March 9th, 2007 | categorizilation: all categories,Greece,Macedonia
The strong tailwinds and flat(ish) roads continued today, with over 120kms logged. So much for the continental winds blowing from west to east.
Apparently Greece has not caught up on the latest developments in country names and borders. Yugoslavia does not exist any more. It is now three different countries. Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro.
I spent a good part of the day pondering over how I could improve my Coffee Can Stove. A discarded piece of bumper grill on the side of the road gave me a brain wave. The stove now has a grill, raising the embers off the base of the stove, improving air flow.
The grill is expanded aluminium. I figured that the heat of the stove might melt the aluminium, so I picked up a convenient piece of steel mesh further along the road to put on top of the grill to provide some protection from the heat, making it a two layered grill.
The idea was that the steel mesh on its own would not be strong enough to support the wood. The expanded aluminuim would provide some support.
The grill is supported by tabs cut in near the base of the can.
The main base air intake has been made larger also, as has the exhaust hole at the top of the can.
The end result was that it burned better than the Mark 1 stove, but the steel mesh over the aluminium grill clogged up with ash too easily, choking the stove. I still managed to make pasta and a tomato sauce on it in about 1 hour, but I think that the aluminium grill on its own will work better, and may even hold up to the heat without melting.
My pot by the way is now very black. Apparently if you put detergent on the outside of the pot before you use it, the tar and soot cleans off easier.
I was sleeping in a small pine forest, so there was plenty of small dry pine cones for fuel.
Glad to see that good Kiwi ingenuity at work Rob. Happy cooking. Don't start any forest fires though!!
The melting point of Aluminium (to all the americans out there – note the correct spelling!) is 660C. If you mangaged to melt it, I would be mighty impressed.
