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Woodsman's Gear of the 20th Century Part 8

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morning folks I'm Dave Canterbury with self-reliance Outfitters in the Pathfinder school back with another video in our series on woodsman's gear of the 20th century and today we're going to talk about the sphere 123 atmosphere 123 clone as well as field 123 are and the difference between - 123 - 123 are was a simple needle that moved up and down to clean the fuel jet I'll show you that in a minute up close but this was the first type stove that was really designed to be carried by backpackers back in the woods [Music]

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it's very lightweight even by today's standards it's not exceptionally heavy when you count the cost of carrying a fuel bottle with some of the more modern type stoves other than a small alcohol stove but for something that holds a lot of fuel and works as well as this does with the efficiency that the SPEA has is probably just as worthwhile a piece of gear today in fact I know it is as it was in the 1950s but it was a very popular stove all during the 1970s and there were other companies like Sig who actually made kits cook kits that could be carried that were specifically designed for the Swedish speed of stove and we'll talk about that as well here in a minute so let me give you an up-close look at the mechanics of the stove the way this thing works is when you heat up the tank it actually creates a pressure that pressurizes the tank and it draws fuel up into a vapor and that vaporized fuel turns into your fire so what happens with that as well this use this one as an example what you would do is you have a small indention on the top of this stove and what you do is you fill that with a flammable liquid and that could be white gas some people also use denatured alcohol for that and that heats up this also heating up the tank and pressurizing the tank what you want to do is you want to take the fuel cap off before you do any of that equalize any pressure and then you want to heat that up and what happens when you do that I'm just going to take a little bit of white gas here actually Coleman gas works fine for this and you can be really really neat about this or you can be sloppy about it like I am for this demo but I saw a guy who just used a straw to dip into his tank and then put a little bit of fuel right there and that seemed to work out really well I'm just gonna pour it in from the top I'm not gonna get crazy with it I'm just gonna put a little bit in there and then all you would do at that point was you would take a lighter and you would light the stove right here at the bottom just like that

and you're gonna get a flame up and you think oh my gosh the stones gonna blow up well it's not and all you're trying to do is heat this tank up and then you open the valve and has the tank heats up the stove will begin to fire and you can hear it give you a close-up up here it sounds a little bit like a jet engine firing up

and then you just let this fuel burn down

and it takes it a few minutes to heat everything up and really get going well but once you get it going you can actually simmer on this stove it's not a full wide open or Nothing type deal once it starts drawing well and vaporizing well you can turn it down to a simmer or you can have it on full blast

that thing is putting out an absolute ton of heat it will boil this cup that comes with it in less than four minutes and it'll boil about two cups actually in about four minutes of water it's very very efficient it comes with a couple components it comes with this piece here which is just a housing that goes over the top of it that you put the tea through and you drop the housing on top just like this and lock it down and now you have a grill on top just like this to put your pot on the top of and it came with a handle for that pot so take it off and put it on it also had the ability to be able to spread these out this direction so that you could use a larger pot on there as well if you wanted to and when you want to turn it off you would just turn the key the off position blow out the flame and let things cool down and it was as simple as that and then the cup that came with it actually acted as a cover for the whole thing and you shoved your key up on the inside

drop your pot handle down the side here just like that and do a slot and covered it up and you were ready to go put in your backpack

now the improvement to the 123 are as you can see when I turn this fuel knob a piece of wire comes up here and it moves up and down and what that is is a cleaner for the actual fuel jet that screws into that then you screw that fuel jet down and of course the key comes with all the sizes which is another great thing about this stove is that all these nuts and bolts on here all had a key that fit them here the same key used for the stove itself and that wire moving up and down would keep that jet clean so that wouldn't get fouled up with soot and dirt from the fuel so as you can see this sphere 123 and this 123 clone that I have here are pretty efficient as far as how they operate it's not difficult to get them to fire up once you understand how to do it I actually think it's probably around 42 degrees out here today and it didn't take him long at all to get that clone to fire up but I wanted to go over this stove with you because this is one of the classic stoves of the 70s that was used by backpackers and woodsmen it also had some sets like this SIG tourist cook set that were made to go along with this stove that were made by swiss companies although this is a Swedish stove purpose made to fit components of this stove so that you had a cook set with pots pans and pot grabbers even back in the 70s very similar to the nesting cook sets we have today ok folks along Dave Canterbury or self-reliance offered in the path fires but when I appreciate you joining me today for a quick video on the SPEA

123 we talked about the 123 are with the movable needle that cleans the jet and the 123 are clone and I think this one this clone was made in Taiwan but again it works just as good as the sphere 123 and actually fires up a little bit faster from my experience maybe not as good of quality but I'm sure that this one's at least 50 years old and it still works to this day so be that as it may both of these are very very good stones you can still find these stoves even brand new Optimus now owns fiha and they are selling brand new spiel 123 that you can buy and you can buy them used the old made in Sweden original spheres you can still find them on place like eBay and Etsy as well make sure that if you go to buy one of these I would go ahead and spend the money to buy one that says it's in working condition or that's been fired and proven because sometimes there's a little bit of fussing around that goes into making these things work if they're not operational when you get them and you don't have a lot of experience with antique or this type of camp stove I appreciate your views I appreciate your support I thank you for anything you do for our school for our family for our business or our sponsors instructors affiliates and Friends I mean back to another video as soon as I can thanks guys

About the Author

wildernessoutfitters

wildernessoutfitters

From the lore of bushcraft to all things related to self-sustainability, the Pathfinder vision is to pass on the knowledge of outdoor self-reliance. Providing basic to advanced self-reliance training and survival gear, our goal is to offer both practical knowledge and survival gear that will stand the test of time. From emergency preparedness to sustainability, the Pathfinder way is to share and educate.

Here you can explore the world of survival knives, survival kits and simple tips on outdoor self-reliance. We are always learning and enjoy passing on the knowledge we acquire.

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