Another great homemade camping stove!

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. As promised, more blogs!!

This is a cool penny stove that many of you may be familiar with. Because it is a common little project I will not discus why you need a stove, or why is is better than others, or is not better than some.

I will say I like it, it was fun, but I will not be taking it camping due to the need of alcohol vs. wood for my rocket stove, but for around the house it will be my go to stove for power outages.

Let's get to it.


Supplies:

• Razor
• 2x4 Lumber
• 3 Sodas
• Sand Paper
• Rubbing Alcohol
• 2 Small Nails
• Drill with Small Bit, or Hammer and Small Nail.
  

Here is one of my soda cans. As you can see it is full, and not dented. You will need 3 like this.

Step 1: Sand the ink off the bottom of 2 cans. This is a necessary step in order to keep your sanity.

Step 2: Assemble your cutting device as shown below.

Step 3: Once your razor is in place you will want to slowly rotate your soda can against the razor. It will take anywhere from 10-20 rotations, so be patient. There are 2 ways you can do this. With a full soda can, or an empty one.

Double think your decision. This was my first attempt and the results were rather "surprising".

Let me say this. If you do step 3 with an empty can, it will be more likely to "crinkle" on you and lose its perfectly round shape, which is bad. If you do it with a full can, it can either get a pin hole and start to leak which is an easy clean up, or it can straight up explode like mine. Be ready for anything. The mitigating factor is that with a full can the inward pressure trying to get out will keep your soda can a perfect circle, resulting in an easier fit in a later step of the process.

Step 4: Once you have finally cut the can in half, you will want to take the bottom piece and shove it on another full can of soda to enlarge your subject can just a tiny tiny amount.

Step5: Take the full can #2 and repeat process with cutting the bottom off. Once cut DO NOT shove this piece to enlarge, you want this one small, that's why you sanded the ink off.

Step 6: You now have 2 pieces that, except for the circumference, are identical. Now the theory is that you can shove the enlarged one over the regular sized one. I say theory because it took me 2 tries and is not always easy.

You can see my first attempt failed. This is why sanding the ink off in step 1 is important, as well as shoving the top onto a full soda can to expand the circumference.

This is the result you are shooting for. The enlarged top piece will cover your bottom piece leaving you an enclosed capsule

Step 7: Now comes the power tools, or the hammer, which ever you prefer. The capsule you have has no top or bottom, use which ever you want. You will see I have 2 different stoves here. The one that works the best is the one with double the holes but they are smaller. You will also want to put a larger hole in the middle of the can.

Step 8: Fill your stove, via the hole in the middle of the can, with alcohol.

Step 9: Cover your fill hole with a penny, like in the picture above. You will also need to set your stove on a saucer or something that can contain a small puddle of alcohol.

The way this stove works is with pressure. You need a small fire below the stove to make the inside alcohol pressurized and therefore escape through the holes your drilled, or hammered.

Here you can see the alcohol is on fire, but you can also see the small flame on the saucer below the stove. You will want to light this puddle of alcohol and wait until you hear the capsule boiling, and then light the outer perimeter to get the stove going.

If the puddle of alcohol below goes out, your stove will continue to function, so no need for worry.



As stated above, I would rather take my rocket stove camping. It will produce more heat in the same amount of time, with sticks and twigs rather than alcohol. If however, you carry alcohol in your first aid kit or for consumption anyways, this may be a great stove to keep in the pack. I love it, and will be using it as my stove for use when the electricity goes out.