Gear Hacks for Entertainment Purposes

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Luckydrew
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Gear Hacks for Entertainment Purposes

Post by Luckydrew »

About half of my gear hacks are usually for entertainment purposes.
In the process of blackening my cookpot bottom, I added a few flames just for fun.
This is my Stanley 24 oz pot. Love this guy - I made a custom cozy for it too.
The paint is auto engine block paint - it can handle much higher heat than the sub 200 deg boiling at 10k feet.
Cooking it actually cures the paint better once it sets up for a day or two.
The flames are just stenciled patterns I found on the internet.

A little blue tape; an exacto knife, and walla! :smirk:
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zacjust32
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Re: Gear Hacks for Entertainment Purposes

Post by zacjust32 »

Fun! I've seen this done before and wondered about it. Do you notice a significant difference between painted and shiny? Have you actually tested it, any data?
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Jimr
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Re: Gear Hacks for Entertainment Purposes

Post by Jimr »

Personalize it baby!
If you don't know where you're going, then any path will get you there.
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Luckydrew
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Re: Gear Hacks for Entertainment Purposes

Post by Luckydrew »

zacjust32 wrote:Fun! I've seen this done before and wondered about it. Do you notice a significant difference between painted and shiny? Have you actually tested it, any data?
Not really a huge performance difference that I could discern - these pots are relatively small diameter. Perhaps 15-20 seconds difference in boil time. Over several days I figure I might get one or two extra boils out of a canister. My trips are limited now day to 2 to 5 days so long term field testing really isn't in the cards. I'm a Pocket Rocket cooker

The big difference is in using a cozy on this pot. An old potholder that was ghetto sewed to fit around the pot reduced the rate of heat loss by about 50% over 20 minutes. Since boiling is under 200 where I usually eat, that is where my real efficiency comes in - heat retention and fewer and shorter reboils.
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longri
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Re: Gear Hacks for Entertainment Purposes

Post by longri »

Luckydrew wrote:Not really a huge performance difference that I could discern - these pots are relatively small diameter. Perhaps 15-20 seconds difference in boil time. Over several days I figure I might get one or two extra boils out of a canister. My trips are limited now day to 2 to 5 days so long term field testing really isn't in the cards.
That's not even a significant difference. Measuring boil time is a very inaccurate way to determine fuel efficiency.

And choosing black paint may be irrelevant. What's the theory behind "blackening" a pot base? Can you articulate it?

There was a thread on BPL a while back about this. It wasn't conclusive but there were plenty of reasons given to make one suspect painting a pot (any color) doesn't help very much, if at all. One thing that does help is to reduce the flame. A lot. Another is to use a pot with a wider base.

But I get the feeling that the fuel conservation hack is second fiddle to the flame painting adornment. That's pretty impressive work. It looks professional to me.
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bobby49
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Re: Gear Hacks for Entertainment Purposes

Post by bobby49 »

The theory is that a shiny metal surface will reflect a certain percentage of the stove heat hitting it, and a black surface will reflect much less and therefore absorb more heat. How much? That is the question. All I know for sure is that a windscreen and a lid are very useful in speeding things up. There are lots of maybes around the geometry of the pot.
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Luckydrew
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Re: Gear Hacks for Entertainment Purposes

Post by Luckydrew »

longri wrote:
Luckydrew wrote:Not really a huge performance difference that I could discern - these pots are relatively small diameter. Perhaps 15-20 seconds difference in boil time. Over several days I figure I might get one or two extra boils out of a canister. My trips are limited now day to 2 to 5 days so long term field testing really isn't in the cards.
And choosing black paint may be irrelevant. What's the theory behind "blackening" a pot base? Can you articulate it?
The theory? Not much more than "I read it in a magazine many many years ago".
Empirically however I can say that the black bottom acts to significantly reduce radiant heat from the bottom of the pot. The shiny sides continue to burn my fingers long after the bottom is "handle-able" (if that's a word).

But yes, the primary motivation was the flames on the side.
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longri
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Re: Gear Hacks for Entertainment Purposes

Post by longri »

Luckydrew wrote:Empirically however I can say that the black bottom acts to significantly reduce radiant heat from the bottom of the pot. The shiny sides continue to burn my fingers long after the bottom is "handle-able" (if that's a word).
That's actually backwards in a way. A highly reflective surface will radiate far less than a surface with very low reflectivity. It's one of the complications in the theory of blackening a pot. By reducing reflectivity you increase emissivity.

You're talking about touching the surface, so you're sensing the heat primarily through conductance not radiation. Stainless steel is a very good thermal conductor whereas the paint you used is probably a poorer conductor.
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