Messages

Hey, Ebb--
Just use the link on the website to drop him an E-mail, you may be able to work something out and/or he may be willing to build you a stove...I believe he is willing/able to do a modicum of fabrication work at this point if someone really wants. I think...not know. Never hurts to ask!
Dave

Hmmm...Ebb, you are geographically closer, so I now elect you!

Dave

Another possibility exists for a gimballed stove which I should also mention:

My friend James Baldwin has built several gimballed one-burner stoves over time that will hold a 10" fry pan (!) or a large pot, and also will use small LPG bottles if desired (his standard setup is kero). He has just set himself up with a bit of a landbase for the first time in 20-some years, and has facility to manufacture some of the things he has cooked up (no pun intended) over the years, including these stoves. Check them (and the rest of his site) out at //www.atomvoyages.com .

Also, James and Mei are presently staying aboard a larger boat they are fitting out for someone which is equipped with both a regular cooker and a one-burner Origo setup just like Ebb was talking about. Probably because they are used to only one burner, they use the Origo sea stove for all their cooking. James reports that it is working out to something on the order of 25-30.00 per month for alcohol fuel as opposed to 3.00 a month for kerosene that they are used to. Cooking times, say James, run appx. 10 percent longer with the alky.

Best,
Dave

Hi, Scott--

Thru-bolting with countersunk screws is a pretty simple matter, and I like it a lot because it gives that much more material that would have to fail before the seacock/thruhull could be pushed thru by an impact or an extremely concentrated load.

Extremely concentrated loads can be described as things that shouldn't be happening, like the full force of a jack pad or worse yet a rigid non-free-swiveling pad) cradle's pad...or in some cases, the hull trying to stand on the mushroom head only against the pad on the Brownell trailer...well, any of these forces coming to bear right against the thruhull. If you use countersunk thruhulls especially (which is well worth doing, BTW!), you would want to bioth add some layers of 'glass inside to make up for what you are taking out, and thru-bolt it, as I am inclined to think (may well be thinking wrong, but it's just my gut here) that it would be a wee bit easier to ram one of them up thru the hull. Those three little machine screws might be the difference someday by minimizing the deflection in that spot, you never know.

Even if there is never a problem with a yard crew in too big a hurry, if you sail the boat enough, long enough, far enough...you'll find something to hit or lay up against. Those three little screws and the minor amount of time spent...just seem like cheap insurance to me.

Best,
Dave

I usually see them --when I do--for around 50.00 as a beater or 75.00 for a good one at the seajunk stores. The aluminum will inevitably be black and the brass very ugly...and the pump may not make pressure. The pump is rebuildable with Viton rubber O-rings from the local industrial bearing shop, BTW.

I have a very cherry one that I managed to find as 'New Old Stock'. I do not want to admit to how much IT was! Suffice to say I pretty much could've bought that Origo setup Ebb was looking at...

Sometimes you will see one with a leaky tank, usually right around where the burner attaches (from repeated bending due to rough handling or careless storage). These can be repaired easily by silver-soldering (if you happen to know a jeweler, you will get a super-bang-up-job done!) or if the tank is really thrashed you may want to just buy another optimus stove off of e-bay.

That old Optimus is sort of the VW Bug of stoves in terms of simplicity and repairability.

Meguiar All-Metal does a pretty good job on the aluminum, and brasso does a great job on the stove itself. Just don't use the brasso on the Aluminum parts, it'll etch!

Also...the thumbscrews are often missing from the bracket, which is an easy fix---take a look at the pic I put up of my friend Tom's stove in his Albin Vega 27...that's a standard thumbscrew from the hardware store holding the bracket and it works great! I did round over the tip of the screw a bit for him, but it worked OK without, too.

I see Peter is dreaming of hot drinks from just inside his comp'way, huh???

Dave

Very Cool, Kent!

The only Sterno-can SeaSwing I had previously seen was markedly different from the standard SeaSwing stove mount...yours looks to be the same thing as the standard optimus-stove version.

This brings up an interesting possibility I want to mention...the stove itself in the seaswing is a standard Optimus stove, very common, parts still available (although most come from the hardware store)...Force 10 replacement burners fit fine...and I have seen the things sell on Ebay (the stove alone) for 5 bucks! Just search "kerosene stove" or "otimus stove". BTW, those burners come as either Alcohol or Kero (I have 1 of each, Just in Case).

Just to be sure, I dug my SeaSwing out of the coat closet just now and measured...Dimension from bottom of stove mounting flange to bottom of the pot holder is appx. 4-1/2". If yours is of this same size, you could convert to other fuel as needed...or, (Ebb???) you could put an alky one together. The sterno-can ones are probably very cheap, as so little is commonly known about the stoves already that the gimbal/potholder only would likely be real cheap at the seajunk store if they had one! (Ebb, I am sorry that I had forgotten about the burners until now. DOH! The only change is in the burner, you can screw one off and the other on (and swill out the fuel tank a bit) and go right at it.

Also...Force 10 sell a springy-stainless slide-type bracket for the current sorry version of the SeaSwing such as it is; this same bracket will work on the vintage model stoves and are pretty neat as you can have two of 'em (I do) to allow you to mount the SeaSwing securely in it's usual spot and also be able to move it out-of-doors for cooking in hot weather. For that matter, if the Wx was good and a person wanted a hotter burner (for crab?) the fuel/burner could be swapped out easily and no worries of sooting or fumes would be in effect!

These are cool old stoves, really neat items. They are also pretty bone simple and use no special parts to speak of, which is amazing. There is a near-100 percent likelihood that if you buy one it will not work properly, though. Easy to fix, there are a few tricks to it but not many. Just about everyone in the local OarClub clatch seems to have one, so I've gotten to play with just a few and learn from other who have as well. If anyone gets one and has questions, please feel free to ask. If it's useful to me or to others too, then it's valuable knowlege, but if it's not used it just becomes worthless trivia I am clogging my last dozen or so remaining brain cells with!  

Best,
Dave

Well said Ebb, well said...

But...maybe she LIKES to get a screwdriver or a wrench...maybe more than flowers.

I've known a number of gals who would be like that, some were straight but all were great!!

Dave

Ebb's right--

No one, certainly not a boat manufacturer, a yard/installer, the surveyor who recommended the yard and/or personally felt it was just fine...is going to say that in the interest of a bit more profit and productivity that they have installed/added/recommended/sold to you something sub-par. I mean, no one is gonna say that!

There is a defined reason for proper seacocks...Llloyds' standards are VERY specific about it, and I mean the Lloyds standards for small craft insuranve here. To my understanding ABYC standards were pretty specific too...if nothing else, at least about the hose.

You gotta watch surveyors, too. In most respects, you or I or my dog spot can go out and print business cards, hang up a sign, and be a marine surveyor...it is not a regulated industry. This I get from a friend of mine who is a very talented marine surveyor. He also advises me that there are a lot of surveyors in this world who will tell the pleasureboat owner what they want to hear rather than being the contrarian, as repeat business and word of mouth do depend more on warm-fuzziness than accuracy in a lot of cases---at least in the minds of the unscrupulous.

If, for example, I do a lot of business inside a certain yard across town...and if, for example, they have the ability to either recommend me or talk trash about me...or just take me off the "approved contractors" list...I may think or even know that I would not let the crew over there haul and block a dinghy of mine so to speak, but I can't be running around saying it loudly. For that matter, I could be the very worst contractor they ever saw, but as long as I make the customers FEEL good and as long as I keep sliding 'em the referral fees...they will keep on handing out the cards!!! Sorry to seem cynical, but I see this all the time and it is just a matter of how it works. You can't walk into the liars' club and expect someone to tell the truth!

This is not to say that there are not good yards, good yard crew, or honest surveyors to be had in the world--there sure are, and I am glad to know the ones that are who I am fortunate to know. For every one honest and forthright outfit or person, though, there are a gaggle more who are looking to gouge, get-over-on and generally decieve the customer as this is traditionally how the money is made from the pleasureboat community! That's gone on for years and years, but in the main this sort of thing is a cancer that sweeps all bounds of our society anymore.

Agent Mulder has it right: Trust No One. Especially when they are making money off of you and your boat.

OK, off my soapbox.

Dave :eek:

Some bronze seacocks come with good old fashioned waterpump-style greas cups on them, you just keep the cup filled with lubriplate and periodically give it a twist to force grease on in there. I like the Marelon variety better just because of all the issues of no corrosion-lightweight-superstrong-less money, but also, they are more-or-less self-lubricating.

Oh man, Ebb can have fun with that one!!!

It's just..I have a teeny brain but a smaller wallet!!!

At that rate--

There was a less expensive version (not as nice, but I think the same size) that took a sterno can, too. They're probably nearly free at the SeaJunk store and so forth, and would take less adaptation.

SmokyStinkyDavid

Well...I'd buy a lot of this crap brand new if anyone still made it!!!!

It would definitely be easier, and I would be spared the load on my limited remaining brain cells of things like the how-tos of overhauling Optimus stoves, Kerosene Shipmate heaters and Wilcox-Crittenden Navy Pumps. I wish, I wish...

Now...all I can wonder, is how much the optional Rube-Goldberg-mechanical-timer-start-the-stove-twenty-minutes-early part will cost you if you want the water to boil on the alky flame anytime soon. Maybe they burn hotter than the pressurized ones, but I don't remember that being too much the case from my relatively few times in using the non-pressurized version you are looking at. Good luck, and if all else fails we can sail close enough to throw you a thermos of hot tea, OK???

Dave


PS...I have one last idea, if you are real dedicated to making the propane-bottle stove work in a seaswing...

Buy an old S/Swing stove minus the optimus or with a trashed optimus, do a little cut-and-paste, and make the Coleman 1-burner screw-it-on-a-propane-bottle "stove" guts attach to the bottom of the old SeaSwing. This really should only mean hogging out a hole in the cast aluminum base bigger. Might give it a look...

Always remember that these are PRODUCTION boats...and that meand hurry-up. You can look in any other production boat for the most part (including those of the brand-new Hunte-Bene-Lina ilk that cost 200K) and find just as much chicken crap in the places they figure the owner isn't too likely to look at or see. There are exceptions, but they are always in lower-production boats for the most part (although my pal's little Vega has incredible attention to detail...well, it is the Saab 99 of sailboats, after all...).

Another friend of mine once observed that old Pearsons are HEAVILY and STRONGLY built boats, ENDURINGLY buitl, even...but not particularly WELL built boats. Fair enough.

I have found parts in my Triton which bear hull numbers a few away from my own, as I did in my Commander, as I did in a friend's Triton. Not too hard to understand if you think about it, I guess...when a build order is issued materials are gathered, grouped and staged, sometimes on pallets, sometimes on rolling carts. Sometimes the boats move to the parts, sometimes the other way around, but there is always gonna be a "hey! where's the ______?" "Dunno, Fred, just grab one off that pallet over there and GET MOVING!!" and that sorta thing. Probably well exacerbated by the fact that the actual hull number is indeed only on that plate and was only assigned permanently to the boat, more-or-less at least, on the boat's way out of the plant. No biggie. Also remember that in all truth and honesty the majority of the Pearson production workers in the old days spoke little or no english and read even less. And drank home made port wine from hip flasks throughout the day as we would drink water at work now. Dead serious.

Dave

Opening the burial vault in the bottom of the bilge gives further insight into the lives of these ancient beings, who apparently prized antimony as a great treasure. Further thoughts have suggested that the boat itself is actually a complex sort of floating burial chamber, as encapsulated within this cavity along with the treasured antimony were a bottle the ancients must have intended to carry the essence of the departed, whose name according to the writing thereon was "Jim Beam". It is likely that these were peoples who alternately travelled by land and by water, perhaps in the desert, as a small, crumpled packet which must have carried the essence of the departed Mr. Beam's Camel was also recovered from the antimonious cavity. Whether these being believed that the spirit essence of the departed could be carried into eternity within only a glass bottle or whether a packet would suffice is not clear, as similar crumpled packets have been found bearing other names such as "Pall Mall", "Chester Field" and "Philip Morris". It appears that the believers crumpled the packets as a means to keep the departed's spirit essence from spilling out.

Hmmm.

Ebb, I hate to be the harpy...but man, I have lived with and used alcohol stoves before...both pressurized and not...I mean, I GREW UP on boats with alky stoves...and I hate the things.

The stink of the alcohol in an enclosed space is enough to get a person hurling as bad as the stink of kero in my book. But...the real issue to me is how cold the stuff burns. I like coffee before noon if I start it at 0700, you know?

That much said, I was deperately trying to figure a good way to use the lazarette in the Triton as a propane locker and just flat couldn't. Too bad, as it worked so good in my friend's Vega, and it would have worked so good in the party-room-aft-cabin-suite lazarette of the Commander. Still, my immediate choices were:

---Big bottle in a deck box (nix, I like an uncluttered deck and do not like to carry weight up high)

---Smaller bottles in a pair secured inside the pushpit (nix, weight too far aft AND too high, and I know and respect Neptune's fist too well for that..."remember that passage where the big boarding wave took away the propane? Cold hash and DAK ham for 29 days, we finally slaughtered Dave and ate him raw to have hot food!")

---Costly and spookily cheap-looking storebought propane locker set into cockpit locker (nix, too small, drain is a problem waiting to happen as well as adding a hole in the boat and adding drag when the boat's heeled over. Cockpit lockers too small as it for a boat that has to carry somewhere between 9-12 bags in one and everything else in the other).

They all stank, Ebb.

I got Mary to capitulate on the 2-burner range and go with the single kero seaswing, but I worried about having no backup at all. You CAN bake some pretty good bread, even coffee cake, in the seaswing, it's just an odd shape. You cannot, however do lasagne..and that would be a real tragedy.

A friend of mine had a half-famous Renegade for a long time, oh-so-originally named RENEGADE by the original owners. Ever sail on a Renegade? Sheesh, with that balanced spade setup the rudder post goes down thru the cockpit over a foot ahead of the aft cockpit bulkhead. Jay used to have a ful-size steeel BBQ tank back in one corner. He sewed a double-walled sunbrella cover to go over it, which had some of that hi-tech heavy-duty foilized bublewrap insulation in between the layers. Sun could beat on it all day, never popped the overpressure valve.

Mary went off to the RV store and came back with a pair of aluminum tanks that are about 16" tall overall and just under 8" around. The actual poundage excapes me, but they are aparently about the same as carrying one BBQ tank or a little more. They happen to JUST fit in the aft cockpit corners of the Triton and still allow the tiller (I know, I had to dummy in a rudder post and fit the tiller to try!) to go pretty much hard over...as hard over as one practically takes it, at least. Still weight aft, but lower, and out of neptune's reach!

If you want real simple though, I still have to carry on for the kero seaswing. Since we last exchanged about soot I have looked critically in the overheads when visiting friends whose boats are so equipped and who live aboard, hence the thing is used twice daily. Very little sooting, if any. I think the key is that the stove needs to be running well and you need to keep the burner good and clean. Again, kero sets Maria off puking furiously if she gets a good whiff while underway, so I used lamp oil instead last the issue came up. Now...while a little bit costly, that iunscented lamp oil is very efficient and very very clean...plus the little optimus burner in the things really just sorta sips at the fuel. Hisssss.....(Whistling!!!)....Raspberry Tea, anyone?

Ahem. I should add, that Revere Ware make a really HD whistling teakettle, SS, in a small size to fit on a seaswing. MMMmmmm. Spiced Cider. Hot Chocolate. Dry heat in the boat from the stove. Tea.....

Dave