Canadian vs American camping propane cylinders

with a car camping stove so no adaptor both US and Canadian cylinders work fine.

im not sure if the 1lb cylinders have this but in Canada the 20lb cylinders have safety valves that if you open the valve without any back pressure it shuts the cylinder.

Otherwise I can’t think of anything that could be dofferent and have never ran into the problem myself over quite a few trips into the US

US 20 pound cylinders are the same – shutoff valve if the line breaks so there’s no back pressure

I have a weed flamer that connects directly to 20 pound cylinder.  There’s no regulator.  You have to open the cylinder valve slowly or the shutoff valve will trip.  Pressure gradually builds up in the flamer hose.

I’m pretty sure the cylinder looked like the one below, it’s a photo from a Canadian supplier.  Since the general opinion is that there is no difference, either the cylinder really was bad, my adapter is bad but works on some cylinders, or I was spaced-out up there in Canada.

I’ve used a number of Canadian-purchased cylinders with a couple of backpacking stoves with no problem.  Over the course of about 34 years using these cylinders I have come across 2 or maybe 3 bad cylinders.  Two of them were clearly full, and no fuel would come out.  One cylinder worked while the stove was on it, and failed to close once I took off the stove.  Nothing I could do would stop the propane from coming out, so I had to let it vent safely.  I’ve used a couple of the adapters before, and have had much less luck with them. Sometimes they function on one bottle and not on another, while a stove directly hooked up to the bottle would work.

I had a butane canister that wouldn’t close.  I just left the stove on until it was empty.