So, while looking for a small and light weight stove for hiking / SOTA whatever I decided to pick up a Hexamine pocket stove and give it a try. I usually have a Camping Gaz type stove but it’s big, bulky and you need to carry compressed gas cartridges with it. These themselves are big, bulky and can’t really just be chucked in a bin when they are finished as they are still a risk of exploding.
I’d really like a MSR Whisperlite but they aren’t cheap, however, they are very versatile.. best you read about them on the manufactures website (click the link back there). At some point I’ll likely get one of these, but not right now.
For now I’ll have a go with this Hexamine stove. This the very same one I have picked up for £4.00
To night I decided to do some timing experiments to see how long it takes to boil water in both my crusader cup and a small aluminium kettle. The Crusader cup took 6m20sec to bring 1L of water to a boil and the Hexamine cube held the boil for 3 minutes. Might want it to boil longer if you were sterilizing water, but just pop another cube of Hexamine and it would be good for another 9 mins of burn time. The kettle, which has a lid, only took 4m30sec and the same 9 min burn time on the cube so that means 4m30sec of the water being held at a boil.
A couple of pics and a couple of videos can be seen below.. click to enlarge or see the videos.
Well, now just have to try it out in anger one day in the field 
Cambridge, UNITED KINGDOM
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