galley stoves

[ebb]

Whenever you look into things a little things get dicey.

Ethynol is made from any number of edible produce:
potatoes, corn, beets, fruits, sugar cane, and grain. Edible in moderation for us humans.
Because it is, our governmint, the ATF, tells the makers they must poison the ethyl alcohol. They do this by adding methyl a. (wood alcohol.) 100% poisonous to humans and probably is the additive that makes stove fuel nauseating to some.

Denatured alcohol S-L-X (?) from the hardware is that edible alcohol made poisonous, otherwise it would come in glass and be called vodka and taxed to hell. On the gallon can I use for epoxy cleanup they say it's a "clean burning fuel for marine stoves." There is no MSDS on the can, so casual users like me don't know the composition of the solvent. I use a lot of it and breathe it all the time.

Some agency (the ATF?) governs what can be labeled 'denatured alcohol.' Kleen Strip SLX is reported by one guy to contain 80% methanol, 17% ethanol, 3% MEK. Not something you'ld want to use in an enclosed space, I think, for clean up or fuel. (I have not researched this myself. but I will now get the MSDS for the Kleen Strip I use. I know no one should burn methyl on a boat!)

Who can say what IS a stove fuel?

On the Parks site, they list ingredients as Ethyl a. 93 - 96%, methyl a. 4 - 6%, m. Isobutyl Ketone 1 - 2%, Ethyl Acetate 1 - 2%, Gasoline 1 - 2%.
Parks makes the product for many labels.

Trying to make the point here that maybe this fuel is not a good thing to burn below without direct ventilation. 'Safer' (NONE OF THIS SOUNDS SAFE) fuel might be gotten in the states, but what would you be getting in the Caribbean Mexico or the Pacific?

Any thoughts?

[marymandara]

Hmmm.

Ebb, I hate to be the harpy...but man, I have lived with and used alcohol stoves before...both pressurized and not...I mean, I GREW UP on boats with alky stoves...and I hate the things.

The stink of the alcohol in an enclosed space is enough to get a person hurling as bad as the stink of kero in my book. But...the real issue to me is how cold the stuff burns. I like coffee before noon if I start it at 0700, you know?

That much said, I was deperately trying to figure a good way to use the lazarette in the Triton as a propane locker and just flat couldn't. Too bad, as it worked so good in my friend's Vega, and it would have worked so good in the party-room-aft-cabin-suite lazarette of the Commander. Still, my immediate choices were:

---Big bottle in a deck box (nix, I like an uncluttered deck and do not like to carry weight up high)

---Smaller bottles in a pair secured inside the pushpit (nix, weight too far aft AND too high, and I know and respect Neptune's fist too well for that..."remember that passage where the big boarding wave took away the propane? Cold hash and DAK ham for 29 days, we finally slaughtered Dave and ate him raw to have hot food!")

---Costly and spookily cheap-looking storebought propane locker set into cockpit locker (nix, too small, drain is a problem waiting to happen as well as adding a hole in the boat and adding drag when the boat's heeled over. Cockpit lockers too small as it for a boat that has to carry somewhere between 9-12 bags in one and everything else in the other).

They all stank, Ebb.

I got Mary to capitulate on the 2-burner range and go with the single kero seaswing, but I worried about having no backup at all. You CAN bake some pretty good bread, even coffee cake, in the seaswing, it's just an odd shape. You cannot, however do lasagne..and that would be a real tragedy.

A friend of mine had a half-famous Renegade for a long time, oh-so-originally named RENEGADE by the original owners. Ever sail on a Renegade? Sheesh, with that balanced spade setup the rudder post goes down thru the cockpit over a foot ahead of the aft cockpit bulkhead. Jay used to have a ful-size steeel BBQ tank back in one corner. He sewed a double-walled sunbrella cover to go over it, which had some of that hi-tech heavy-duty foilized bublewrap insulation in between the layers. Sun could beat on it all day, never popped the overpressure valve.

Mary went off to the RV store and came back with a pair of aluminum tanks that are about 16" tall overall and just under 8" around. The actual poundage excapes me, but they are aparently about the same as carrying one BBQ tank or a little more. They happen to JUST fit in the aft cockpit corners of the Triton and still allow the tiller (I know, I had to dummy in a rudder post and fit the tiller to try!) to go pretty much hard over...as hard over as one practically takes it, at least. Still weight aft, but lower, and out of neptune's reach!

If you want real simple though, I still have to carry on for the kero seaswing. Since we last exchanged about soot I have looked critically in the overheads when visiting friends whose boats are so equipped and who live aboard, hence the thing is used twice daily. Very little sooting, if any. I think the key is that the stove needs to be running well and you need to keep the burner good and clean. Again, kero sets Maria off puking furiously if she gets a good whiff while underway, so I used lamp oil instead last the issue came up. Now...while a little bit costly, that iunscented lamp oil is very efficient and very very clean...plus the little optimus burner in the things really just sorta sips at the fuel. Hisssss.....(Whistling!!!)....Raspberry Tea, anyone?

Ahem. I should add, that Revere Ware make a really HD whistling teakettle, SS, in a small size to fit on a seaswing. MMMmmmm. Spiced Cider. Hot Chocolate. Dry heat in the boat from the stove. Tea.....

Dave

[ebb]

Dave,
you can see why Force 10 is on my enemy list. FOR ALL TIME. Considering what small boat sailors have to put up with just to get a quart of water boiling, it is unconsciousable that Force 10 reworked their seaswing one burner so that it no longer would fit the 8 inch pressure cooker. The Forespar gimbaled single burner accepts only Forespar specially made pots, so I don't even consider anything as stupid as that. The design of the Force 10 at least allowed you to find your own pots and pans. Everybody has they own favorite, dented, blackened, bent, perfect one! Force 10 could easily fix the grate and rail to get that 8" cooker back in the cooker again, I even told them how they could do it, easy.

Some cretin, who is not friendly to small boats at Force 10, came up with the new wire 'rose' pot holder, He cleverly made it part of the burner grate so that it robbed a whole inch of pot diameter. Now it is 7 inches, The really nice 8 inch pressure cooker I have won't fit. It is an insult. There has to be something wrong, maybe ethecally wrong, even sick, with a company that does that. Really, it is so illogical as to be sick. And I would like to be in an empty room with this person for just 5 minutes.

OK, that's propane, with the little screw-on non-recyclable propane camping bottles. Representing possibly the only alternative down scale, back up, galley available. Yes, I won't consider keroene at all. My past experiences rule that decision.

I am going to try the new wick powered Origos. The guy swore they had no smell. Except for the smell, if it proves to be there in the new Origos, it is the best fuel for a downsized galley in the Ariel. Clean burning, lighter than air, simple and safe. You, Dave, like to come up with flea market finds and antique deliverances. I will give a spanking new appliance the test. Man, sure hope I don't find some glaring stupidity in the Swede's cooker.

If bread can be made in a pressure cooker,
then lasagna HAS to be possible,
It's a slow heat baking process. Right?
Start layering on a moist bed of kelp
in a well oiled pressure pot. use
Italian mazarella and lotsa meat sauce on the bottom
Cook real slowwww for hours
then heat it fast befor you eat it.

[marymandara]

Well...I'd buy a lot of this crap brand new if anyone still made it!!!!

It would definitely be easier, and I would be spared the load on my limited remaining brain cells of things like the how-tos of overhauling Optimus stoves, Kerosene Shipmate heaters and Wilcox-Crittenden Navy Pumps. I wish, I wish...

Now...all I can wonder, is how much the optional Rube-Goldberg-mechanical-timer-start-the-stove-twenty-minutes-early part will cost you if you want the water to boil on the alky flame anytime soon. Maybe they burn hotter than the pressurized ones, but I don't remember that being too much the case from my relatively few times in using the non-pressurized version you are looking at. Good luck, and if all else fails we can sail close enough to throw you a thermos of hot tea, OK???

Dave


PS...I have one last idea, if you are real dedicated to making the propane-bottle stove work in a seaswing...

Buy an old S/Swing stove minus the optimus or with a trashed optimus, do a little cut-and-paste, and make the Coleman 1-burner screw-it-on-a-propane-bottle "stove" guts attach to the bottom of the old SeaSwing. This really should only mean hogging out a hole in the cast aluminum base bigger. Might give it a look...