Monday 17 August 2009

Mini Bull Designs 'Stumpy'

Just a quick note - today's 'goodie' in the post was a carbon-wicked MBDCult 'Stumpy' high-output compact alcohol burner. The carbon wick replaces the previous glass fibre wick design which tended to spoil and melt when the fuel ran out. On a first test run the carbon wick seems to be an improvement.
This stove is the big brother of the uno#1 I reviewed back on the 11th July and runs from the same fuel system - it is basically a larger bore version of the same burner. Results of the first test firing are rather curious - it took 12ml of meths to bring 375ml of water to a rolling boil in 9-and-a-half minutes - a good minute and a half faster than the Uno#1 but, curiously, using the same amount of fuel!
I really like the remote fuel system on this stove - it is great to be able to watch the fuel level drop as the stove is used and it being perfectly clear how much fuel, so how much run time is left in the stove.
When I'd finished boiling the water I disconnected the fuel bottle and recovered fuel in the pipe. The burner kept the water at a rolling boil for another 5 minutes!

2 comments:

  1. Interesting post Rob, I am currently trialing the MBDC Bongo CAB. I have made my own remote feeder so that I can 'load' a known quantity of fuel at any one time and then see what consumption is like. Currently the Bongo seems to be following a fairly well established pattern and using 0.05 - 0.07 ml of fuel for each 1 ml of water boiled. I shall go onto using the remote auto loader when I'm satisfied that I know how much fuel I'll require for any given trip, based on the boiled water consumption I expect.

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  2. I'm torn between the pure simplicity of the EK meths burner and the visibile fuel level of the remote burning MBDC stoves. I'm afraid I'm not practical enough to carefully measure water & fuel in the field so I've run the EK dry before reaching full boil, hence the attraction of the visible remote supply. And for cycling use it isn't like the pair of them are that heavy compared to the fuel so I might just bring both along!

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