Alcohol Stove

I've been working on some fun new ideas for Provident Living....these are the links and a tadbit of info to catch your eye. Pictures will be added as soon as I can get one of the family photographers to help me out. We have far tooooo many digital cameras in this family thus I refuse to have one for myself, but if everyone refuses to take my pics and upload them to the computer I may have to break down and get my own. Usually if I remind certain little ones of the cost and what they could get with that money they then hop to my aid!!!

The Homemade Alcohol Stove and The Wonder Box, by LeAnne
A simple homemade alcohol stove and a Wonder Box slow cooker can simplify your life and add the comfort of cooking and warmth.
How to make one?You need a clean empty steel one gallon paint can; and a smaller can, such as a clean empty quart paint can. You also need a roll of toilet tissue and your alcohol. .First, you remove the cardboard tube from the inside of the tissue with a knife. Then scrunch up the roll of tissue and stuff it into the smaller can. Then take the larger can and punch holes all over the side of the can, so that air can flow through it. You can do this with a hammer and nails.
Fill the smaller can with 1-1/2 cups of alcohol, so that you can see the alcohol at the top of the tissue. Put this can into the larger one, and light the alcohol. You can put a pan on the top of it to cook your food.
One pint of alcohol will burn about eight hours. However, if you extinguish the flame, before you can light it again, you have to pour in more alcohol to bring the level up to the top of the toilet tissue again before you light it.You should not plan to store the alcohol stove with the alcohol in the can, since it could rust.
It isn’t an extremely hot flame. It may take a bit longer to cook your food. But it is easy, cheap and safe.

The Wonder Box
Ideally, if you have an alcohol stove, you have a Wonder Box insulated slow cooker to go with it. If you bring your stew to a boil over your alcohol stove and then put it into a Wonder Box and cover it carefully with its lid--six hours later, it will still be so hot that you will have to use hot pads to take it out. It has been cooking all of that time, and saving you fuel.
The fabric must be 100% cotton to prevent it from melting from the heat of the pan. The pan must be one that has small handles on each side and it must have a lid. A pan with one long handle extending out from under the Wonder Box lid, will lose too much heat through the handle, and it will not work as well.
The Wonder Box is much like two small bean bag chairs, one being the lid for the other. You can get the pattern in a fabric store. The larger one is 24" in diameter and the smaller one about 16". You make it in sections, like orange sections, just the peeling part, made out of 100% cotton. Denim is a good fabric. Even old jeans stitched together would work. You stitch it together, leaving an 8" hole for turning. Turn it right side out and fill with seven gallons of Styrofoam beads. Make the lid in the same way, using four gallons of beads. Don’t let the static electricity of the beads bother you. Pin your seam, then try nestling a pan down inside to see if you have enough or too many beads. Sew up the seams, and you have a Wonder Box.
Nestle a covered pot of boiling food down into the Wonder Box bottom, and carefully cover with the insulating Wonder Box top. It is a good idea to put a layer of aluminum foil between the pan and the Wonder Box just to keep the Wonder Box clean. Let it sit for up to seven hours, and it will cook with no additional heat.Whatever method you use to bring your food to a rolling boil before you put it into the Wonder Box, it can save valuable fuel in a time of no electricity or other services.