Building the Gödel was easy and overall took not much more than an hour. First I used a piece of cardboard to build a prototype in a size to snuggly fit my boots. Then I cut two pieces of aluminium to the same size and bent them in the vise into the final U-shape. To get the slit for the straps, I drilled a few holes next to each other and cut through with a Dremel. Five more holes each for the bolts and I was done.

The bolts are perhaps a little long, but were the only ones I had available where I found 10 identical ones. They are M5 16mm, but if this works I will probably replace them with 12mm ones. I’m thinking about sharpening the tips to improve traction, but I’m not sure if this is really necessary.

The material cost roughly 15€ (~9€ for the straps and 6€ for the aluminium) with plenty of aluminium still left for future projects.

The two Grödel weight in at 271g an I think I could get this down by using plastic buckles instead of the metal ones on the strips and drilling a few holes to get rid of some material.

This weekend I will test them on tour and will report here about the performance in real life.

More pictures can be found in this Picasa album.

Update 2011-03-11:

I decided to cut off parts of the screws to reduce the forces on the body of the crampon and cut a tiny ridge through the tip to increase friction.

As an added bonus this reduced the overall weight by 10g to 261g.

Update 2011-03-14:

I can’t report on the performance on ice, because it was a nice, warm weekend and the snow we encountered was soft and slushy. But I can report, that the crampons fit perfectly and it’s comfortable to walk in them… Will update once I have done a real test.

Damon, a colleague of mine, is the lucky owner of a MakerBot and yesterday I was at his place and we printed a stickpic clone. The original design worked but today I spent some time learning OpenSCAD and improved (I hope ) the original design. My clone of Damon’s stickpic clone has rounder edges and is overall a little smaller and thus lighter.

Diesmal wollte ich einen deutlich kleineren Kocher bauen, da ich den Eindruck hatte, daß meine erste Variante unnötig hoch war. Außerdem habe ich bei outdoorseiten.net den Tip bekommen, kleinere Löcher zu verwenden. Deswegen verwende ich diesmal einen kleinen Nagel und steche damit die Löcher.

Sonst habe ich alles genau so wie beim ersten mal gemacht, deswegen spare ich mir weitere Worte.

English version further down

xZutaten:

• eine Becks Dose (eine beliebige “normale” Dose funktioniert hier)
• eine Red Bull Dose (hier hätte ich gerne ein Getränk verwendet, daß ich auch trinke, aber ich habe nichts gefunden)

Den Kocher zu bauen hat laut den Timestamps der Bilder keine Stunde gedauert. Für den ersten Testlauf hatte ich keinen Brennspiritus greifbar. Ein paar meiner Single Malts und ein Cask-Strength Whisky hatten noch mehr als 45% Alkohol, aber Jack Daniels war der einzige Whisky, den ich bereit war zu verheizen

Danach habe ich eine Flasche Brennspiritus gekauf und noch einen Testlauf gemacht. Der Kocher hat ziemlich genau 7 Minuten gebraucht, um 500ml Wasser zum Kochen zu bringen. Aber wie man auf den letzten Bildern sieht, brennt er nicht besonders gut. Ich muss mal sehen, ob ich die gelbe Flamme noch irgendwie wegkriege. So und jetzt gibt’s die Bilderserie, viel Spass damit…

Well, a few days ago I got the urge to build my first can stove.

Parts:

• one can of Becks (any normal-sized can will do)
• one can of Red Bull (couldn’t find a small can of something I actually like drinking)

According to the timestamps it took me less than an hour to build the can stove. I didn’t have any denatured alcohol for the first test run but I had a few whiskys (single-malt, one cask strength) with 45 percent alkohl or more. The only one I was willing to sacrify was bottle of Jack Daniels.

The next day a bought a bottle of denatured alcohol and not surprisingly it burned a lot better. The stove needed 7 minutes to boil 500ml water. As you can see from the last few pictures, the flame is not optimal and I will try to get rid of the yellow flame.

And here are the pictures in chronological order: