>>It seems to me that I've read about some toxicity issues when cooking in untinned copper. Don't know if that would apply to a boiler since there's probably nothing for the copper to react with. OTOH if you're trying to purify water in the field that has a high mineral content then it might be a concern.<<

Personally, I wouldn't be concerned. There is a concern about long-term exposure to reactive (acidic, mostly) foods cooked in copper... among other things, you can get minute amounts of arsenic. However, if you search, say, ebay for "copper kettle" you'll get hundreds of hits.. they've been in constant use for centuries, and are stil made (I think Revere Ware whistling kettles still have copper bottoms. You can't beat it for conveying heat). When you think about it, it's not much different than copper pipes coming from a water heater...

The minerals in the water actually tend to form scale in pipes and especially in a boiler, that actually isolate the water from the copper, so if the copper were a hazard, the minerals would be a good thing.

But then, I think toxicity of common metals is overhyped anyway. Entire generations survived somehow with dental fillings made of metals that might, in this day and age, provoke building evacuations. We've gone from being probably too casual about it, to hysterical overreaction. I've seen mothers snatch children away because there was a chance they would touch something made of lead... a couple of generations ago, it was what our pipes were made of.

As for the bail verses the handles, I'm not sure. It's really not hard to pick up the kettle by the bail without putting your hand over it- and it looks like those handles have real potential to be knuckle-burners. That copper with boiling water inside looks awfully close to fingers... but not having handled one, I can't really know.

I actually might be persuaded to try this one, though. The design of the cooking ring and base, used with or without the kettle in between, seems to me likely to be much more efficient than the Kelly Kettle's add-on auxiliary cooking arrangement. Whereas that doesn't work at the same time as boling water, this one does both at once, with the same fuel- and where that is reduced to a fire-in-a-pot with a grill, with no chimney effect at all for cooking, this one actually looks pretty efficient even without the kettle.