame, efficiency is increased and soot reduced. (I have put a trivet on top of the stove to support the pan for these photo’s) I am currently making a windshield to suit my Evernew ca-251, 600ml pan and then the trivet will be redundant.
It boiled 400ml of tap water in 6 minutes without a shield so i am expecting a little better when the heat shield is in place. I like the fact that the flame stays just about inside the pan base resulting in very little heat loss.

My quick stove test - for what it’s worth.

 Well i have had a good number of hits on my 12-10 type stove post. Not too many comments coming from the hits though. But one comment from fellow blogger Martin Rye got me thinking. Now Martin’s views are worthy of listening too and he recon’d that his Flat Cat stove was the best with superb efficiency.
So i thought i would make one, give it a try and see how the results turned out.
Now the genuine Flat Cat stove has 24 outlets whereas mine had only 20 so in theory my stove would not be as quick as the genuine stove but the fuel should last longer. Agree?

Anyway here’s a photo.

Quite well made even if i say so myself. 65mm diameter and 13mm tall

 So anyway without going into depth of statistics. It was nowhere near as good as my 12-10 type stove.
The fuel lasted longer than the 12-10 when i had the pan approximately 1/2” above the stove but when i had it positioned higher the fuel burnt away much faster. But even at 1/2” above the stove as recommended by Flat Cat designer it took almost 8 minutes to boil 400ml of water which was straight from the tap.

My homemade stove against my purchased 12-10 stove.

 This was just a quick test for my own purposes so i don’t expect readers to take it any more seriously than that. Maybe a deeper and wider stove would be better. I might try that next.
Just thought i would share my thoughts and see what reactions i got. Thanks.

12-10 Stove MYOG or not.

The 12-10 stove from Trail Designs has always had a bit of a fascination on me since i saw my first one just after they came on the market. Always one to give a MYOG a try, last week i decided to give it a go. My own 12-10 stove has proved great and i much prefer it to the Whitebox type stove.
But that’s just my choice.

Conclusion.

You may wonder why i am giving you the conclusion first. Well the conclusion is very simple. Don’t bother making your own unless you have quite a bit of time on your hands.
You can buy the 12-10 stove from Ultralightoutdoorgear for £15. Here.

My 12-10 stove weighed 14 grams against the 16 grams given by Trail designs.

The 12-10 stove is worth every penny of your hard earned £15. It’s a lovely piece of well made kit and Trail Designs deserve the profit to work on the next one. Well done TD.

MYOG 12-10 similar stove.

I bought my 12-10 as i said a while ago and it’s made from 3 pieces of re- cycled aluminium.

• A “Coke” type drinks can.
• A “Caffeine” type energy drink can.
• A base plate. What the original base is made from i’m not sure. Maybe it’s formed unique but made from old cans. I’m open to be educated by anyone in the know on this.

First of all, starting with the Outer skin, the coke type can.
Cutting it to length and adding the holes is a simple enough job that anyone could undertake. But the central hole is a bit harder. The drinks can starts life with the base being concave. You have to re-work it to make it convex. To do this properly you need to make a double form tool, out of wood i suggest, that will give you a nice shape. Making this former takes time and i didn’t make one.
I decided to cut the large diameter hole into the can first and then push the base out with my gloved hand. You need gloves because of the sharp edge of the hole. Unfortunately although a convex shape can be achieved it’s not as aesthetically pleasing as the bought one.

My attempt. Weight wise it is a whole gram less than the TD one. But you can see the convex shape is a bit untidy.

The inner skin, made from a caffeine type drinks can, again is easy to cut to length and add the holes. It fits loosely into the groove in the outer skin. Its not secured to the outer. The gap between the inner and outer skin is about 6mm. The inner skin provides the well for the meths and holes must be put into the inner just below the top lip to ensure that enough air provides combustion and that any excess fuel has an escape route to ground.

I made my base from a cut open drinks can which i flattened and cut round. I didn’t cut 1 large central hole as the original but added 2 rows of smaller holes. Functionally no different.

The beautifully formed 12-10 on the left and my prototype on the right.

I’m again unsure of how TD joined the outer with the base but it’s flawless and if it was liquid welded or friction welded they made a superb job. 

So thats the next step for me, finding liquid weld that will stand the temperature. I eventually found some in a motor accessory shop. Made in the USA.

It set in 4 minutes and although i didn’t make a neat job of it, it still worked.

Would it work in practice? Well i tried it first off and gave it a whole lot of space just in case it fell apart. It didn’t. It worked well. I boiled about 3 litres of water just to see if it deteriorated and it didn’t. 

So i set about a little boil test and the results were:- 15ml of meths into both stoves. 400 ml of water into the pan.

• The original 12-10 stove boiled in 4 minutes 55 seconds.
• My attempt boiled in 4 minutes 58 seconds.

Considering i didn’t measure quantities to the ‘Nth” degree i say my experiment was a success. Although aesthetically not as pleasing, it works well.

But as i said at the start. Spend the £15 and buy one. Or have a go at making one and then let me know how you went on.

Support for White box type stoves.

 I recently noticed that Backpacking light UK have started to supply the excellent White Box stove. I really liked the simplicity of this stove and i’m pleased that it is now easier to buy here in the UK rather than have it shipped from the US with all the extra charges incurred.

 It’s a very lightweight alcohol or meths stove made from an aluminium seamless container.

The White box stove in action.

 Many moons ago i managed to get hold of lots of Aluminium beer bottles, i posted about it here, and made quite a few of my own stoves.

 But one of things that any potential buyers of the stove will be thinking is about how to stop it from tipping over in use. The diameter is only around 50mm depending on container and pots can get quite wide and heavy. A recipe for disaster. 

 I for one certainly have my "heart in my mouth" as the saying goes when i use it. I googled a support for it but there’s nothing out there as far as i could tell. So there was only one thing for it and that was to make something. Now the stove is very light, around 30 grams all in with it’s reflective base. So i didn’t want a support which weighed much because that just defeats the object.

 So i made 2 supports. One for soft ground and one for hard ground. These are my first attempts and thought i would pass them on to readers who may also be looking for ideas.

If anyone has better ideas than please feel free to share them.

 So, the soft ground stand. 

Made from 2mm stainless steel. Basically its a loop and eye lasso that is shaped around the stove and the loop is bent at a point which will retain the stove without slipping.

Simple Lasso support

Stove partially located, in soft ground 

Stove fully supported and secure. The lasso is located about a 1/4 of the way up the stove

and in conjunction with the ground prevents the stove from tipping over. My Evernew 600ml pots works just fine with it.

 Fits nicely inside my pot

Weighs in at 7 grams.

The hard ground or bothy support.

 I made this from exactly the same beer bottle as i made the stove but if you buy a stove from BPL instead of making your own then its quite a simple job to make one from any aluminium container of a suitable size. There are many types around which will suffice such as deodarent, water or hair products that use the same type of container.

 I simply cut the bottom off the container then spaced out 3 legs and 3 retaining lugs and making the relevant cuts. Cleaned up all the sharp edges and then carefully bent over the 3 narrow lugs which perform the levelling duties whilst the 3 wide lugs create the stove support.

The hard ground support and stove.

 Stove and stand in situ. 

It does work ok on grass too but it’s not as secure as the lasso on soft ground.

The underside of the stand. 

The 4 holes are there to remove the vacuum effect. 

The complete centre of the base could be removed for the very weight conscious readers if required.

 Both bits fit into my pot.

Weight is 12 grams

This photo above is what i use to extinguish the flame from the stove, a douser in effect. Which saves fuel.

Made from a drinks can and with a handle glued to the top. When packing up, the stove fits neatly inside it.

 So, those are my 2 ideas to support the White Box and any other similar stove construction. Hope you find them useful.

Fire Maple FMS-116T v ?

 I had an email recently from Ultralight outdoor gear showing the new Fire Maple stoves they have or are due in soon. I then noticed they had the Fire Maple FMS-116 Titanium. 

I recognised it as one i had seen last week when i was mooching around Manchester gear shops. 

Now i cannot say that the 2 stoves above and the one below are one and the same but the specification is exactly the same and it looks, exactly the same, and the weight is, yes, exactly the same at 48gr. 

A fantastic weight for a backpacking gas stove.

The only difference i can see, is the price. £34.99 at Ultralight outdoor gear, £24.99 at GoOutdoors and £16.00 at Sports Direct.

 I like UOG and GO very much, because they are good company's, i have ordered from them numerous times and will do so again in the future but i couldn’t let this go without highlighting it to potential gear buying challengers and other interested parties, obviously.

You need to make your own minds up.

Lightweight remote cylinder stove.

 My favourite stove for all seasons is the Primus Express Spider remote cylinder stove and it is very good, especially when ambient temperatures are low. 
 The leg design could have been better and i improved mine to stop the stove tipping. I did a small post on it here. CLICK   
 Remote cylinder stoves are not the lightest backpacking stoves you will find but the low centre of gravity is what i particularly like.


 I have numerous stoves, Coleman F1, Optimus Crux, White box, BPL pocket Ti, Trangia and more Meths burners than i can shake a stick at. But stoves fascinate me and i am always trying different designs usually of my own, to try and get something more efficient, lighter, smaller, quicker. It doesn't always work and i end up back at the drawing board but it's fun trying my ideas.
 The PES (Primus express spider)weighs 200 grams and folds down quite neatly into my 600ml pan. Good for a remote cylinder stove of such robust design and quality. The only down side to using this stove is that the windsheild required has to be quite a large diameter and quite a large height.

 I have been considering trying to get some weight out of kit. After many sketches and hours making cardboard prototype designs, i decided not to compromise the stove and end up destroying it. But to have a go at making my own from scratch.
 That's where i ran into problems. I searched and searched to see if i could buy the parts as individual items and modify them. Burners, nozzles, gas pipes, regulators etc etc and i just couldn't find anything anywhere in the very light weight department.
 I was going to give up when i thought about looking for a cheap off the shelf remote cylinder stove, stripping it down completely and revamping the design. Not the way i wanted to go particularly but at least i could try and achieve a lighter stove and if i ended up ruining the thing, well i would have had fun trying anyway.
 Checking out the web i eventually decided to go for the Hi Gear Inferno folding stove although there were a few choices. It was just under £20 and weighed 250gr. I recon that if i had managed to source the parts individually they probably would have cost me at least this amount of money. So it wasn't a bad idea to buy off the shelf after all. As long as it would strip down of course. Some stoves don't readily do that.
 Luckily this stove came apart completely into it's component parts. The parts i had to keep were the burner head, the remote gas tube and regulator. Everything else could be changed, modified or binned.

 
         Here's the stove as bought.

The Hi Gear Inferno stove.
A decent buy in it's own right
250 grams.

 I was lucky, this stove stripped down completely which gave me many options of design, having more or less a blank canvas to work with.

 So i started off by throwing away the piezo ignition. From past experience these are very unreliable and have a short life span.

 The leg assembly pan support was very well designed and very well made but it was also the heaviest component, so that had to go as well. I looked into making the assembly lighter but not enough weight could be got out of it.

 The standpipe and hose support, i decided to keep because although i could make lighter versions, it would take time and the resultant weight saving wouldn't justify all the effort.

 So, with the bits left, i tried numerous ways of supporting the burner, supporting a pan whilst maintaining stove stability. On numerous occasions i thought i had it cracked only to be disappointed when i got to use it in the field. (Well in the garden actually).

 Like all prototype designs you have to tinker with it before you end up with the production version, so i wasn't disappointed that i had a few failed goes.

 One of the things i did learn was that you cannot support pans using aluminium tent pegs. Heat changes the molecular structure of the metal in such a way that with only a few uses and with the peg glowing red they start to break up. Result, spilt pan of water.

 I decided to purchase some 2mm stainless steel rod from ebay which didn't cost much and it gave me a chance to play around with pan support design.

 Titanium is out of the question by the way, it's just to expensive here in the UK to play around with.

 So this is what i ended up with.

 As a support for the burner standpipe i bought an aluminium water bottle for £1 and cut off the base. I drilled numerous holes which would allow air to completely flow around the burner when a heat shield was being used and also to reduce the weight of the base.

 I used the 2mm stainless rods as pan supports and angled the ends to allow my 600mm Ti pot to sit firmly in place.
 A heat reflector was incorporated below the burner head.

 The componant parts

 Pan support x 2

 Base

 Burner, reflector and stand pipe assembly.

 Gas tube and regulator assembled.

 Pan supports in situ.

Complete assembly weight 139 grams.

Top Left:  here is the stove, windsheild and pan. Together with my breakfast bowl,mug and lid.
Top right: The windsheild rolls up into my mug.
Bottom left: The mug fits into my insulated bowl.
Bottom Right: The bowl/mug lid keeps everything safe and secure. There is still room in the mug for 2 breakfast cereals to be stored.

The stove itself fits easily into the 600ml Ti pan. With lots of storage space left for other gear.

Pocket Stove, in Titanium, from BPL

 I saw this first on blogpackinglight and i toyed with the idea should i get one, do i need one etc. A couple of info messages later and i ordered one from Bose and Rose at Backpackinglight.
 I spoke to Bob later that day due to an error with my order and i found out that i was now the owner of the very last stove in this batch. Phew. And really pleased that i got my order in and processed seconds before BPL closed for a holiday.

Photo courtesy of BPL UK

 The stove arrived and it’s a fine, packs very neatly away, well designed and manufactured bit of kit. It’s multi fuel means that you can put one of the old Trangia burners in place or better still the Evernew Titanium burner if you have one. I don’t. Well not at this moment in time anyway.
You can use wood and also hexamine tablets.
The White box stove can also be used.
I don’t think gas is involved yet but that could be an upcoming project for me.

If you click on the link to blogpackinglight on line one, Robin has put together a very nice video of the separate parts and how they fit nicely together. It’s far better than i could put together so just nip over there and have a look.

Total weight :- Stove 56gr on my scales.
Retaining tin:- 54gr on my scales. This will soon be replaced by something weighing around 5 gr and made from Tyvek.

I did a bit of a test run today.
The Trangia burner sits well in both slots provided and as the info says the top slots give you the best burn. It boiled 400 ml of water in 5 minutes 40 seconds so no complaints .

I didn’t try the wood burn or the hexamine but i tried the White box and a similar copy stove and also the Gram Weenie. My tests proved that none of these worked particularly well stood on the base plate with the stove in its correct attitude. This was because the jets on these stoves are horizontal and are below the top of the sides of the windshield. I found that if you tip the stove upside down and have the base plate fitted in the bottom slot then it works much better.

Obviously i need to do more testing but those are my first observations.