Fuel canisters specific to stoves

[AK Granola]

I use an MSR Windburner and love it. I have always purchased the MSR canisters to use with it, but recently my local shop was out and I bought a Snow Peak canister. It worked ok, but twice I had to tighten the stove on the canister because the canister was leaking extra gas below the burner, a little scary. I’ve never had that with the MSR canisters.

Is this likely user error, or is there actually enough difference in the canisters that i should try to stick with MSR brand?

[Scott Smith]

Well.  Anecdotally, I’ve used jet boil cans, on my Reactor, with zero problems

Could  have just been a bad can (?)

[Scott H]

Somebody else can speak to this better than I can, but I thought that all the screw on cans in the U.S. were on a common standard.  We were using jet boil on a recent trip and i think we had a mix of Coleman big canisters  and jet boil branded small canisters.  But in the end i thought jet boil, msr, soto, and the like use the same threading for the canister stoves.

[Jon Fong / Flat Cat Gear]

Roger can chime in but they should all be basically the same with one exception:Coleman.  Here is a Hikin’ Jim article  about that

https://adventuresinstoving.blogspot.com/2017/03/coleman-canister-gas-caution.html?m=1

 

[Roger Caffin]

Yeah, they are all meant to conform to a single Standard.
But you know how that goes: who enforces the Standard?

Lots of companies make the canister body. It used to be that all of them bought the valve at the top from the Lindal Group. That ensured that all screw-thread canisters have a 7/16″ ENF thread. That is Standard.

What is not ‘common’ or standard is the plug inside the screw thread nipple: there are variants. Personally, I think Lindal made a mistake in permitting this.

This has lead to variations in the distance from the top of the nipple to the top of the plug (red). In turn, this means that the length of the pin (blue line below) needed to depress the plug (ie open the valve) varies. Some companies have gone one way in length while others have gone the other way.

(taken from our article on Lindal valves at https://backpackinglight.com/lindal-valves-caffin/)

Whether some of the Chinese canisters use a genuine Lindal valve insert, or whether they now make their own: I do not know. Have the patents expired? Trouble there is that a lot of ‘Western brand names’ source their canisters from China these days (with increased dirt content).

What you have to do is to screw the stove on quickly while holding the lot upright. There may be a hiss as some gas escapes in the process. In that case you have to screw the stove on a bit harder, to make the O-ring seal. If there is still no gas coming out, perhaps the canister is empty? If not, you can try screwing down a bit more. Eventually the thread on the stove gets ripped off, so it no longer works.

I find this variation damn annoying. I had to make the canister connector on my Winter Stoves able to handle a wide range of canister nipples to overcome this. It does work.

Cheers

[Brad W]

I have never had an issue with a stove/fuel cannister as far as matching any brands. I did have a dud fuel can that multiple stoves could not get fuel out of but that is 1 out of 250+ cans?

[Jerry Adams]

I had a dud fuel can that valve wouldn’t close when the stove was unscrewed.  I just left the stove on until the canister was used up.

I had a stove that worked fine, except if I left it screwed onto canister overnight, and it was really cold, some metal shrank which caused the canister to leak all it’s contents.  That was annoying because I couldn’t heat up my breakfast in the morning.

 

[Brad Rogers]

I figured they were pretty much all made by the same company on Korea.   I think Snow Peak used to make their own in Japan, and MSR was unique because their canister size was different, but nowadays I thought they were all the same.

[Jerry Adams]

yeah, same here, examining canisters in detail, they used to be different between manufacturers.  The color of the bottom.  The pattern of lines on the bottom.  other details

Now, it seems like they’re all the same.  There must be some factory in South Korea that has advantage of scale

I’ve only looked at a few though

[Dan]

I have never paid attention to the brand of the canister, and as a result I’ve used a variety of canisters with a few different stoves (both major name brands, and those cheap tiny no-name stoves probably made in China), and never noticed any difference. Maybe you had a defective canister?

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