Sewing needles placed in needle nose visegrips work well. Place the needle in line with the jaws and use the end of your visegrips as your depth stop.

with's sodacan stove did you guys made ?
the cheap, dirty one ?
http://hometown.aol.com/walkingfire//halconstove.htm
or the good looking one ?
http://www.pcthiker.com/pages/gear/pepsistove.shtml

i made the halcon one... still have to test it yet..

I built mine using the Don Johnston plan. Another version that has an interesting twist to the windscreen that doubles as the pot stand can be found Here.

The nice thing about the "cheap & dirty" one is that it can be made with just a knife and single soda can, in about 10 minutes if you've built one before. Something to be said for being able to create something effective on-the-fly. I'm sure it's not as efficient as a photon stove, but it works, and can be made in the field easily.

http://hometown.aol.com/walkingfire//halconstove.htm

What fuel do you use? If you use methyl alcohol, I have a possible source for some of you to check into. I work at a school and the technolcgy is finally catching up. All the old duplicating machines used methyl alcohol for fluid. I grabbed about 5 gallons before they threw all of them away.

What happened to "Sterno" ? Is it still around ? It fired up without problems, came in a gel / can. Cheap too...M

i still seen them in store's and the web. i don't use them, though. they are like cooking with a soda can stove with a simmer ring on it, maybe a little beter, but i already think the soda can stove is a bit slow...

I was amazed at the performance of an alcohol stove compared to my white gas "jet engine" Optimus stove. I did several rather unscientific tests boiling 8 oz. of water in a titanium cook pot. Both stoves were allowed to reach maximum output before placing the pot on the burner.

The alcohol stove beat the white gas stove by 45 seconds. This particular stove was made by Dave Goodling. My attempt at making a stove was not as successful, taking over 4 minutes to boil a cup of water.

For those of you wanting a quality stove at a really good price Dave's URL is here.