I am amazed there is another "Kelly" out there. The Thermette is sold locally for me, so I may check it out sometime. I would be curious about the copper version, but overall I think that I like the Storm or Kelly configuration a bit better.

Once you pick up a Kelly like a bucket with it burning you very quickly discover a better way. The bail is heavy wire so that you can actually pick up the kettle with the bail horizontal to the chimney until you swing iy away from the fire pan. This is easy to do, but if you do not, you will never forget this lesson.

Hope that the Popular works PresumedLost. I think I am adding the largest Storm to my Christmas list, but I may change this after seeing the Thermette. I want one for my home kit.

My chimney is black from burning wood or cones. I am not sure it increased the boiling efficiency, but next time I am using it I will precisely time it. Using this indoors now would probably scent up the kitchen a might.....not a bad thing altogether really.

There do seem to be a lot of these things around, all hiding in semi-obscurity.

I admit to being intrigued by the Thermette myself, but there are certainly some disadvantages to the design....

If you look closely at the photos, you'll see that there's no bottom on the fire chamber. It's just a ring. Maybe that's just as well, that there's no pretense of protecting what's underneath from heat... but leaving fire scars is generally unacceptable to me.

Then there's the fact that the base clearly doesn't "nest" in the bottom of the kettle the way the Kelly and the Storm do, which means extra bulk. Ditto for the cooking ring. Then there's the weight...

On the other hand, it looks like something that would be great fun to play around with. :-) I'm intrigued by the versatility, and by the possibility of boiling and cooking at once, and shifting to cooking alone on the fly once the water boils.

Tempting to think of combining the best features of each of these designs into one, though.

After Isobel passed through, the yard was so covered in tree debris that you couldn't see the ground (we have a LOT of tall trees around the house- too close for comfort in a large storm).
In more trying circumstances, that's a LOT of potential fuel for cooking or water purifying.

I tried to fire up the Storm Popular on Sunday, but I tried it inside with one of those 2.5 oz Sterno cans... figured I'd get a baseline with a clean fuel before maybe clocking a boil again after blackening the inside, one way or another. Didn't work out- Sterno puts out so little heat that 45 minutes later the fuel was gone and the quart of water never did boil. I don't consider that a reflection on the qualities of the kettle, just the weakness of Sterno for cooking, which I've experienced a few times before. I'm sure the Storm will do fine, given decent fuel and a little "seasoning".

Good catch on the fire"pan". I have not studied the thermette site enough to see all the differences. The wire handle on the side looked less than perfect, but the Kelly or Storm bail and chain lifter are strange too.

I burned my splitting stump with the firepan (see photos) but at least the full base allows burning on mineral soil or rock without scarring. The storage feature is also a must in my view.

I like the larger fill hole of the Kelly design also, but this does pose a splash hazard that I learned with mine. I was down blowing through the firepan holes to really accelerate the burn (for photo purposes not really needed) and the spout was pointing in that direction....splashed boiling water on my cheek. Now I point the spout opposite the holes, but mostly blowing is not needed unless you use really green wood or have fed the chimney with too much fuel at once.

I keep the fill to 20 oz (600ml) on mine or the extra boiling water splashes out.

If I get over to Bellevue to look at the thermette I will try and give some feedback here. My guess is that I will get the large Storm from Lehman's or direct from the UK though.

The one pint is not bad for backpacking, more bulky than a cup and little alcohol or esbit stove though. But unlimited fuel is an attractive feature if all you need is hot water.

While it's fascinating to see yet another variation on the theme, I see the market for the Thermette as somewhat different than that for the Kelly and Storm kettles. With the extra bulk and weight, I think backpacking use is pretty much ruled out. This is a car-camping stove, or a home/cabin/disaster/survival stove, maybe in somewhat the same niche as the 18-lb "Volcano" stove that claims to cook for a family of 5 for a year on 300 lb of charcoal brickettes (or "briquettes", if you prefer, though I've never seen a building made of "briques").

The lack of a bottom would seem to be a drawback, but maybe if you routinely car-camp in areas with fire pits, it's easier just to pick it up and leave the ashes behind than it is to clean out a pan.. and it's probably still a much faster way to get morning coffee and/or tea than building a big fire. The lack of a bottom, and of a top "flare" on the fire chamber might have one other advantage- it means that it's much less likely to slosh or boil over and douse it's own fire.

For a long-term stay-at-home survival scenario, say a prolonged depression, or full wartime, I can certainly see a use for this. There's no shortage of tree debris in our area for fuel (I pay a company now to haul it away periodically), and long-term water purification would use a LOT of fuel. You could stand the Thermette up in the Weber grill, for that matter, and have a semi-permanent operation going on the back deck. For portability, where 95 percent of the use is for boling water (for freeze-dried foods, or to heat MREs, or whatever), the Kelly and Storm are clearly superior.. but in a truly long-haul scenario, the cooking versatility of the Thermette would come into it's own.

On the other hand, a small aperture on a copper boler brings another possibility to mind- it would be relatively easy to connect that small outlet to a condenser. This very efficient, copper boiler could pretty easily become the basis for a mini-still. :-)

I finally got a chance to give the "Storm" "Popular" version of the Kelly Kettle an honest try.

I carefully masked the thing off and painted the inside of the chimney area with black stove paint- which I think was a total waste. After boiling 3 quarts, the inside is just as black in the areas that were masked as the areas that were painted- can't tell the difference.

I boiled 3 quarts in rapid succession, pouring out the first two and making green tea from the third. All three were very fast, and I can see how people get very fond of these things- it didn't take more than a handful of pencil-thin twigs and five minutes to boil a quart. This has the refined feel of a design that evolved over time, it all just works very well. I especially like the ability to feed the fire just by dropping stuff into the chimney- this let me use acorns, small pine cones etc. that would be difficult to feed though a hole in the side without getting burned.

It does tend to douse itself when it boils over, but that's not all bad. Looks like you could travel a long way with this, using practically anything as fuel, and with a few Esbit tabs as backup, be covered for all eventualities except possibly for long periods in desert, or above timberline. For a fair weight comparison, you should be comparing it to pot/kettle, stove, plus any special fuel you'd be carrying otherwise.

I'm more convinced than before that the optional cook kit for the larger version of the Kelly Kettle is dubious, though- it's clear that a LOT of the efficiency of this device is because of the draft from the chimney effect.

The "Thermette" is supposed to arrive Monday.

It's very tempting to come up with a design combining the best features of each- but I don't know how you'd get one made.