31 y/o white passing mixed w/ Black monster woman from the Netherlands. Artist (occasionally). Writer (again, every so often). Prone to camera sniffing behavior, one of them θΔ folk.

AD: @blimpjackal


atomicthumbs
@atomicthumbs

just went to three stores in a row looking for stove fuel for my Trangia Mini, which I haven't tried since I bought it in August. It's a little alcohol burning stove.

At Bevmo I found they do not stock 190 proof Everclear because it's banned by the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. I resigned myself to using poisonous denatured alcohol (ethanol with a percentage of methanol in it) and being careful.

At Home Depot I found they do not stock denatured alcohol because it's banned by the California Air Review Board as a volatile organic compound. At this point I started to get pissed off.

Finally, I found HEET at O'Reilly. It's 100% methanol. I'm going to burn it in my stove. I'm getting tired of this state


atomicthumbs
@atomicthumbs

I am out in the rain with my trangia


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in reply to @atomicthumbs's post:

right, I understand that, so I'm confused why they thought ethanol was somehow more dangerous a "volatile organic chemical" than, you know...methanol, or acetone, or naphtha, or any one of a dozen other things that I'm pretty sure you can still get in California...

now, you used to be able to get 70% ethyl alcohol medicinal alcohol at drugstores, and that might be strong enough to burn; any chance of finding that?

I'm genuinely curious if 99% isopropyl would work for this but don't have enough experience with camoing equipment to speculate at what could go wrong?

(at a guess, higher energy density? longer carbon chains resulting in incomplete combustion and more CO generation?)

also take things into consideration like vapor pressure, ignition temp, etc

like you could probably use pentane as a fuel but pentane really wants to be a gas so it evaporates super quick, and considering that goes faster when hot, i guess you can get a larger flame? higher burn rate? no idea tbh but material properties probably matter

good ol yellow HEET. that's what i always end up with trying to restock fuel for my little cat food can stove when i'm backpacking. at home i've got one of them iwatani tabletop cassette stoves that uses butane cans, it's great for hot pot of course, but also for when the power AND the gas get cut, like during the last big wildfire we had.