galley stoves

[ebb]

Have reread tpalmer's thread and Capt Dave's (and Maria's) cook top choices. Does anybody else have a good relationship with a kerosene stove? There seem to be other folks who are looping around to the less explosive fuel. Kero has other atvantages in that it can be used for lamps and exterior backups in case the battery dies.

I think I also have a problem making such a big deal out of the kitchen by using available s.s propane stoves/ovens that fit better on larger yachts. Rather refurbish with a more modest stove top.

Kerosene, correct me Please!, may be carried below deck. If in cans how do you vent? OK so you don't vent store boughts. Trying to contrast here with propane that on an Ariel MUST be on deck, probably on the cabin top in a locker. Did focus befor on 1 pound bottle installations - but that really can't be done on boxey gimbeled stoves so far as I know. Kerosene is looking better and better.

So I'm asking: are there successful gimbeled kero cook tops? Really nice ones? Have no use for an oven! Ones with rails and pot holders and self-pricking burners that you don't have to replace every week? Any SMOKELESS wonders? Any that you don't have to pre-ignite with alcohol? Probably have ten choices in Europe - any here?

So specific because I've axed the diesel auxillary possibility for a bloody outboard. Mostly because of the bad smell. So inviting kerosene aboard seems stupid. Guidance anyone?

[Bill]

How about one of these?

http://www.ec21.com/co/s/sundries/pr...ml?grp=4&cid=9

[Bill]

“Force 10 carries replacement burners and accessories for diesel/kerosene stoves. Custom models available. Call for details.”

23080 Hamilton Road
Richmond BC
Canada
V6V 1C9
Toll-free 1-800-663-8515
http://www.force10.com/cooktop.html

Of course, there's always: http://narang.com/miscellaneous_surg...ene-stove.html

See the side tank dougle burner model . .

[ebb]

hmmmm... that chinese baby... you get hungry half an hour after you use it? Not funny. Made polite inquiry for info.

Now those india ones....how about that brass four burner in one combo, looks like a temple! But then there is that 40 wick cooker! No kidding, I ran across someone lamenting that he had a stove once (or was that marymascara Dave?) who had used regular mop yarns for his wicks in a stove he once had. Didn't have to buy expensive wicks. Looks like it's all right here!

Once, long long ago on a cold winter morning, I remember frantically wiping black soot out of my baby girl's nostrils - from a karosene heater.

I know, when looking at the ads and product literature, I need to see the right words. And the words that are not there are just as important!

Isn't it the PRESSURE kerasene appliances that are the problem? Of course that's 95% of everything available. Those multiwick one-assumes-non pressure stoves look intriguing. Maybe a gimbal like the seaswing could be made. Will have nothing but time to make one when cruising. What are the wicks? How good are the stoves? They are made by a hospital supply company - how bout that! Are they rural? Do you have to take them outside when you light 'em up and to turn off?

[Greg]

Ebb,

Check these out...looks like quality stuff. One of the links tells how to make the wicks out of a mop head. Sounded like a lot of work to me so I kinda blew it off, but if you needed a hot meal, it wouldn't be too bad. These seem to be oriented towards "survivalist" types, but, I guess survival isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The url is:

http://www.endtimesreport.com/kerosene_cookers.html

[marymandara]

The pressurized stoves are nothing to fear as long as treated with respect and reasonably maintained...not unlike the rest of a sailing craft.

Remember, for years and years we were all a-feared of propane in the boat. Even the good 'ol CG insisted that pressurized alcohol was a wonderfully safe alternative. Then, we gotta pick our favorite likely culprit...

---The "boating Public" became infested with people who simply HAD to have all the discomforts of home...

or

---Kenyon-Homestrand was nearly gone broke because the stoves lasted forever.

or

The "boating public" became obsessed with "safety" to a pretty ridiculous extent because the activity itself has been marketed for sale to people with more money than good sense. This may ruffle feathers or sound snotty, and it isn't meant to...but sailing is in and of itself an inherently hazardous activity (so is taking a shower, driving a car, or crossing the street, for that matter). Anyone who is capable of undestanding and respecting the inherent hazards of the water and the forces of nature against rigging, blah blah blah...can probably survive a pressurized stove just fine. Good lord, to hear it told it is a miracle that anyone survived having a gasoline auxiliary! Sheesh. Sold a lot of diesels, though!

To my personal exposure the biggest hazard of a pressurized alcohol stove is that a guy might have to set sail beating a tide change or whatnot before he's had his coffee and pooch it good from lack of alertness...as it would take about 1/2 day or so to perk it (or just boil water) over the alcohol!

For some reason...this is a bit before the time when I really paid attention to "why"...years ago a lot of folks ditched the kero. in favor of the alky. Sheesh.

Well, here we are today all the same, and a nice byproduct of all of this is that there is a great selection of kerosene stoves and cookers at a used marine store near you for very little money. Bulkhead heaters, too.

One of the things that inclined my good wife to be an engineless sailor...is that she gets very nauseous very quickly belowdecks with any sort of petroleum stank going on. While I think it could get costly with a 2-burner cooker, things like old seaswings and bulkhead heaters run very economically, and burn lamp oil just dandy...which doesn't stink like kero/diesel and puts out very little soot.

The alcohol preheat on the burner is easily done in a safe and spill-less manner with a syringe and a little length of plastic tubing, BTW. I'm pretty good at the trick of sticking a match in a hole between two fingers and then yanking 'em back smartly, but since the advent of the aim-n-flame a guy need not even cultivate that skill.

And hey...those old Kero units just look "right" in a good old-school boat like we're fitting out anyway!


Best,
Dave (AKA Mrs. Mary, S/V MANDARA)

[ebb]

Capt Dave, no offense, play on words, tis but a bit o' spice. And I can rage on the unjust, not here. Thank you for your kero philosophy. It is right on! Shall renew the search. Thanks Capt Greg.

When I was a kid there were a couple old ladies up the street in a house my mother coveted. Have never forgotten how they smelled, when they opened the door - they always wore black - you were enveloped in a staggering plume, didn't know, being a kid, what it was. It was furnace oil and kerosene. Still with me, that.

I recall the smell of kerosene cookers mixed with spaghetti sauce and coffee. I've never seen a gimbaled lamp that didn't have soot on the chimney or the enamel overhead. I'm always hoping progress has been made - and burning fuel with an unvented open flame below decks become a science. Maybe not. And the odorless fuel can only be purchased at boutiques in Slobovia not the Bahamas.

Maybe with propane you are forced to be that much more exact in the installation. While you slide with the safer stuff. Trimming wicks and spilling kero don't sit too good in my belly either. BUT, the time has come for kerosene.

Maybe.

[ebb]

Capt Greg.
The stainless steel one looks substantial. And I can get it shipped to me in a plain box. Wonder if I can talk with these folks without shaving my head.

Is this the mop wick one - the s.s Premier? - 10 wicks, wow! - how does it work??? Actually. Mops burn clean, tho, right?

Off the grid, indeed. If armageddon comes will kerosene be delivered by our lady of fatima?

The end is nigh. Better buy a goodly supply of mop heads. Get my onboard composting head hooked up with a methane collector - connect it to the galley. But I'll need a gass cooker. Now THERE is true recycling!

Won't need no stinkin mops...

[ebb]

FINALLY DECIDED
338 is going to have a single burner stove and is now the proud owner of a nickel plated Petromax 'multifuel' kerosene burner that I got from Britelyt. It's not a camping stove being an impressive 8" diameter. Haven't tried it yet. I want to gimbal it like Jim Baldwin's.

So I have to ask, having never built gimbals: Has anybody had any experience bending s.s. rod? How do you get those perfect circles? Around a form?

Has anybody built the Baldwin Gimbals? I may try to put it lower down at 'counter' height in a tradition lined box setup in an attempt to get it out of the way. Has anybody else shunned propane? I'd like to continue a discussion about a voyaging stove set up.

[eric (deceased)]

My Post On Sailing To Hawaii On Starcrest States The Alcohol Wouldnt Stay In The Preheat Cup.a Subsequent Voyage On A 90 Foot Schooner Used A Propane Torch To Preheat The Burner,that Is What I Used On Starcrest 2 now I Just Use Propane For Cooking On My Current Boat....'starcrest Too.....the Range Of M'ocean'

[ebb]

Eric, thank you for your feedback.

This model Petromax has a preheater in the form of an extra tube and valve that uses the fuel in the tank, preferably kerosene, to heat the burner. You pump up the tank to a red mark on the dial, light the preheater for 60 seconds, big flame, flip off the valve on the preheater and listen for the stove to light. Then you repressurize and after that supposedly the tank is ok whether you turn the burner up or down. Sounds like you might cook with it. But I still have to play with it.

There is a rudimentary tray on the burner you still can use for alcohol, but it wouldn't hold anything. Maybe a saturated fiberglass wick would be possible.

Always thinking of this thing in gimbals, what caught my eye was that you get a fitting that replaces the pump that allows you to pump up pressure thru a tube, like a bicycle pump. Maybe sounds weird, but so does pumping up the tank when its swinging around. I imagined the pump could be hard mounted at the side of the stove box and the tube permanently connected to the tank would flex and do its thing. Actually... sounds almost civilized!

This nickel plated stove looks sharp. Looks nicely made, has some heft to it. Not tinny. It's about 8" round and 8" tall. It has to have custom gimbals made for it. I thought I'd start with Jim Baldwin's kero stove setup and go from there. Keeping the shape of that old double-action aluminum seaswing stove in mind for proportions. 8" cooker, 10" sauce pan.

[cjackson]

Check out this link...with a little bit of metal fab work this could be adapted quite well I think! The price is unbelievable by comparison!!!

http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/te...equestid=75674

[ebb]

Thanks James for responding to the stove question. (On your dryout legs thread.)
I can understand not being set up to produce a niche product.
I also know that any interest HERE in this Forum is HIGHLY SPECULATIVE.
Most of the skippers in this Forum won't be going foreign. 'Course I believe that is changing.
I participated in a discussion here on the subject of stoves and fuels and came to the lonely conclusion that while I hated kerosene it was in my future.

Everyone else around here is a propane fan. So this is likely the last on this subject. Your experience that kerosene is a world wide fuel was the clincher for me. Might call it the people's fuel and may in some way be the least polluting petroleum product because of the way it is used. Irresponsible corporate production of the liquid we'll study about later!

Don't remember if it came up on the old thread but I have a very nice looking kerosene lantern and an equally impressive BRITELYT Multi-fuel stove. Britelyt says they replace the old Petromax, Geniol & Hipolito stoves. In fact some web pages are IDed as Britelyt-Petromax. The stove will supposedly burn kerosene, mineral spirits, citronella oil, gasoline, diesel, bio-diesel, methanol, ethanol and alcohol. You can't just dump in what fuel you want without a bunch of downhome fiddling based on the number of summers you went camping. I haven't tried to start these two up yet - because I know they will consume a lot of time and FOCUS. Britelyt promises all the support you need, parts and spares, they repair old lanterns, and have a tech line. For what I got, I think the price was right.

Instructions for setting up for burning kerosene has you pumping up a bit of fuel into a preburner to light and heat the burner. I believe it is under a little pressure itself. No dosing with alcohol needed - altho you can do it the old way if you desire. You curl a piece of fiberglass wick into the cup and douse that with your little alcohol squirt bottle. I'd like to hear from someone who's done it a number of times. SOOT? It could be BS, yet some BS is revolutionary!

Where these burners are made escapes me. They look too well made for Taiwan or Mainland China. Or India, where zillions of small kitchen stoves are stamped out of sheet.
These are strong and beautifully made, beautifully finished chromed/brass metal art pieces.
How they are in daily use on a boat?..........

OK, where's that bread recipe?

It was the multifuel option that caught my eye. And the no alcohol start up. Their website is a bit of a challenge to extract info from. Their shipment arrived with a totally confusing video.
I don't know how anybody makes a decision to go cruise with a kerosene stove.
It's just something some people just DO.
www.britelyt.com

James, I was interested in your gimbal.
It's more time-consuming engineering that I thought I could cheat my way out of!
That's OK, there'll be time to gimbal when Little Gull gets in the water! And I have a copy of your plans from your GENEROUS webpage. Really nice, THANKS.
Interested to hear your take on these Britelyt stoves. Aside from their expense, I know!
__________________________________________________ ________________________________________
Sorry for the repetition!!! After Bill put this over to here, ole single track scrolled back this page.... and it sure looks like what James got from me was a repeat of what's already here! Must be the beans.

[atomvoyager]

Ebb,

You're a very lucky man - you have not tried to light the bitelyte yet. You still have time to drop it in the trash and put it out of your life. Walk away and don't look back.

Or you can do as I did. I bought the stove two years ago when I was researching where to source stoves for a couple customers and friends. I struggled with that piece of junk all day - never got it to burn a full minute. It leaked fuel from all that pretty plumbing that could not be tightened or gasketed. Bitelyte folks said send it back, so I did. They never issued my refund! I called. They stalled. First the mother was sick. Then someone had a vacation. Months later they said they lost the paperwork. ARGH! Also, once I got my hands on the thing it became clear that there was no easy way to mount it to a gimbaled potholder.

There is nothing I can see about the stove that makes it more multi-fuel than the Butterfly. Don't even think about pouring gasoline in it

Well, maybe you'll have better luck than I did. If not, you might try the link in an earlier post:

http://www.stpaulmercantile.com/MilesStair.htm
Brass Pressure Stove - $50 (2 for $90)
Pressurized solid brass stove can be disassembled and carried in a backpack.
---------------------------
These appear to be the same stoves as mine and cheaper than I can sell them. But mine come with a useable preheat wick and are pre-tested and have spares available so it's comparable value.

One minor issue is that these stoves used to be all brass except the pump rod, which doesn't rust anyway because it is in an oily environment in the pump tube, but the past few years most Indian manufacturers have substituted brass plated steel flame rings and preheat cups which will rust eventually when pots washed in seawater are set on the stove. Not a big problem if you have spares, but it is annoying. A few of my stoves got out with these brass-plated parts, so I sent some spares along with them. I'm still trying to source the solid brass and have just a few right now. I don't
know if the above supplier has plated steel or solid brass.

Contact me when you're ready to weld up your gimbal and I'll send you some detailed instructions and dimensions.

My stove page was updated a few months ago for anyone who wants to see what we're talking about:

http://atomvoyages.com/projects/AtomStove.htm

James

[ebb]

A lucky man I am, James!
In a minute I'll phone St Paul and get a couple.


Always been a magpie and a shill's easy mark.
Hard to fault such (apparently) well made objects as the Britelyt stove and lantern. Proof's in the working....!
Comparing the two, the Butterfly by photo, the Bitelite stove is a WHOLE HIPHOP of "plumbing". A lot of brass tubes, levers, knobs and returns of soldered joints popping in-and-out of the tank and looping over the burner - that obviously should be perfectly assembled. Simple is the more dependable and more easy to fix. Like a waltz.

Appreciate the tip, the lead, and your offer to help with the gimbal.

It appears from the website that Britelyt is a small, privately owned outfit. It was incredibly stupid how unskillfully you were treated by them. Can always blame the help, but the manager should have been on top of it and sent you another stove (air pressure tested at least) free of charge, and an apologetic letter. Theirs is a word of mouth product. Unbelievable!

There will be a cursery light up and comparison between the two brands in the near future. Have the low-odor kero ready to go.


In the interior remodel of Little Gull, I have the aft seat of the starboard side dinet at the c'way ladder. An image keeps arriving in my head that a single burner gimbaled stove will be in a bay just opposite the seat on the port side - so the LIGHTING and cooking can be done sitting down. A 'braced' position!

I will also explore a stove hood of some sort - it could be folding sheetmetal - it could be fabric/wire coil like big airhose - but the hood needs to conduct positive OUT venting for nasties with a small builtin fan that is part of it. We'll see about that! But there WILL be positive out venting of stove lightup. There is no room or route in this busy part of the cabin for anything fancy or permanent. The c'way hatch is overhead. Hmmmmm, maybe a customed top hatchboard with a small fan in it....a plug in hatchboard! But this can all be sussed out when the boat is in the water.

The other issue now is the space needed for a full swinging stove. Trying to put it low in the Ariel is limited by the turn in the hull. It's all about keeping the stove with a pot of boiling water out of the aisle when heeled.

A functioning kerosene cooker can double as a heater. Kerosene and other fuels have to be vented totally, but they say you can get away with burning alcohol below being a little more casual about ventalation. Yeah, I know, C'monoxide Seems to me, extra stoves ain't a bad idea.

************************************************** **************************************

YOU HAVE A PATENTABLE STOVETOP
there with your 'Mark IV' more compact looking lower surround with the adjustable pan/pot holder. AND adjustable counter weight. You have something unique there too!
It certainly is a 'niche market' product.
BUT
Your top could be universalized to include many cooking fuels with the right stove. It could be customed into another mode with a burn plate for the 1# screw on propane cans.
It's a great versatile top you have going there! Your nearest and only competitors: the two single burner (marketed as heavy weather extra) propane can stoves in the market require special small size gear to cook with. And "COOK" is in quotes, because of the constricted tops. Last I heard the Force 10 will take only a 7" pot! And Forespar only special-made-for-their-stove.

Small boats don't need, can't give up the space for three burner stoves with ovens. A two burner countertop drop-in is just about the only possibility - even that takes too much valuable real estate. They all look rediculous to me on a boat under 30' - unless you're a chef. A true chef would take the single as a challenge! And write a one-pot meal cookbook! A single burner with a generous well thought out top like yours might break out of the niche and get mainstreamed in smaller boats and trailer sailers. The right single burner stove hasn't been invented yet.

Well, maybe it HAS... just not marketed yet!!!