Handwarmers, S01E01: Performance MOD's and Use Tips
Channel: Mountain Parameters
Date: 2015-02-02

The aging liquid fuel hand warmer is very misunderstood. Many users damage the catalyst heads beyond redemption before they ever get a chance to use them. This would not happen if they had a clearer understanding of the principles that underlay hand warmer performance. This demonstration examines why that expensive hand warmer you thought was the best is in fact not, and looks at how to performance tune generic offshore liquid fuel hand warmers by replacing the cotton batting with carbon felt, and rebuilding the catalysts. It also compares the different styles of hand warmers, explains that you can indeed use naptha instead of expensive lighter fuel, and goes through invaluable tips on how to properly light and use hand warmers so that you do not damage them, thus ensuring many seasons of trouble free use (you'll see some tips in here that you've never seen anywhere else). If there were a Hand Warmer University, this would be Introduction to Liquid Fuel Hand Warmers 101 and Esoteric Hand Warmer Performance Tuning 400, all rolled into one.

New for winter 2016-2017, Carbon felt and catalyst rebuild kits.

One of the most often asked questions we've had since doing the above video, is where can I get some catalyst material. That has been a big problem until now, because you'd need to buy enough of it to rebuild thousands of hand warmers. And quite frankly, I don't expect to live that long. Finally we've been able to source some quality (made in the USA) platinum catalyst pads, and I underscore the word 'quality'. Until now, the best I've been able to do, is get replacement heads from China, and tear the material out of them to rebuilt heads from Zippo to Peacock. I noticed that the quality of the material looked rather sketchy. When I looked into it, I learned that a quality platinum catalyst material should contain 1% platinum. But, you can get other transition metal catalysts to use in building a hand warmer head such as iron ($59.00/Ton), vanadium($.02/g), nickel ($.01/g), and palladium ($24.05/g) that are cheaper than platinum at $29.27/g*. So we've send some Chinese catalyst material off to the lab for testing, and will post the results here when they come in. The problem with those is multifactorial. They do not live as long on the substrate material, and the core temperature of 1200 that the platinum can achieve is not realized. (What do you think is in the Chinese catalyst material?)

When we placed some of the new catalyst material into a hand warmer head, and used about 3x as much as was previously packed into the head, it was too hot to touch unless oxygen restricted in a carry pouch. So it would seem, real platinum catalyst does make a difference, and you can fine tune your head to meet your individual needs.

* Spot market prices at time of writing.

My plan for this winter is to produce an updated version of this video to test the better platinum catalyst along with carbon felt packing the reservoir.

Oh.. BTW, I sometimes get asked why not the electric hand warmers? A: There are 10 millon Joules in an ounce of fuel, there are 10 thousand Joules in a AA battery (that weighs .8 of an ounce).

Music: Google Free