I've just replaced both of Fantail's Maxie burners. There were two problems: the burners had suffered from dezincification and had crumbled away over time (a la Weetbix), and a 'jet' (actually more of a valve) had resolutely jammed. A minor niggle is the use of zinc plated grub screws to fasten the knobs; these had corroded to the point where they could not be used.

An attempt to rejuvenate one burner using canabilised parts, and specifically a damaged wick, provided a brief moment of excitement when tested. Meths is capable of providing a significant flare in the right circumstances, and damaged wicks are the right circumstances. 

Getting replacement burners from the supplier was an exercise in herding cats. Whitworths did their best, but it seems the manufacturer does very limited runs of stove parts. Six weeks of emails did result in the arrival of the only two burners to be had (I would have liked a spare). No complete stoves were available. Hopefully this was a just a case of bad timing.

Following Arne's suggestion and moving from Weaverbird's Refit to here.

Peter - and all those like you and me who are desperate for a decent metho/alcohol cooker.  I contacted 'John at Taylors' and suggested they go back to making/sourcing alcohol burners and offering them as an alternative to kero.  It's getting increasingly difficult to get good quality kero, but alcohol is more readily available.  If the burners are interchangeable, one could even swop over, if the one fuel became cheap/available and the other became expensive/unavailable (although the tank would need a good clean.)  If sufficient people do likewise and we could get through to him, this would be the answer to our prayers.  Hot, clean and efficient: just what we want in a cooker.

The idea of designing and developing a DIY-friendly, cleanly-burning  alcohol burner, which is safe and powerful, and which can be turned low for simmering, is of course quite attractive.

However, I have a life to live and a boat to rig (..the 2-part mast for Ingeborg has just been assembled...), so that burner has been put on the back burner  -  on my maybe-some-day list. Luckily I am good at adapting to second-best solutions, so my Origo 3000 stove  -  simple as an anvil  -  will serve me just fine.

Cheers, Arne

 

David Tyler wrote:

Doing a little more research, I find that there used to be another Australian-made alcohol stove, the Ravia, with a burner designed on the same principle as, but not quite  identical to, the Maxie burner. There are some good photos on this forum thread. I wonder how long ago these were made, and what the burners were made from, and all sorts of other questions.

That stove looks so like a Maxie, that you can't help wondering if they didn't buy out Ravia.  I hope, by the by, that you noticed the instructions, David, and the one about re-filling the cooker when it's lit?  By the way, later down on the same thread there is someone raving about the Origo and saying it's a lot faster than the Maxie!  It just shows how preconceptions and/or preferences can distort the facts.

Another wondrous source for arcane information about stoves of all types is the Classic Camp Stove forum.  These guys are nutters and enthusiasts of a calibre that make junkies look indifferent!  I gather that they even have their equivalent of junkets where they all discuss burners and spindles and heaven knows what else.  Some of the stoves even get lit!  Unfortunately, they seem intent on collecting them rather than reproducing them.  They have an online store which I have occasionally visited in the hope of finding alcohol burners.  It's a jolly good browse if you have a spare half hour or so, which alas I don't.

Darren Bos wrote:

David, I was looking at the valve in your parts list and it looks like a plain valve with the knob and needle valve oriented 90 degrees to the flow path, while the knob on the Maxie is aligned axially with the needle of the valve.  Were you thinking of a different arrangement to control the fuel flow?  Or maybe you would locate the valve in what is now the drip tube of the Maxie?

I threw in this valve as an example of a low-cost easily obtained needle valve, which avoided the skilled task of making one, but I must admit that I don't have a clear idea of how to use it.

I found, when I couldn't turn my needle valve and had to use the shutoff valve at the tank, that the burner was very slow to respond - not surprising with nearly a metre of hose. What this teaches me is that the needle valve must be very close to the burner, and that it must have vapour flowing through it, not liquid fuel, to respond quickly. It must be downstream of the area where vaporisation takes place (which, I think, is just behind the burner chamber on the Maxie), and just upstream of the final exit hole, with not too long a path between the two, and not too voluminous a tube downstream of the valve. This creates a difficulty with any separate valve, and it may be that the built-in valve is the only way to go. I don't know. Perhaps what's needed, so long as a separate valve can withstand heat well enough to be close to the burner, is to have the flow horizontal through the valve, with the spindle (extended) pointing outwards towards the operator.