Lightweight canister for lightweight stove

I have also used the "Asian" A4 bayonet style canister with a convential remote canister stove by using the Kovea adapter. These canisters are light, cheap, widely available in many parts of the world and ideal for summer use. However the adapter weighs 30g.

Roger – I think there is an opportunity here for a universal canister connector mated to a (more conventional?) remote stove, thereby creating a "world" stove. That would be the distinguishing feature to create a unique product. Just my 2c.

The parts used are in the following picture. What is most important is the gasket (bottom right). I used a cylindrical rubber gasket I found at a local store. It is 4 mm thick, what is just enough to seal with the recessed valve. It's OD matches well the grove for the original o-ring in the connector, but it is too large to fit outside of the grove. That's why I cut the edges as seen in the photo. The lower part now fits the groove perfectly. A plastic washer with larger hole (bottom left) replaces the original one. Both brass pins shown in the photo work with the canister. With the shorter one (top left), it is necessary to turn the valve lever all the way to the canister, what is possible only when it is aligned with the notch in the collar of the canister. A bit longer pin (top right) works better, but the lever can not be rotated all the way around.

"You mean, something like this?"

Roger, I was thinking of the small Ronson butane cans, not the standard ones like you show.

Also, this photo shows three feet on the Hank Roberts Mini Stove, and mine is certainly nothing like that. Mine has a bottom shaped much like the top.

This was state of the art stuff prior to about thirty years ago.

–B.G.–

I want someone to rip out the tip of a Ronson canister and see if it then will work with Roger's stove.

Start taking video first in case anything entertaining happens.

>"Also, this photo shows three feet on the Hank Roberts Mini Stove, "

I've had both styles. The one in Roger's photo with three multi-colored legs and another with a gold-anodized base that, yes, was much like the windshield that surrounds the burner. In the later model, all the bits store between the two halves in a disk about an inch thick.

Pretty light weight, smallish size, quick-lighting, and unlike Bluet you could make and break the connection to the canister. Definitely a precursor of what's emerged as the default canister stoves of today.

"unlike Bluet you could make and break the connection to the canister."

Yes, but you didn't want to do that while the burner was aflame.

–B.G.–

Did someone say “Hank Roberts”? A very nice stove. :)

Someone rigged up an adapter for modern canisters for me.

It works quite well.

HJ
Adventures In Stoving

Hi Stuart

> a universal canister connector mated to a (more conventional?) remote stove,
> thereby creating a "world" stove.
Universal canister connector? How about connection to screw thread plus Campingaz plus Powermax? Tick. Granted, the Powermax is now off the market (although some of us still have large stocks …), but what other butane/propane formats are there today?

What mine does not handle are the plain butane canisters. This is entirely intentional as it is meant to be a UL winter stove. However, Jan Rezac is working on that … :-)

Hum – I guess mine does not handle a large LPG (propane) cylinder. True.

Do we want to get into the 'summer remote stove with butane canister' market? Seems to me that a lighter solution to that problem is an FMS-300T mounted on top of either a screw-thread canister or a Campingaz canister with a commercially available adapter. A separate adapter for a bayonet canister is probably commercially available already: all you need is a very light foil radiation baffle to protect the butane canister.

Or am I missing something here?

Cheers

Hi Jan

Looking at the brass bits – turned on a lathe?

If you have access to a lathe, did you know that you can actually turn the rubber washers? Yes, it works. You would need a mandrel, or rod through the middle, of course. maybe a small bolt of the right size with a nut. A very sharp edge on the lathe tool is needed too. It should make a much neater finish than the hand cut version you have in the photo.

Cheers

Roger,
I don't have a lathe, I turned the brass parts using a drill press and a file. It works quite well. Previously, I made such parts even at home, using a cordless hand drill.

I very much like the concept of a universal stove for use in all seasons which can utilise most commercially available canisters (except pierceable). I really don't like canister-top stoves, because of: fractionating of the fuel, evaporative cooling of the fuel and the heavy squat canisters. To use a FMS-300T with a Campingaz canister you need the Edelrid adaptor which has a listed weight of 75g!

A remote canister stove with a universal connector at sub-100g is lighter than a canister-top stove plus adapter and has virtually no weight penalty when you factor in the weight of alternative canisters that can be used with a remote stove.

Your stove is very close to this with the ability to connect to screw thread plus Campingaz canisters, and Jan has shown that with a few alternative parts the A4 bayonet style canister can also be used. Although these canisters contain 95% butane, they can easily be kept warm when connected to a remote stove, they are inexpensive and I am told that they are the most widely available canister in much of Asia.

I am thinking beyond the folks here on BPL who go for a one week hike in the mountains, I am thinking more of those who hike or cycle tour or travel for months at a time crossing several countries, who want a stove that will use whatever fuel is available and have traditionally used a heavy multi-fuel stove for that reason, but who may consider a light-weight multi-canister stove instead.

Hi Stuart

> want a stove that will use whatever fuel is available
Hum, well, we will have to skip alcohol and petrol/kero variants for a start.
I have covered screw thread and Campingaz, so what is missing? As far as I can see, the only other realistic one is the bayonet canister. or am I missing another one?

Cheers

I am ignoring pierceable canisters; although widely available there is a heavy adapter to convert them to screw thread, so that leaves the A4 bayonet style canister (with the notched rim and internal pickup) as the other widely available canister.
Unless some of our other international contributors have other suggestions?

Camping Gaz, screw threaded (“Epi gas”), and bayonet are the big three. As mentioned, I’ve seen an awful lot of the bayonet type in Asia (Japan and Korea, specifically). Adding the ability to pick up the bayonet type would be nice. Perhaps all it takes is just a couple of easily swapped alternate parts.

Puncture canisters are to be avoided I think.

I don’t have a sense of the availability of the cigarette lighter type canisters (like the one Jan featured).

HJ
Adventures In Stoving

They did their best to make the bayonet connection as INcompatible as possible with the others. I will have to think about this one.

Cheers

I received one of Roger's stoves and after verifying it works well with a standard butane canister I quickly modified it to run on the butane lighter refill canisters usimg Jan's second alternative listed in the OP (ie I removed the brass actuator pin and plastic waster from the connector and cut the end shoulder off of the canister's nozzle).

This works great! I have found three different sizes of lighter refill cans:

Clever Name – Fuel/total(%fuel)
1)Weekender – 42/67g(63%)
2)Maybeweek – 77/111g(70%)
3)Week+some – 165/214g(77%)

I have been able to find the smaller sizes at 3/4's of gas stations I've been in lately. Small and mid sizes in Walmart and the largest in my local grocery store (Kroger's). Brand is labeled either zippo or ronson (apparently one and the same). Another important note is these are all isobutane. So stove should operate into the teens (F)/and I suspect lower as the canister would be easy to warm by hand while in use.

Thanks Jan for the idea and, of course, Roger C for the fantastic stove.

Hi James

I would love to have more techie details about this, please! Yes, iso-butane should be very usable.

I imagine that the critical part is how long to cut the plastic tube? Details? How did you determine this?

How does this affect the sealing at the connector? Can you still get a seal against the fat O-ring?

Emaiol to me would be appreciated, as I will be off the air for almost 2 months from this evening – another long European walk.

Cheers
roger@backpackinglight.com

Edit: the more I look at this, the more realistic it looks. I was initially not interested because those 'butane' canisters in Australia are all n-butane (0 C BP), but if you can get ISO-butane canisters like that … yeah! I suspect that the simplest solution will be to remove ~1 mm of the plastic tube from the canister and to remove the brass pin and the clear plastic washer from the canister connector. I think so – but not tested for safety yet!
Roger

Bumping this slightly vintage (but awesome!) thread to say that I have successfully used the method described by Jan and James to fuel my Caffin V1. I removed the brass pin and clear washer from the canister connector. Trimmed the bayonet on the Zippo isobutane canister to 14mm and wrapped it with a few turns of electrical tape. There is just enough thread on the connector to seal up this canister (when tightened down it is probably a 1/2 turn from the top.) When engaging the wire handle for the canister connector it stops at about 150 degrees (not fully in the down position) so the bayonet could probably be trimmed a bit more. As-is the canister is sealing well and the stove runs great! Time to get it out in the field for some testing.