Review: Civilian Trangia and Clikstand, with pics

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Review: Civilian Trangia and Clikstand, with pics

Postby Towanda » Mon Jan 26, 2009 1:44 am

The venue is the top of an aluminum folding table set up just inside the door of my unheated garage. The table has been in the garage all winter. The outside temperature at the time the test started was 7 degrees F. There was no appreciable wind at the time of the test.

Here are the Clikstand parts. The sort of triangular piece is the center which holds the stove. The other pieces are the three walls of the stand stacked on top of each other.

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Here's a photo of the Clikstand side walls. The hooked part on the end of the side wall on the left goes into the slot in the piece on the right.

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This photo shows two side walls hooked together:

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And here is the stand assembled, with the middle piece in place:

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This next photo shows the Clikstand with the windscreen in place and the Trangia burner lit. The burner was warm from having been inside my apartment (thermostat set to 68* F). The fuel used had been sitting in the garage in an old Ice Mountain water bottle since June. The fuel was whatever temperature the garage was, probably within two or three degrees of 7* F since the bottle was sitting on the cement floor near the garage door. I filled the central well of the Trangia burner about three-quarters full, and the cold alcohol lit with the first match.

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I went outside the garage to the big pile of snow left by the plow guys who clear the driveways here and scooped some into this stainless steel pot. It's the one-quart pot that comes standard with a Sierra Zip Stove. Then I put the pot on the burner.

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Here's what the whole rig looks like from the side:

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Literally, in the time it took me to move the camera from the pot-of-snow shot to the from-the-side shot and back, this is how much snow melted:

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When the first load of snow was nearly melted, I used the frying-pan lid of the pot to add some more snow from the plow-pile:

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Then I went and got another lidful of snow for good measure:

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When the second load of snow had melted, I added that extra lidful. It melted pretty fast, but for the next ten minutes, the stove stayed in that maddening just-short-of-boiling state that you hear so many alcohol stove users complain about. So I put the lid on the pot and checked my watch:

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Three minutes and some seconds after putting the lid on the pot, I could hear that the water was boiling. I removed the lid and found this lovely, full, rolling boil:

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It's hard to see from the angle of these photos, but the quart pot was a bit less than half full. I'm guessing there was about a cup and a half of water in there. Here's a shot of the stove with all the jets alight after I took the boiling water away:

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There was about a half-inch of alcohol still in the central well of the stove when I extinguished it with the simmer ring.

So there you have it. The Clikstand appears to be a quite efficient little fold-up stand for a civilian Trangia burner. The whole test, from laying out the pieces of the Clikstand to extinguishing the stove, took about thirty minutes. I'd bet that with an efficiently-designed kettle instead of an open quart pot, the snow would melt and boil even faster.
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Re: Review: Civilian Trangia and Clikstand, with pics

Postby OrangeJoe » Mon Jan 26, 2009 5:52 am

Great review. Thanks.

How much efficiency do you think that windscreen adds to the Trangia burner?
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Re: Review: Civilian Trangia and Clikstand, with pics

Postby Towanda » Mon Jan 26, 2009 2:42 pm

I'm sure it helps noticeably, but that's hard to quantify. The windscreen certainly retains heat around the sides of the pot and would help keep wind from getting down to the burner. It also sort of acts as a chimney to draw air through the holes at the bottom of the Clikstand. At one point during the test yesterday, I saw a little bit of flame curling up the side of the pot from the burner, but the flame wasn't visible in the photo I took of it. Any increased efficiency is not something I can put specific numbers on, though.
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Re: Review: Civilian Trangia and Clikstand, with pics

Postby TaskuT » Mon Jan 26, 2009 6:55 pm

I just have to ask, how much difference this clickstand can have from trangia's own stand? Were you comparing just burner and burner + clickstand? I'ts pretty much the same, but trangia is looks easier to assemble. And doesn't have that much small parts.

If someone for some reason dont know what I mean with whole trangia system, here is some pics:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... attuna.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... ooking.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... a_27-4.jpg

In my opinion, trangia rules. Also avaivable with faster gas burner (not that good in winter, need to keep the gas warm when cooking).
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Re: Review: Civilian Trangia and Clikstand, with pics

Postby Towanda » Mon Jan 26, 2009 11:37 pm

TaskuT wrote:I just have to ask, how much difference this clickstand can have from trangia's own stand? Were you comparing just burner and burner + clickstand? I'ts pretty much the same, but trangia is looks easier to assemble. And doesn't have that much small parts.

If someone for some reason dont know what I mean with whole trangia system, here is some pics:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... attuna.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... ooking.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... a_27-4.jpg

In my opinion, trangia rules. Also avaivable with faster gas burner (not that good in winter, need to keep the gas warm when cooking).

In the US, you can't get a Trangia storm cooker like the ones you posted for less than around $125. The Clikstand, windscreen, and civilian Trangia burner added up to a little over $50 from Campsaver. The Clikstand, the first time I took it out of the box, took less than a minute to set up after I looked at the instructions. Less than three minutes if you count instruction-viewing time.

So, other than the Swedish Army surplus mess kit with the bigger military burner, I've never used a Trangia cookset. The Clikstand set tested in the OP breaks down small enough to fit in the one-quart pot that I melted the snow in. It might even fit in the GSI Hae kettle that arrived today, but I haven't tried to do that yet. I performed the test in the OP because here and on other sites I've seen complaints that alcohol stoves are useless in winter because they don't get hot enough to boil water, much less melt snow. I never used a Trangia at all before last summer, so I thought I'd see for myself if an alcohol stove will melt snow, and a day when the temps were in the single digits seemed like a good time to try it out. 7 degrees Fahrenheit is -14 degrees Celsius.

I do have to say that I like the design of the civilian burner better than the military one. The lid has better threads and is much less likely to leak fuel.
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Re: Review: Civilian Trangia and Clikstand, with pics

Postby TaskuT » Tue Jan 27, 2009 7:59 am

125$?!? holy sh*t thats expensive. It costs "only" 60€ in here. Okay, 109€ with teflon parts.
But I personally would probably use alcohol stove rather than gas in cold weather, since the gas in bottle might "freeze" and stop flowing. I'ts slow, but reliable.

I've never even seen those clickstands or other things like that, pretty much everyone has trangia. If someone has enough money, I'ts worth it. I still sometimes use my dad's old and rusty trangia, I think its atleast 15 years old. No problems at all, works just like a new one.

Now I understand why you guys have so many threads on stoves :)
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Re: Review: Civilian Trangia and Clikstand, with pics

Postby Allen » Tue Jan 27, 2009 5:58 pm

Great Review! Thanks for the post!

I've used a home made Pepsi can stove as cold as 9 degrees F

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Re: Review: Civilian Trangia and Clikstand, with pics

Postby Towanda » Tue Jan 27, 2009 11:20 pm

TaskuT wrote:125$?!? holy sh*t thats expensive. It costs "only" 60€ in here. Okay, 109€ with teflon parts.
But I personally would probably use alcohol stove rather than gas in cold weather, since the gas in bottle might "freeze" and stop flowing. I'ts slow, but reliable.

I've never even seen those clickstands or other things like that, pretty much everyone has trangia. If someone has enough money, I'ts worth it. I still sometimes use my dad's old and rusty trangia, I think its atleast 15 years old. No problems at all, works just like a new one.

Now I understand why you guys have so many threads on stoves :)

If I ever find myself in Europe again, I'm going to pick up one of those Trangia sets. For the foreseeable future, between the Clikstand and other cookware I already have, I'm set for camping/bugout cookware. Now to start stockpiling gallon cans of denatured alcohol... :lol:
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Re: Review: Civilian Trangia and Clikstand, with pics

Postby 111t » Sat Feb 07, 2009 2:10 pm

AWESOME!!! I've been waiting to see a review of one of these!!! :D :D :D
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