IN European countries, have been using this type of alcohol lamp for a long time, replacing a conventional burner with it. We can find and take note of many advantages of this device. For example, in a type of transport such as, say, an airplane, you can easily carry alcohol. Containers for alcohol weigh much less than a gas cylinder, etc. And about the significance of such a spirit lamp on winter fishing you don't have to talk at all. Therefore, we suggest making such a spirit lamp with your own hands; it will be very useful in everyday life.
Buying an alcohol lamp is also a piece of cake. But, if you take all the advantages and characteristics, it will be better to make it yourself at home. In order to make an alcohol lamp, containers from tin cans are usually used. Such cans can be, for example, cans or beer cans. In order to make an alcohol lamp, you only need a couple of drink cans. The design itself is not complicated at all. And it is made quite quickly and simply.
So, let's start simple. You need to empty the first jar of its contents, rinse and dry thoroughly, and then cut off the bottom. You can immediately empty the second jar, but you can do this later. It's not so important here. Next, we will need a board of a certain thickness in order to cut the jars. It is best if the height the desired board it will be twenty-five millimeters.
The next move is this: we take the jar, put it on the table, and then press it tightly against the blade and twist it. It will be enough to make no more than fifteen revolutions. After this, the bottom can be easily separated from the top of the jar. The cut off part will serve as the bottom of the future burner. We will further insert the top into this part. Based on this, we insert our second jar on top (still whole). In order for the upper part to fit easily, it needs to be stretched a little. We insert it very carefully so that in the future we can easily disassemble our structure. A sufficient depth of about seven millimeters.
Having completed all these steps, we begin to manufacture the future upper part. If you did not release it earlier, now release the contents of the second jar. After emptying, drill holes around the entire perimeter. For greater effect, use a thinner drill bit.
After the completed manipulations, we proceed to the next ones. Remove the entire middle of the bottom and cut off the entire top of the can. This is what the design should look like.
From the remaining parts of the jars we make inner side. We will need to cut out a strip. To do this we need a special formula for us. The length we need must correspond to the height of half the jar plus the height of the narrow part of the second half of the jar. Simply put, our resulting length should be much greater than the width of the board we use.
In the lower part we make several cutouts in the shape of triangles, the height of which should be approximately three millimeters. These cutouts are necessary so that our fuel flows into the inside of the burner.
To complete our equipment we will need several steps. To make the folding process even easier, we use the remains of the jar. We cut out a small mount from them. And on the top of the jar we make a small cut, about six millimeters.
Alcohol burners are useful for those who like fishing, hunting, and hiking. In one of the previous materials we talked about using a vessel from an asterisk. Today we'll look at a way to create a larger burner using an aluminum can. Many may wonder why make an alcohol burner if dry fuel is sold in stores. Dry fuel can also be used to brew coffee or prepare hot tea while camping, but practice shows that an alcohol burner does this much better and more efficiently.
Let's watch a video of an alcohol burner from the author of the homemade product:
What do we need to make a homemade alcohol burner?
- Aluminum can for soda, beer or other drinks;
- Round nose pliers;
- Four matchboxes;
- Stationery knife;
- Medical alcohol;
- Felt pen or marker
- And scissors.
First of all, we must cut off the top of the jar. To do this, we need to make a cut with a stationery knife and tear off the unnecessary part with pliers.
Next, we put two matchboxes, a stationery knife on them with the blade towards the jar and cut off the lower part.
The same procedure will be done with the top of our aluminum jar, but this time with four boxes.
We apply two matchboxes to the cut off upper part, but this time we do not cut it, but outline it with a felt-tip pen or marker.
On the resulting line we place marks or dots every centimeter and make cuts with scissors so that they start from the line to the very bottom of the piece of the can.
Our alcohol burner is almost ready, and all we have to do is assemble its component parts into one whole. To do this, lightly fold the bottom of the top piece of the jar so that it fits easily into the second.
All that remains is to pour medical alcohol into our burner and test it.
Attention!!! Medical alcohol, like the burner itself, is flammable. When using it, be sure to follow the fire handling and safety rules. Keep the burner away from flammable materials and mixtures. Do not add too much alcohol as this may cause the burner to explode and cause serious injury.
The burner is working, which means that another homemade product was made successfully. This way we can boil approximately 250 ml of water in just 2 minutes using approximately 15 ml of alcohol.
IN last years with the development of the popularity of tourism and survival themes, a lot of different different designs homemade alcohol lamps. In this article, of course, I will not describe them all and analyze how they differ. Instead, I will tell you in detail how to make a spirit lamp with your own hands from aerosol can. This is one of the most effective and simple designs In my opinion.
Alcohol lamp device
First, let's look at the device of the alcohol lamp. This design has only 3 parts: body, cover and filler made of glass wool. Well, the case is clear, this is a container into which we pour alcohol.
Lid made from the top part of an aerosol can, it, let’s say, does not allow alcohol vapors to burn from above, they come out through the side holes and burn in the form of a burner, like on a gas stove.
Glass wool This is necessary so that the alcohol does not overheat, does not boil, and evaporates more evenly. Without glass wool, the alcohol inside the spirit lamp, when it is full, boils, begins to boil and splashes out through the side holes with strong fire.
To ensure the stability of the alcohol lamp and initial heating, you need a metal stand, such as a regular jar lid.
How does an alcohol lamp work?
Pour alcohol through the hole in the lid almost to the side holes. Because of the glass wool, the alcohol level is not visible, but it is quite possible to adapt to pouring “by eye” or marking a bottle of alcohol in portions. In my alcohol lamp it is about 20 ml.
We put an alcohol lamp on the metal lid, and put a mug of water on it.
Then pour a little alcohol onto the lid-stand around the spirit lamp and set it on fire.
What happens:
The alcohol burns around the spirit lamp, thereby heating it and the alcohol inside. It begins to evaporate more actively and comes out through the side holes, igniting from the fire outside. At first the flame will be quite large. Then the alcohol on the lid-stand burns out. By this time, the alcohol lamp itself has already warmed up enough and the alcohol inside it is actively evaporating and burning in the form of a burner. As soon as the alcohol from the lid has burned out, the flame of the alcohol lamp becomes a little smaller and burns evenly along the bottom of the mug, almost without going beyond its limits. At the same time, the flame continues to heat the upper edge of the alcohol lamp above the holes and the alcohol inside it is constantly heated from the walls of the body. A stable equilibrium is established between heating the alcohol, its combustion and evaporation. After some time, the water in the mug boils.
Important point - the mug should stand exactly on the alcohol lamp, in direct contact with its body. Since the mug is cold and gradually warms up, it takes some of the heat from the body of the spirit lamp and prevents it from overheating. This is very noticeable; if you lift the mug above the alcohol lamp, the flame immediately becomes much more intense and the alcohol burns out much faster. When the mug is on the alcohol lamp, the flame burns evenly most of the time.
What is this alcohol lamp for?
The main purpose of this small alcohol stove is to boil one mug of water for coffee or tea. You can brew coffee in a Turk or heat canned food.
Since the alcohol lamp is quite small, its power is only enough to boil water up to 0.5-0.6 liters. I tried to boil 1 liter of water on this alcohol lamp at room temperature. After some time, the water would, of course, boil, but fully filling the alcohol lamp is not enough for this. You can, of course, add more alcohol when all of it has burned out, but for such tasks it is better to use a large alcohol lamp with large size burners, just like on a gas stove.
How to make an alcohol lamp from an aerosol can
First you need to find an empty aluminum can of suitable size and completely release the pressure from it through the top valve. I have a cylinder with a diameter of 35 mm.
We mark 43-45 mm from the bottom and carefully, trying not to crush the body, cut off the bottom cup. This can be done with a blade stationery knife, holding it between the pages of a thick book at a height of 45 mm from the table surface. We press down the book with the blade, press the can against it and turn it several times until we cut it.
We cut off the upper part, the one where the valve is located, in the same way. For different cans, this part is rounded differently, so choose its height yourself. It is necessary to mark 3-5 mm from the place where the rounding turns into a flat body. The main thing is that later this part does not block the side holes on the body of the spirit lamp.
These two parts must be thoroughly cleaned sandpaper inside and out. Otherwise, the heated paint and varnish will then stink for a long time and strongly. Don't forget to remove the canister valve. It is plastic and can be easily pulled out from the inside with pliers.
We retreat approximately 1 cm from the upper edge of the spirit lamp body and mark the locations of the holes in 5 mm increments. In thin aluminum, holes can simply be carefully pierced with an awl, but so that they are all the same, it is better to drill thin drill no thicker than 1 mm.
Let's start assembling. We put a piece of any glass wool inside the spirit lamp body so that it does not tightly, but evenly fills the entire space. We turn the upper part of the can over with its bulge inside the alcohol lamp and insert it into place. It won't all fit in at once. Place the alcohol lamp on a level surface durable surface. Place it flat wooden block and gently tap it with a hammer until the lid is hammered into place. Don't overdo it! Aluminum is very soft and the entire structure can easily be crushed.
The alcohol lamp is almost ready. In order for any utensil to stand on it steadily, you need to make sure that it does not rest on the entire circumference of the spirit lamp, but only on three points. We mark these points evenly on the body and use a file to slightly grind down the metal between them, at the same time leveling the edges.
Alcohol lamp tests
That's all. You can pour alcohol and test it.
An alcohol lamp similar in size to mine easily heats 300 gr. metal mug with water in room conditions in about 7 minutes. In experiments at room temperature, a full alcohol lamp burned for 15 minutes. This is enough to make tea for one person.
So, I continue the topic of burner construction. In previous episodes of me, this has yet to be corrected. Now I have come across a design that is very popular in the English-speaking travel community. In Europe, it is quite popular to use camping alcohol lamps instead of burners. This gives several advantages at once - alcohol can be carried on an airplane, the weight of the alcohol container is much less than empty gas cylinder. The weight of the alcohol lamp itself is negligible compared to the burner. You can, of course, buy an alcohol lamp, but homemade alcohol lamps leave store-bought ones far behind in many respects. The most popular alcohol stoves are made from cat food cans and beer cans. I especially liked the design of a spirit lamp made from beer cans and decided to try it out in practice. Fortunately, for production you need two tin cans of beer or lemonade and that’s it. The total weight of the finished product tends to 10 grams. To make a spirit lamp I needed the following tools:
- Blade from a stationery knife
- Clamp
- Drill with a drill bit with a diameter of 1 mm (preferably smaller)
- Scissors
- Marker for marking
How to make an alcohol lamp:
First, we need to empty one jar and cut off the bottom from it. If you haven’t emptied the second jar by this point, then it makes sense to wait, although this is not essential.
Using a tablet required thickness and clamps we will organize a small can cutter. After several experiments I came to the conclusion that optimal height the boards should be 25 mm. Although there is an opportunity to experiment here.
This will be the bottom of the future burner. The top will be inserted into it, so it makes sense to stretch it slightly by inserting a second, still intact, can on top. Attention - you must insert it very carefully so that you can later separate this structure. 5-7 mm depth is enough.
Now let's start making the top part. We empty the second jar. And drill holes around the perimeter. The finer the drill you can find for this operation, the more efficient your torch will be. In the first version of the burner I did this
However, upon further operation it turned out that this is not the most best option and I remade the top like this
The next step will be to remove the middle of the bottom and cut off the top, as was done with the first can. The result should be something like this:
Now we need to make the inner wall from the remains of the cans. To do this, cut out a strip with the height of one half of the can plus the height of the narrowing of the second half. That is, it must be clearly larger than the width of the board that was used to cut the bottom. In general, you need to make something like this:
That is, on top you need to make three or four small cutouts in the form of a triangle or semicircle - about 3 mm high. These holes will be located along the bottom and will be used to allow fuel to flow into the burner. And you need to make two cuts with different sides by 2/3 of the width of the tape, so that you can secure this tape in the form of a ring like this
Once again, I draw your attention to the fact that the triangular cutouts should be located at the bottom, and the height of the resulting ring should be higher than the height of the bottom. After this, all that remains is a mere trifle - to push the “top” into the “bottom”.
In theory, after we stretched the bottom in the previous steps, this operation should go smoothly, I even saw a video where it was possible, but it didn’t work out for me. Therefore, to simplify the process, I cut out a small pry bar from the remains of the can - visible in the photo on the right - and made a small cut of 5-6 mm on the top can. After that things got more fun and I got these two alcohol lamps
IN big hole Alcohol is poured on top - it takes about 25 grams of alcohol to boil half a liter of water. Then the alcohol is ignited through a large hole and begins to burn, after about 1-2 minutes the alcohol begins to boil and alcohol vapors escape through small holes and are ignited from the central flame. At this moment the burner is considered to have started. At this moment, the access of oxygen to the central hole stops and the flame escapes only from the holes around the perimeter. After this, you can place a pan directly on top and boil water. The trouble is that if you make the holes too close to the center, then when you install the pan, the flame goes out due to lack of oxygen. I had to place the pan on a small taganok made from tent pegs to avoid fading. Because of this, I had to make a second version, which was free of this drawback. In the next series I will show a video of working burners with measurements of the efficiency of both burners. And now I will list the mistakes that I made while making these two copies - I hope this will help you not to repeat them:
- If you make the burner higher than 3 cm, then it will not start and its use is ineffective
- Initially, I tried to drill the central hole with a large-diameter drill - as a result, the can completely wrapped around the drill, like a rag, and had to be thrown away. The center will have to be cut out with a knife.
- You should not pour liquid paraffin into this burner - it will not work, and it is very difficult to wash the paraffin out of there.
That's about all I learned in the process of making these alcohol lamps.
Update from December 19: I made alcohol lamps from the same materials. In my opinion it works much better than this.
I believe that using this method it is possible to make a full-fledged oil lamp. Empty glass perfume bottles are perfect for this purpose. For example, let's take a bottle of nail polish.
Depending on the diameter of the bottle neck, you can use anchor nails of different sizes or blind rivets as a cap and wick holder. You will also need a sealant in order to form a plug from it. A spare wick for a Zippo lighter is ideal as a wick. But a brush is also suitable for smoking pipe or any natural fiber cord. You can refill the alcohol lamp with alcohol, kerosene, or liquid for lighting a fire. But oil for oil lamps turned out to be the ideal fuel. It seems to be called oil arbitrarily. Composition: a mixture of liquid paraffins.
For homemade alcohol lamp, we will need:
And so we take a bottle of nail polish.
Take out the tassel and cut it off. In the lid where the brush was, we enlarge the hole and push it back.
Separate the rivet from the rod.
Coat the rivet with sealant. It is better that the piece of iron does not touch the glass body.
Insert the wick. The homemade alcohol lamp is ready.
Before using a spirit lamp for a long time, it is a good idea to test it for about fifteen minutes. To do this, light our oil lamp and place it on a metal tray or baking sheet. If the glass doesn't crack, it will work.
Since the lid is made of plastic, after finishing using it, you need to let our alcohol lamp cool down.
