Yet another version of the DIY robust retro backpack stove
In 2021, I mulled over some way of making yet another lightweight DIY backpack stove.
An old Sears two-burner stove, shown below, was looking superfluous to me. The Sears stove was probably originally powered by propane, although I don’t know. I got the stove without any fuel supply from a neighbor.
That neighbor tended to be someone who favored convenience, so I’m guessing it was propane fired. I used the Sears stove numerous times, powered by a white-gas tank and generator that I’d salvaged from a burnt-down home on a leisurely walk one day about a mile from home.
To make the Baby bullet, I sawed the tank into three segments and tossed away the middle one. The insides of the remaining two good segments were heavily rusted. I removed the rust using lots of swimming-pool acid (hydrochloric, HCl) and sandpaper. I then coated the insides, except where the edges of the two “halves” would meet, with POR 15 automotive fuel-tank sealer. It attached the two ends using JB Weld epoxy and strips of aluminum inside and out and then covered the inside of the joint with more POR 15 sealer.
The secondary burner in the Sears stove, as in any Coleman two-burner stove, is smaller and lighter than the primary burner. Thus, I selected the secondary burner for use in the Baby Bullet, and welded it onto the U tube in place of the primary burner. The burner bell was pared down and modified to shave off yet a bit more weight. With the addition of steel rods for pot supports and a windscreen for greater efficiency, I had a 2.1-lb. four-season stove. It might be regarded as light enough for backpacking.
It’s certainly robust and will take some abuse while carried and used in the backcountry. The windscreen is made of thin sheet steel and does its job well. The stove is low and squat and has wide pot supports and thus affords great cooking stability. It does the convenient Coleman priming thing using the selector rod; then, after a minute of running in that mode, one turns the rod 180 degrees to switch the stove to liquid-fuel (normal, run) mode. It simmers extremely well, and then, with a turn of the large black plastic dial, it sends up a tall flame. The stove compacts down for stowage by sliding out the windscreen (obviously) and removing two wing nuts (one shown). Maybe soon I’ll try to run it on kerosene or on a 50/50 kero-Coleman-fuel blend; don’t know why, just for grins.
Perhaps this stove, and not the DIY robust retro stove, is what Coleman might have initially developed in the late 1960s if their designers had been foresighted: after gazing into a crystal ball and foreseeing future developments in backpacking cooking gear in the early 1970s.