LOL, I was just about to post the same link.
Coleman fuel is (at the very cheapest) £3.99 a litre here, but US stovies laugh when you tell them that because they pay about £1.00. Apparently there's some substance that car painters use that can be used instead of Coleman fuel and is almost as good (panel wipe?), but I haven't tried it yet.
After the latest stove debacle at Llanthoney I stripped down the stove and found the generator tube to be mucky. When it was reassembled it ran like a blowtorch... which didn't assuage my sense of shame one bit. My mistake (in retrospect) was in trying to run it at simmer temps, which an MSR doesn't like when using petrol and likes even less when you're using paraffin. It did manage supper, half of breakfast and two coffees before going phut though.
Funnily enough I picked up a Gaz stove in its neat blue tin the other day for £1.00. Despite being at least 20 years old it lit and ran beautifully and yes, I can see the advantage of gas during the summer months, it's way easier (right up to the point you run out of fuel).
As for Scott, he used containers with leather washers which allowed the paraffin to 'creep'. This problem was exacerbated by the positioning of the bright red paraffin tins on top of his depots to act as guides. Over the course of the many months they were there they went through countless expansion and contraction cycles as the temperature varied. He found that he had lost up to a third of his fuel stock. Amundsen, on the other hand, had his tins sealed with metal caps that were then soldered into place. Apparently one of his depots was rediscovered in the 80s and the fuel tin was still full.
GC
