Check out “Bomber” above, if you don’t believe me. Alcohol doesn’t burn hot enough to melt aluminum. Of course, you can use steel cans, and you won’t have any real weight problems, but they are much harder to form.

I just noticed something that differs from the stoves I’ve made, his stove does not have the open top and no center ring, for his design I can see why he used fiberglass insulation (the pink stuff), same principal as mine and his could be made in ten minutes or less!!

I ain’t no expert but when I think on the subject, not only have I made several hundred pop can stoves and have taught dozens of boy scout troops to make these stoves but I’ve also used the stoves that I’ve made to boil water on countless backpacking trips for over twenty years, I still don’t think I’m an “expert” or anything else, they do work and burn hot as ever when you use ‘denatured alcohol’, heet or grain alcohol from the liquor store. Once you’ve made a few of these stoves, you can make one that will last forever in about twenty to thirty minutes.

Once you have your stove made, with a little practice you’ll learn how much denatured alcohol to fill the stove with to be able to boil two cups of water for whatever noodles and sauce meal you’re having for lunch or dinner, once the stove is burning there really isn’t a reason to turn it off 🙂