Blackcap Blog

Published at 18:09 on 30 July 2017

Last fall, I took my old single-burner Coleman stove camping. It was the first time in decades I had used it, but I knew how badly canister stoves acted when temperatures were in the forties, and this was a trip to Wyoming, where lows could be expected to be in the twenties each night.

The pump didn’t pump well when I tried it. After some research with a search engine, I fed it a couple drops of household lubricating oil and waited a few minutes. It pumped perfectly. I filled the tank and did a test firing. The stove operated just as I had remembered it from years back.

And it was very nice to have a stove the just belted out the heat, no matter how chilly it was. Gone forever was the “tank is only partially full, so performance sucks in cold or even cool weather” syndrome. But it was tippy, vulnerable to the wind, and difficult to make it simmer reliably.

I had been lusting after an MSR Dragonfly, but those are way too spendy to rationalize on my presently limited budget. So I’ve been keeping an eye on the local Craigslist instead. Most of the Dragonflies there were still $70 and up. Then I spied a Coleman two-burner car-camping stove on sale for $35, about $10 less than the norm for such things, in the “items available in nearby areas” section. Its picture showed it in very good condition, atop a stack of other such stoves, and the ad mentioned the seller being hard of hearing. Ah, thought I, a fully checked-out and restored stove from a retired tinkerer with a hobby business to pass the time. Probably every bit the deal it appears to be.

It’s not lightweight like the Dragonfly, but I seldom backpack anyhow. My Dad had (still has) one and used it for years on camping trips and (when burn bans were in place) picnics. It never let him down. It was not tippy. It simmered easily. It performed acceptably in the wind.

But it was for sale in Mount Vernon. Add the ferry tolls and gas and it’s totally not a justifiable expense. Except that I was going to Lopez Island this weekend, and Mount Vernon is essentially on the way there. So I contacted the seller and said that if it was still available Sunday (today), I was interested in buying it. It was, and the seller was basically as I had sussed him out. He demonstrated the stove worked, we chatted a bit, and I left with it. It set me back 1/4 the price of a new Dragonfly.

My ride partner had asked to be dropped off downtown, so he could visit a used book store he liked. While the proprietor was ringing up my friend’s purchases, I remembered a highly-regarded (and out of print) book on mosses I had been wanting for some time. I asked where the botany section was and darted off. And there it was, priced at $9.95. It sells for $40 and up on Amazon. It followed me home, too.