This is my windscreen and there is my Fancy Feast alcohol stove you know it's
kind of hard to find wind screens and if you're brand new to this that might
confuse you a little bit so I'm gonna show you how you can make one out of
tinfoil and talk about some of the ones I've used and made windscreen is a very
important component of your alcohol stove system
Right, right.... I got a few wind screens here now this is the one I use for my own
cook system it's a really nice foil it came with my white box stove and it's my
preferred one it's about 16 and 3/4 inches long has the holes punched in the
bottom when you use a windscreen for an alcohol stove you want a little bit of
air coming in the bottom but of course want to set it up a lot of times
there'll be a gap like that on the leeward side so what I mean by that is
if the wind is coming this way I'll set the windscreen up so this side this
little gap if I have one is away from the wind this one is made out of the
material that's made for your MSR whisper light stoves and it's a foil
very similar in feel and everything to this one right here this is a titanium
one very flimsy it's adjustable so no there's one you can get at REI I can't
remember where I got this one but that's your titanium windscreen and of course
most of you're gonna start out making one at a heavy duty tin foil but kind of
fold the edges up this is the bottom where I've punched the holes a folded up
a little bit did that on the edges to them one on the top then this is made
out of two layers of good old Reynolds Wrap heavy duty tin foil all my wind
screens are cut to fit into the pot I bring the most everything fits into my
eye Musa 12cm pot which I call hillbilly pot so measure your pot whatever the
depth of your pot is this one's four inches so I'm gonna make my windscreen
eight inches so it'll be double but want to leave about an inch maybe an
inch and a half longer so I can make my folds this piece of tinfoil I just
ripped off is 24 inches by 18 so that's gonna give me plenty of room to work
with now you're gonna find your way to fold these things but I like to lay a
straight edge on it bring the tinfoil over so Mike so my bottom edge is pretty
even and that was 18 inches so that should give me about 9 inches to work
with and then I just take my straight edge push it toward the top because what
I'm looking for here is just a nice clean fold no take a straight edge out
and you can use the edge of your scissors or your finger however you want
to do it to smooth that edge out really nice you want this nice and crisp this
is gonna be your top edge I'll even give it a little roll with the dowel all
right so now we got tinfoil ready so what I'm gonna do here is take my
straight edge I'm not measuring I'm just eyeballing this and I want a little just
a little lip here just kind of hold the straight edge take
my finger bring the foil over and pushing against that straight edge like
that I'm gonna bring it out press it down use the edge of my scissors to kind
of burnish it make it really this fold so that's gonna be my top now I'll trim
my gnarly edges I'm just gonna cut that you want a sharp razor I'm not pressing
too hard
mmm cut into a couple of layers there boy now I got a clean edge there and
I'll do that on the other end right down here same thing
well what I'm gonna go to next is just fold on the bottom which I'm gonna fold
that up a couple of times because this is where you want a little bit of weight
is on that bottom so I'm gonna like double or triple fold that up so looking
at this one I made it seem like my fold is one-inch all right so one inch and my
four inches is gonna put me let's see how four inches is what I want so I'm
gonna take my sharpie and make myself just a little mark at four inches right
there and I'm gonna go here and make one I
want it to be that tall so I'm just gonna go ahead and just grab me a little
light line that way I know where I'm going now I think I'm gonna fold it
three times so I'm gonna go down from this four-inch line this will be the
actual height of my windscreen so I'm gonna go three inches and three inches
and I'm gonna make another line there or I'll just go ahead and make the cut
right here I can make a line if you're gonna cut with scissors just draw
yourself a line and cut that cut my scissors cuts through Tim Paul quite
easily get a nice smooth here to work with gonna make me an inch mark there's
an inch there's an inch that's gonna be my first fold line I like to use the
straight edge just to get that fold run it on a straight edge take a straight
edge away just run that down with my fingers but what I really like to do is
take the edge of my scissors and burnish it a really nice crease on that and that
gives you a good hard crease and then I'm going to do that one more time here
rather than just you know freestyle this gonna lay my straight edge right where
it cut
it up I'm gonna do that one more time and then just furnish that down again
either with your Dow or the edge of your scissors or your fingers but really
getting the edge of those scissors on this hard surface really does it so the
last one I made I didn't really fold those edges in too far that looks like
that's about about a half an inch like you know I could just even eyeball this
that looked good enough to me that's about a half an inch it's not that
particular and let's just use the edge of a straight edge again bring that in
burnish it down the edge of my scissors crinkle that down and if I want because
I know I'm going to have some extra length I could just fold that one more
time which why not it just gives a little bit more body to the windscreen
early so I want to want it to be about 17 when I'm done so there's 17 I'm gonna
give himself about an inch maybe an inch and an eighth right there and I will
start from there about a half inch look good enough to me sug and I'll bring
that up to a straight edge rub it get a straight edge out of the way push it
down burnish it so I'll put my straight edge there again right where I folded
push it fold it over burnish it rub it all down really just get your folds real
nice and sealed in there so our next thing is to put our holes or little air
holes for the bottom so nothing scientific here I don't know how I came
up with this I probably copied it from another windscreen but going from Center
to Center on my holes well from edge to edge is about two inches what I'm gonna
do just because it can I'm just going to lay this one right on this one and I'm
just gonna make me a dot anywhere from about two inches to an inch and three
quarters apart one other thing you want good old hole puncher you saw these in
school now what I use to punch the holes around the
bottom of my windscreen and start punching me a few holes here everywhere
where I made a dot punch me a hole punch me a hole now I know some of your fast
idiots and you want to get these holes exactly the same height I am not that
good I just get them in the area because it's just camping and no one's really
coming over to admire my work as I've sadly noticed and that's about that so
now we got our holes and now we got a basic windscreen for an alcohol stove
now that I got it done I'm gonna take my dowel and smooth the
whole thing out one more time but you can use a rolling pin so right yeah I
got myself a basic windscreen and you got yourself nice simple cheap
windscreen that will make your alcohol stoven system work great and remember
one more thing if you're new to stoves put a lid on your pot your water will
boil faster the windscreen will help you know the other thing with this tinfoil
windscreen is for you ultra lighters that's probably about as light as you'll
ever get 0.41 ounce that even an ounce grams its eleven point five grams so you
know to simulate here a little bit so I've got my alcohol stove sitting on the
ground and I've put my windscreen around it and I will have my pot sitting on top
of that now you only need the windscreen to come up a little bit up your pot I
cut this so it just comes right to the bottom of this handle right here you
don't want your windscreen this tight you don't want it so tight that there's
no breathing room so set it up so that there's a little bit of breathing room
around and it is a very important part of the alcohol stove system you don't
want to choke that flame out as it comes up the side of your pod and you might
find you're out camping and it's blowing around and let's just pretend this is a
rock you might have to find a couple of so a couple of things to kind of you
know kind of hold your windscreen in place when you're cooking that's pretty
common
this is what I buy and I get it from REI of course you can order it on Amazon MSR
windscreen material you get a big ol roll of this which is meant to go around
your MSR gas stove so I can get so I can get probably two wind screens out of
that and it's easy enough to cut don't make your mama mad but I just got an old
pair of scissors here that I've kind of ruined an old pair of sewing scissors
and they use just these scissors to cut this but what I do is I take this piece
and I cut it up into little vapor barriers and what that is is anytime I
use an alcohol stove and this is a fancy fie stove I always use this to sit on
the ground whether I'm cooking on a picnic table or on the ground or the
cold ground gives a little insulation and I swear it gives you a little bit of
a better burn particularly if I'm on pine needles or something and I sort of
clear my area a little bit that's very helpful you can make the same thing with
tin foil another nice thing to make your windscreen out is get one of these nice
roasting pans or a turkey pan and cut it out of the shape on the bottom so that
is pretty much 17 inches the bottom which is almost perfect for this and you
can probably get you're good to wind screens out of that for the hillbilly
pot and any windscreen you make whether out of a turkey pan a lot of people use
flashing material you'll find it in the roofing department you can get it in
silver but a lot of people make them out of flashing too and you can get that at
any home or hardware store tin foil eleven point five grams titanium fifteen
point five grams MSR windscreen 19 grams my windscreen from the old white box
stove that I got years ago 18 grams let's go ounces ounces my windscreen on
the white box stove 0.63 ounces MSR stove windscreen 0.65 ounces titanium
windscreen Zee point five three ounces tinfoil when
scream we just made 0.41 ounces there's the proof of your pudding and speaking
of pudding I'm a mutt bit peckish you know let's say your windscreen is
crinkled up and you want to smooth it out just take off you got a wooden dowel
here from the shop that's a one-inch wooden dowel lay it
down just kind of roll it out keep rolling and eventually roll these
wrinkles out really nicely and you can see the folds but that really smooths it
out a lot and I'll do that when my windscreen gets a little bit you know
little it's bent up and out of shape like that I'll bring it home and lay it
on a hard service just roll it off that odd service and it actually even sort of
puts the curl back in it and that'll smooth your windscreen out really nice
so thanks for that tip Kinney nice collection of old matchbox cars which I
also have some tucked back there Pooh Joe's rolls-royce Bentley's a couple of
my heroes right there Del McCoury and now Ford II Newman we're buddy