cant get ion stove to stay lit

[Derek Cox]

i am having some difficulties using my newly purchased ion stove. it seems whenever i put the pot on the supports that the flame simply extinguishes. usually i light it, try to put the pot on, the flame goes out, i repeat until sometimes it will remain on or i give up. i have tried letting it warm up until the flame looked a decent size, but even that does not always work. any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Ryan Jordan]

Derek, are you using the pot support that comes with it? You don't want to be placing the pot directly on the stove chamber.

[Derek Cox]

i am using the tipod or whatever it is called, yes. the 3 pieces that form a support for the pot. i believe i followed the directions correctly when assembling it, although the pictures on the website appear to have different slits cut into the pieces. in the products section of this website, where i purchased the stove from, the legs appear to have two notches in the longer end, on either edge, and cross over eachother to form the support. the legs i have though each have a notch under the "leg" part and then towards the end of the longer part. in the directions it says to "place the stove in the tipod with the legs sticking up in the air". this is not how it appears online either, making me think that possibly a different version was produced…

[john flanagan]

Another possibilty is that you need to let the alcohol heat up before putting the pot on. Believe it or not. I've never used the Ion, but I think that its universally true that alcohol stoves perform best if the fuel is "preheated". Just as a simple experiment, put the fueled up stove on a piece of aluminum foil and dribble just a few drops of alchol on the foil. Lite that "primer" and let it burn off before putting the pot on. Generally the priming flame lights the stove – no need for another match.

[Ryan Jordan]

Derek – see Ion Stove Website. Does your setup look like the one on the home page? the "legs" should not stick up into the air…if you have the stand upside down you'll quench the flame because the pot will be too close to the stove.

[Richard Scruggs]

Ryan,

I may be wrong, but Derek may have received a stove from BPL that's a different (perhaps an older?) version of the ION stove made by Sgt. Rock. From Derek's description, his stove sounds an ION version that I received from BPL instead of the one shown on BPL's website. The stove itself looked different than the one on BPL's website. But the main difference was the design of the stand, which was a HUGELY different version.

In an effort to resolve the problem, I sent some emails to Addie with photos of the stove I received. However, BPL didn't have a supply of the correct stands, and referred me to Sgt. Rock since BPL believed that he had put the wrong stove in the box/sack. That sounded likely since the stove and stand that I received looked entirely unlike the ION stove & stand shown on the brocure that came them.

When I contacted him about the issue, Sgt. Rock was ready and more than happy to help resolve the issue by sending me the correct version, but suggested I wait for an even newer version to come out once he returned from duty. But I decided to use the earlier version stove and stand as sent to me by BPL, and found that the old ION setup works OK with the stand oriented with the legs pointing down to the ground (rather than pointed up, as the directions clearly and incorrectly suggest).

If BPL does have a newer version of the ION stove and stand in stock, would sure like try it out sometime to see if it works better than the old version.

JRS

[Derek Cox]

i think richard is probably close to right. the stove looks the same as the one on the ion website(minus the fact that its not blue as some of the pictures are) and also the same as on BPL. however the stand i received is very different than the one on both websites. my stand does not have notches in the same place and therefore cannot be set up in the same fashion.

btw – im not sure who does the directions, whether its sgt rock or BPL, but they definitely say with the legs pointing up.

[Ernest Engman]

Howdy,

Right before I deployed to Iraq I made a slight change to the Tipod design to reduce the amount of material interacting with the flame in a move to have a better flame pattern and less heat absorbed into the stand. I had some good results from the stand and some good feedback from users trying it. What you are probably seeing is this changed stand. Since this happend right before I deployed to Iraq, I didn't get a chance to make a new set of instructions. Sorry about that…

To put the stand together, you link the sides together and then fit them around the stove body itself. Here is a link to a picture of an example of how that should look:
http://hikinghq.net/osCommerce/catalog/popup_image.php?pID=40

and another close up image:
http://hikinghq.net/images/ion/stovewithstand.JPG

If this isn't enough detail, here is another with the flame going so you can get an idea of what it looks like:
http://hikinghq.net/images/ion/DSC00037a.jpg

As to your next issue with staying lit. Something to look at may be air flow. Some folks are reporting that their windscreens are not allowing enough air flow after trimming them. I plan to include more air holes in the screens in the future runs.

[Ernest Engman]

Sorry, on that last point – to get better performance you may want to go ahead and add some air holes to the windscreen.

BTW, I am SGT Rock ;)

If it continues to give you problems let me know. I hate for anyone to feel like they got a bad deal.

[Derek Cox]

thank you very much. this is indeed how mine looks and i will try this out. much appreciated.

-Derek

[Author]

Posts