First off, I'm a dummy. So are you. Now that we have cleared up that point, let me share some dummy wisdom with you about stove fuel.
There has been a lot if comments posted recently about the white gas Philmont sells. Some of it has been accurate, mostly from very experienced Scouters. However, a lot of it has simply been <<run, the sky is falling>> type hysteria and conjecture.
Philmont does not sell white gas simply because white gas is not available on the market today. Philmont sells naphtha. The same naphtha that is sold at Walmart in the familiar red can marketed by Coleman and also by many others. The same naphtha that has been used by countless generations of outdoors persons. They don't buy it by the gallon at WalMart. They buy it by the tank truck load. They sell literally thousands of gallons of it each summer. If they sold canned fuel, they would have to charge several dollars a pint to just break even. They sell it for about 50-75 cents per fuel bottle. Duh!
It used to be that an outdoorsman knew the details of it's use. However, with the advent of dummies like me in the outdoors today, that is no longer the case.
Let me share some hard earned dummy wisdom with you concerning naphtha used as a stove fuel. Most of this and a lot more is on Seldens list for those interested.
First off, it will not explode or even go <<BOOM>> inside or outside your fuel tank or your stove regardless of what you saw on TV, read on the INternet or saw posted on the PhiList. It will burn and burn well. It will give off a lot of energy in the form of heat when it burns which you can use to boil water even at the higher altitude found at Philmont. You can also use this heat energy to self inflict a nasty, trek ending burn on you or one of your Scouts if you behave like an idiot rather than just a dummy.
It takes a long time, measured in years, to <<go bad>. When it <<goes bad>> it forms a gum that is next to impossible to remove from stove fuel tanks and IS IMPOSSIBLE to remove from stove generators, thus the manuracturers advise to remove the fuel from yor stove and generator before storing for extended periods of time. A month is an extended period of time.
It is not self contaminating, but dummies can contaminate it. However, smart people can prevent this from occuring and smart people can remove the contamination from the naphtha if it does occur and keep on cooking on the front burner. Even dummies like me can be a smart person and learn to master this skill.
After over 50 years experience at tinkering with Coleman stoves and lanterns and building a collection of older models that counts into the hundreds of workable Colemans made from others junkpiles of <<broken>> aka no longer made stoves and lanterns, I am here to tell you that contrary to some of the recent posts, stoves for use at Philmont using the naphtha sold at Philmont will be the lightest weight to carry per unit of heat value gained that is available today. They will also be the most dependable form of heat on the trail.
They are so dependable that Mount Everest expeditions still use liquid fuel stoves by choice. Does that tell you something? They use kerosene instead of naphtha, but you don't want that oily, smelly stuff lingering on your hands on the PhilTrail, trust me.
Naphtha fueled stoves take a small amount of proper <<care and feeding>> and if you will be depending on them to cook you goose, er uh I mean mush, oh slap my tongue, what I really mean is PhilTrailFood, then it will be very helpful if you master some of the basics of liquid fuel stoves <<care and feeding>>..
First of all, the most common problem with stove fuel is water in the fuel. This is the root cause of 99 and 99/100 oercent stove failures. Water doesn't burn, so the stove stops working. I highly suspect that the fuel that was referred to in the post a few days ago that <<would not burn" was contaminated with water. Most any other contaminant would burn.
So how does this water get into the fuel?
Dummies like me either put it there or let it be put in there in there.
Dummies like me open their fuel bottle to fuel the stove or to just look to see how much fuel is in the bottle while it is raining or in times of high humidity and let moisture in.
Dummies like me fail to use a FILTERING funnel as they refill their bottle at a back woods commissary and allow moisture into the bottle.
Dummies like me fail to use a FILTERING funnel while transferring the fuel from the fuel bottle to the stove and transfer water to the stove where it causes havoc.
Dummies like me tell their Scouts <hurry up and get those stoves going>>, so their Scouts hurry up and forget to filter the fuel, doing exactly what their leader told them to do but sadly exactly the opposite of what needed to be done.
Dummies like me believe the 18-22 year old that fills the fuel bottle in the back country does not need to filter the fuel as they told the dummy. These are typical young people. They are very good young people. However, like all normal young people, they want to hurry up and get through with the job at hand so they can watch the paint dry on the wall they didn't paint or watch the next crew come marching by to see if they have anything in the crew worth looking at. Been there, don't that, still got the T-Shirt. Advisors not included.
Now let this dummy tell other dummies how to keep the water in the fuel bottle and NOT in the stove. And also how to get the water out of the fuel in the fuel bottle that is going to get in there whether you let it or not.
First off, you will hear it touted from the mountaintops and written on the tablets <<carry a filter funnel and insist they use YOUR funnel when they fill your bottle>>.
Well, I know of no better way to grate on the nerves of a nice, highly paid staff member in God's Country, aka Philmont, than to insist they do that. It's slow, it takes up a lot of time and time is the one thing they are short of. They don't get to stay at Philmont working for the rest of their lives like we work. They only get to for a few short years and for a few short months at a time and time passes all too quickly to spend it watching fuel dribble through some well meaning dummies filter funnel when they could be watching top see if the next crew had any members worth watching.
Hand them your fuel bottle and ask them politely to <<fill er up please>>. Don't forget the please!. Let them fill it the way they fill fuel bottles every day before they met you. Pay them and remember to say <<thank you>>.
Take that fuel bottle back to camp and filter it's contents through a FILTERING funnel into another EMPTY, CLEAN and above all D-R-Y fuel bottle. Now you have a bottle of DRY fuel that will cause NO PROBLEMS in your stove........if everything goes right and because Murphy lives on the trail at Philmont........it won't!
However, being a dummy like me, let me remind you to FILTER that fuel through the FILTERING funnel when transferring it to the stove. Thusly done, the fuel has been filtered not once but twice, thereby giving it twice the opportunity to shed the water it has accumulated.
An observant dummy like me will notice that simply through common use of opening and closing at times when the PhilHumidity is high <<aka RAIN>> that more moisture will accumulate in the fuel bottle. The nice thing about it is the water is heavier than the fuel so the water <<floats>> at the bottom of the fuel bottle where if left alone it will stay. Moral to this story is <<look, dummy, don't bottom's up the fuel bottle>>.
So you asy <<well, dummy don't open the fuel bottle when it's raining>>. Well, you aren't going to get much hot food on the PhilTrail, because it is gonna rain and gonna rain a lot. It is particularly gonna rain when you need to fill the stoves with fuel. That is one of Murphys PhiLaws.
Let me educate you about funnels.
There are three types.
First an open funnel with no filter and no screen. don't use that kind.
Second a SCREENED funnel. This is not a filtering funnel but it will prevent cockroaches, pine cones and boulders from entering the stove fuel tank. If that is all you are interested in keeping out of the stove fuel tank, then by all means use that kind.
The third is a FILTERING funnel. This is the one dummies want to use. There are several makes available. The best one is no longer made but you can make one yourself. It's the old style Coleman funnel that contained a felt filter which allowed fuel to pass through the felt but would not allow water to do the same. That is a very important thing for a filtering funnel to do.
Coleman, nor anybody else today, makes this filtering funnel. Literally thousands are still rattling around in Scout troop chuck boxes, tool sheds and garages. I see them all the time for sale at garage sales. The going price is fifty cents. The latest ones were made of aluminum with a blue felt filter. The earlier ones were made of copper with a green felt filter. If moths have eaten holes in the felt, WalMart sells felt in the cloth section of the store and you can make a replacement in short order.
The only filtering funnel available today is a plastic one marketed by Coleman which contains a light blue green poly matrix filter. WalMart also carrying this in the sporting goods section. It hangs on the wall between the disposable ponchos and camp showers, but unlike those items, it works. It will filter out the water from the fuel. You cannot replace the filter matrix, so like so many other things in today's world it is disposable, not repairable. This dummy doesn't like it nearly as well as the felt filters.
And there you have it. My treatise on stove fuel and filtering funnels for dummys. From one dummy to another, filter the fuel twice and fire up the stove worry free and enjoy a hot mug of gruel. Oh, excuse me I mean PhilTrailFood.
And by the way, if you will be making your morning coffee on this stove, then you haven't arrived yet. There is a better way. Expericnce will teach you that.
Notice I did not even mention containerized fuel stoves. Those are for dummy dummies, and city slickers. Now what self respecting person wants to be a city slicker while on the PhilTrail? <<grin>>
Sincerely,
John LeBlanc
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Received on Wed Feb 25 11:44:58 2004
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