Posted by Ashley Cawley
I would like to thank my friend Matt who kindly gave me the gift of a new kettle! I have been without one for sometime now having lost my old trusty kettle somewhere on the trail.
These past few weeks Matt and I, have had a habit of gift-giving; it first started with him giving me eggs, next I brought him road-kill pheasant 
then he sent me away with two fish (Pollock) & more eggs, then I gave him a book and then he gave me a kettle! 
The new kettle is a Optimus Terra Kettle and looks to be just what I was after. It's small & lightweight, at a glance & a feel you'd think it was Titanium but it is infact Anodised Aluminium, here's the info on it:
Lightweight anodised aluminium
0.7 L capacity
Weight: 153 g
Dimensions: 151 x 64 mm
Designed to fit inside Optimus Terra cookset.
Includes mesh bag
There's no whistle like my old kettle had, but then again that only ended up eventually popping off and going into the fire, so maybe it's for the best? I will put my new kettle through it's paces with hopefully many camps, when it's proven it's worth I'll report back here on the blog.
Thanks again Matt!
As you can see beneath the label this little bottle is a handy size, it's fairly durable & has a nice air-tight screw seal. In the photograph I have filled it with cotton-balls covered in Vasaline (Petroleum Jelly) for fire-lighting with a spark. I managed to fit over 10 cotton-balls into one bottle, bearing in mind you could easily start a fire with just one half of these cotton-balls, that means you've got tinder for over 20 fire's in something small that weighs just 24g.
