Bought a secondhand "Handi" stainless steel kerosene stove for wylo, around 1980's vintage.
I heard about it through a mate on the Investigator563 online forum, for sale in Newcastle, NSW. (1600km south as the crow flies) Contacted Gordon the seller, he told me it was removed from a yacht during refitting/upgrade, the yacht had done a 6 year circumnavigation with this stove. It had sat in the shed over 10 years. It was shipped up north by land and arrived at the couriers base in a nice plywood box that Gordon had made up.
Two burners are on top and a third burner is inside the oven. It has adjustable pot fiddles and came with accessories/spare parts and a separate large kero tank attched with a flexible hose.
After cleaning it up a bit, it all connected up and it fired up first go!! (must have been well maintained, thanks again to Gordon).
To operate it involves pressure pumping the kero tank with a bicycle pump, preheating the burner(s) with methylated spirits (alcohol) and opening the burner valve knob (s). There are preheating cups under each burner and it came with a neat little alcohol bottle with long spout.
Kerosene is a safe fuel onboard as it takes allot to ignite it, but once lit it has a very hot burn. Kero also stores well for ages and takes up less space/weight due to high calorific content. Kero is readily available in remote ports too. The only cons are, it takes a few minutes to light up, some people don't like the smell of it and it has unusual maintenance requirements compared with gas.
I want to steer away from propane gas onboard due to explosion safety hazard, bulky large gas bottles on deck, and high cost/lack of of refills in some remote places (also different incompatible gas fittings overseas etc)
Kero stoves like this were once popular back in the bygone era on remote outback off-grid cattle stations (ranches). They also had kero refrigerators, kero heaters and kero blowlamps. It was the fuel of choice before the modern "propane gas" (and gas pipeline) era.
I priced the new modern kero equivalents of my Handi stove (eg Taylors in UK) and they cost thousands of dollars new. My old one represents good value then.
Handiworks factory began production in the 1930's, was located in Brisbane, Queensland but closed down late 20th century. The burners etc are essentially the old kero "primus" type which are still made in places like India.
Another second hand buy i made locally was a 1950's Primus No1 kero single burner pressure stove. It's not running and needs some fettling (new pump cup, maybe a burner head). It's similar to the one Sir Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay used when they summited Mt Everest for the first time.
On a wylo this type could be fitted to a gimballed heat resistant box (like on wylo2 "Io")
To this longterm end, i built a "stove box", around 1 foot on each side. The box is made of plywood, has a 6mm cork tile insulating layer and inside has a 0.6mm aluminium sheet layer which reflects the heat. For now it's the galley on my 18ft trailer sailer and houses alcohol stoves (Trangia 27 or 25, pots , kettles) or Bonetti "can2001" for frypan cooking. It has a hatch-like lid which doubles as a non-skid cork trivet hotpot bench surface with fiddles when removed. Built a companionway-like front board for the box which also turns into another cork hotpot suface.
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| Portable galley box aboard Teria - Trangia 27 spirit stove |
