I think most people are in agreement that the pot attachment system on Jetboils is rather cheesy. I'm looking for good reasons to not remove the two bumps on the base that engage the cup.
It seems that the limit of stability with the Jetboil is the interface between the bottom of the canister and the ground, not the interface between stove and cup (no one here is carrying the little tripod thing, right?) To get a feel for this, I filled the cup on my Sol Ti with two cups of water and set it on the stove, being careful to not rotate the cup and leave the attachment system as disengaged as possible, and then I tilted the entire setup over slowly. Even with a larger, more stable canister attached, the entire rig would start to tip over before the cup began to unseat from the stove base. I had to hold the canister/stove and increase the tilt angle beyond the tipping point to get the cup to begin to unseat. Even when holding the base and shaking it side to side, it took a lot of motion to unseat the cup.
And it makes sense that just by having a base that comes up around the side of the cup a bit, the security of the cup is greatly improved vs. most setups simply because the cup can't slide off to one side.
It would be nice to just be able to set the cup down on the base without having to worry about orientation or having to twist the hot cup full of hot water off of the base when you are ready to pour (I've heard that this can be a real problem with the Al versions; I can't say if removing the bumps would help in that case, though it might). Can anyone present a good arguement for not grinding off the locking bumps on the base? I can come up with:
-You can relocate the entire system by picking it up by the cup if the cup and base are locked together. It feels like I have probably done this a few times, though not while the stove was lit I hope.
-If the entire stove is knocked over, it is nice that the flame is somewhat contained by the cup staying locked on. On the other hand, if you don't get the stove turned off right away, your pot without water in it might quickly overheat and get damaged.
-If you cook in the jetboil cup, it might be good to have the cup locked to the base. I've never tried to cook in the Jetboil, but it seems that if you were trying to stir something, you would do best to hold the cup steady anyway, because once again the entire setup is rather tippy anyway.
-Maybe with a Jetboil pan or Sumo it would be different; maybe someone with these attachments can comment. It seems unlikely that I will ever use these.
-Warranty, pffft.
Any other reasons you can think of?
P.S. Yes, worrying about minutiae like this is a sure symptom of not getting enough actual trail time.
