Stove User Errors

[Jon Fong / Flat Cat Gear]

I glad that you think that the BRS 3000T is rock solid and most people on this site may agree with you (HYOH).  That being said, people who visit this site are not your average purchasers of the BRS 3000T.  With respect of the average user, here is the satifaction rating from Amazon.  With 308 reviews, that’s a pretty good sample size.

Clearly 99% of the people are not fully satified, more like 17% are neutral to negative.  As I said, common sense isn’t.  You found the instructions useful, however; a vast majority of the population will not go to Alibaba and then translate the instruction,

I can see how Hikin’ Jim could give this a negative review as people use his site as a source of information.  I think that the 17% neutral to negative review back up his position.

If the BRS 3000T were my product, I would be taking action to address the concerns and would not attribute problems to user errors.  My 2 cents.

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

HikinJim said:

Disclosures
I purchased this stove with my own money on Amazon just like anyone else would. I have no financial relationships with either BRS or Amazon. If I did, I might be giving a much nicer review, don’t you think? I am an independent stove reviewer. This is my review; it is no one else’s.
Posted by Hikin’ Jim at 11:19 PM

Evidently the negative review was because BRS did not furnish the stove or allow him to have “affiliate” links. As we can see above he said: ” I have no financial relationships with either BRS or Amazon. If I did, I might be giving a much nicer review, don’t you think?”

He also solicits stoves for reviews as shown here:

Your Gear Here?
Would you like to see your gear featured here on Adventures In Stoving? Great! I’d like to test it. Cottage gear, major manufacturer, it doesn’t matter, so long as it’s a stove or stove related.

Basically, I’m interested in any stove that can be used for backpacking. I’m also interested in directly related products like windscreens, heat diffusers, lighters, fuel bottles, adapters, pot stands, fuels, etc. Occasionally, I will feature cookware, although at present that is not part of my focus.

Please contact me at hikin dot jim3 at gmail dot com, and let’s talk.

HJ

My bad, 99% too high I should have said 4 1/2 stars out of 5 was the “majority” like the BRS.

Hikin Jim made major mistakes/ “User Errors” and influenced his readers to follow in his footsteps. He used too large of pot on a non level surface. After putting his food into it and placing the lid on he caused the pot to shift a small amount and topple over and bent the pot support. He made errors and blamed the stove manufacture.

 

 

[Franco Darioli]

Are there many examples on Amazon of stoves that have a much higher than 70% 5 star rating ?

[Jon Fong / Flat Cat Gear]

Soto WindMaster – 89% 5 Star

https://www.amazon.com/WindMaster-Stove-Micro-Regulator-4Flex/dp/B00M1V86WK/ref=sr_1_38?dchild=1&keywords=backpacking+stove+canister&qid=1573166702&sr=8-38#customerReviews

Pocket Rocket – 81% 5 stars

https://www.amazon.com/MSR-PocketRocket-Ultralight-Backpacking-Camping/dp/B01N5O7551/ref=sr_1_15?dchild=1&keywords=backpacking+stove&qid=1573166495&sr=8-15

Etekcity – 77% 5 Star

https://www.amazon.com/Etekcity-Ultralight-Backpacking-Emergency-Earthquake/dp/B00ZA39W6U/ref=sr_1_27?dchild=1&keywords=backpacking+stove+canister&qid=1573166702&sr=8-27#customerReviews

 
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[Jerry Adams]

Anecdotally, people have reported failures with this stove, maybe 10% of the time.  So, there’s a 90% chance you’ll get a good one.

Are all BRS 3000s made by the same company?  Or are there different groups that make a similar stove.  So, it’s not a patented, copyrighted stove but more like an open source design?

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

Here is how HikinJim grades stoves of different weights:
Upright Canister Gas Stove
“Weight Classes”
(Less Than or Equal To)
Heavy 4+oz/113+grams
Moderate 4oz/<113grams
Light <3oz/< 85grams
Ultralight (UL) < 2oz/ < 57grams
Super Ultralight (SUL)< 1oz/< 28grams

He says:

Upright canister stoves today weigh as little as 25 grams – less than one ounce! There are five commercially available stoves that weigh less than two ounces.

Given the light weight of stoves available today, it’s reasonable to insist on that a stove be truly light in order for it to belong to the class of “ultralight” and to be even more demanding of weight savings for a stove to earn the title “super ultralight.”

We give meaning to terms like “light” and “ultralight” by categorizing stoves relative to one another.
Here then are four examples:
Top row, right: MSR Pocket Rocket, 3.1 oz (Midweight)
Top row, left: MSR Pocket Rocket 2, 2.6 oz (Light)
Bottom Row, left: FMS-116T (“Gnat”), 1.7 oz (Ultralight)
Bottom Row, right: BRS-3000T, 0.9 oz, (Super Ultralight)

We have to ask:  why did he abuse such a small Super Ultralight stove?

He just made an honest mistake or “user error”

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

Things we’ve learned from Jon this week:

“The very first thing to understand about products that are sold to the public is “the hardest thing to do in the world is to educate a customer”

“the BRS 3000T is an OK stove”

“Now with respect to Ryan, it’s not his job to educate the customer”

“common sense isn’t”

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

“Now with respect to Ryan, it’s not his job to educate the customer”

Oh My!!! pray tell….what does he do with all the podcasts, webinars,  reviews and editors’ rountable and let’s not forget the “stove bench” thingy

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

Alright, let’s start this cold day off with a warm video of a BRS3000t being pushed to the limits/or shall we say breaking point:

[Nick Gatel]

Dan,

Why all the negativity towards Hikin Jim?

A couple years ago I spent an afternoon with him at a campsite. He is one of the nicest persons you could ever meet. All the people I know who have meet him have nothing but good things to say about Jim. He is a true gentlemen.

That day we spent a couple hours talking about stoves and he is truly a subject matter expert.

Now, let’s talk about affiliate ads. Jim does NOT use  affiliate ads on his blog as you infer. He has ads, but not affiliate ads. There is a difference. He uses ads by Google Adsense and Google determines which ads are placed, not Jim. Jim does not receive a commission from any sale derived from clicking on an ad, but he does get a fee every time an ad is clicked. Jim barely makes enough money via ads to pay the costs to run his blog, which is NOT a business, but a hobby — he collects stoves, like I collect postage stamps. There is no incentive for him to write a positive product review if someone gives him a stove because he already has a huge collection of stoves.

The FTC has rules for advertising on blogs, and disclaimers are necessary. Jim has disclaimers stating his site has ads and that he does not receive any income for reviewing a particular stove. If he is given a stove for review, he states that. He probably should have a privacy notice that his site uses cookies (through Google Adsense), but that is a EU requirement, not a US regulation.

Regarding “user errors” by Jim. They don’t happen. However, he often will use an oversized pot, etc. to see what will happen, because the “average Joe” will use such a pot. This is a good thing, because he can warn people of the limitations of a stove.

[Gary Dunckel]

Nick, I agree that Hikin’ Jim is a good and decent man. What isn’t clear is how high a flame setting did he use during his tests. My feeling is that having a high setting, using a titanium pot, quite a bit of heat can bounce back down to the stove’s supports. A large diameter pot, with more water weight, can enhance this effect.

My own technique is to boil 2 cups (~500 cc) of water with the flame setting between 1/2 and 1/3 of maximum. I usually use a Jetboil Sol cup with a pot riser disk (“thingy”). The only problem I’ve ever had was when my pal fired up the stove at a maximum flame. We were using a titanium Sol cup, and one of the pot supports bent significantly. I’m guessing that a titanium cup could reflect more heat back down to the stove than would an aluminum Sol cup. Fortunately I carried a spare BRS 3000T, so there was no real inconvenience. I’ve yet to try to duplicate the problem at home on my patio.

So for now, I am thinking the problem with this stove relates to what we might call ‘user error’.

[Jerry Adams]

That was a good test.  If you go flat out heating a lot of water, consuming a full 110 g canister, it doesn’t fail.

I think like he said, the problem is there are quality problems and some units have problems.  If you test your stove and it works once, boiling a pint of water or whatever, then it’s probably good.

Although I can see the logic of just not screwing with this.  Not enough weight savings to risk a failure in the field.  Maybe BRS3000ts fail more in the field.  You’d need to buy maybe 20 units at different times to make sure it’s not just a specific batch that has problems.

I like my Soto Windmaster.  Plus the piezo lighter is nice, hasn’t failed in a couple years of use.  If it’s windy, it’s tricky to light the stove, then put the stove on top before it blows out.  I’m testing a MSR Pocket Rocket Deluxe which seems to be a knockoff of the Windmaster, so far so good.

$5 for a 110 g canister????  Cheap butane would cost $0.63.  Plus $3 for the adaptor.  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QH138T7/ref=dp_cerb_2  They say to have the cartridge on the top, but then you won’t get all the butane out of it, you have to hold it sideways with the notch down to get all the butane out.  The directions say to use the cartridge with the notch up so gas comes out, we have to do the opposite of the instructions.

[Jerry Adams]

+1 Nick

I’ve never met Jim but he has excellent information about stoves.  He does a fair amount of work and I’m sure doesn’t make anything off of it, or not enough to pay back the effort he’s done.

If he puts out test results, then it will be possible for people to criticize.  If you don’t like criticism, then don’t say anything.  Especially when feedback is so easy on the internet.

[Matthew / BPL]

I’m going to jump in here with Nick, Gary and Jerry. Jim is an extremely helpful and kind person. I’ve not met him in real life but I’ve interacted with him on the JMT Facebook Group over the years. He has been generous with his time and answered my questions thoughtfully and thoroughly on several occasions.

I don’t understand why the topic of stoves gets so incendiary. (pun intended)

From the Forum Guidelines:

4. Don’t gossip, defame, lie, make unsubstantiated claims, engage in libel or slander, or question motives. Don’t speculate, troll, or suggest or propagate rumors.

6. Give people a break. Life is hard. Don’t make it harder. These are recreational forums, after all.

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

I agree, Jim is an extremely helpful and kind person.

Ryan first brought the BRS to my attention when he reported negatively on it in his Upright Canister Stove Reviews. He directed us to Hikin Jims negative review of it….read:
<h2 id=”h.tz8spffou4qu”>8. BRS 3000t (Final Score: 71/100*)- $17 / 0.89 oz</h2>
Is a $17.00 stove that weighs less than an ounce too good to be true?

Our answer is yes.

While the BRS 3000t scored a 71/100 in our final grading, we have to add an asterisk* to that score of 71 for poor and unpredictable durability issues, and thus, give this stove a Below Average rating.

The BRS 3000t is impossibly small and impossibly light and actually performs fairly well (its overall StoveBench score is only slightly below average). But this stove has a long history of malfunction.

The problem is that the pot supports simply don’t hold up under extended heat (due to poorly hardened metal parts). We’d heard anecdotal evidence (we suggest you read our extensive forum conversations about this stove) but didn’t want to believe it until we replicated the malfunction ourselves. The pot supports on our first sample melted. And the pot supports on our second sample melted. In fact, the pot supports on 4 of 7 of our samples melted. Yes, we were so curious about this that we purchased 7 of them. You’re welcome.

The BRS 3000t also happens to be the loudest stove we tested, by a wide margin – we clocked it at 91 dB in a test group that averaged less than 80 dB – that’s right, the BRS 3000t is more than ten times louder than our average stove (because dB is measured on a log scale)! We don’t think the weight and cost savings of this stove are worth the possibility of having to become a cold-soaker without opting in to this sort of lifestyle.

[Roger Caffin]

The problem is that the pot supports simply don’t hold up under extended heat (due to poorly hardened metal parts). We’d heard anecdotal evidence (we suggest you read our extensive forum conversations about this stove) but didn’t want to believe it until we replicated the malfunction ourselves. The pot supports on our first sample melted. And the pot supports on our second sample melted. In fact, the pot supports on 4 of 7 of our samples melted.
Which, as we now know, is completely false. A propane flame in air simply can NOT melt titanium. Just not physically possible.

The only photo I have seen of the problem shows a perfectly straight pot support hanging off a bent lower bracket. The pot support itself was not damaged.

Four more key points should be mentioned here, beyond the fact that propane cannot melt Ti:
* The bracket which bent is nowhere near the flames. It is way underneath. It gets hot, but not that hot.
* You would need to apply a bit of force to the pot support – quite a bit I think, to bend the support bracket as I saw. The weight of a large full pot could not do that.
* Many of us have bought the genuine BRS-3000T stoves in the past and never had the slightest problem with them. We have been using them for years.
* There are many fake versions of the original BRS-3000T around (I counted up the 12 recently), and some of them look a lot more mechanically wonky than the genuine article. They are NOT made by BRS afaik. It seems that MeToo mfrs have recognised the market value of the brand/model. That’s China.

Cheers

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

Thank you Roger for your years of experience with canister stoves/titanium and sharing it with us. Your above post needs to absorbed by everyone so they really know what’s behind the statement “user error”

[Jerry Adams]

The term “melt” is often used to mean “heated to the point that it begins to lose strength and easily bends”

That temperature is much less than the actual melting temperature

I think there are some “manufacturers” that use poorer metal that loses it’s strength at a lower temperature

Is “BRS” a real company or are they all just made by different individuals that copy each other?

[Stormin]

“Which, as we now know, is completely false. A propane flame in air simply can NOT melt titanium. Just not physically possible.”

What proof of Titanium grade are the supports made from, until we know the facts everything else is just conjecture.

[Roger Caffin]

The term “melt” is often used to mean “heated to the point that it begins to lose strength and easily bends”
It may be used for that, but it is a travesty of the English language. Shades of Orwell’s ‘Ministry of Truth’.

Is “BRS” a real company
As far as I can tell, BRS is a large Chinese manufacturing company. I did find their website once, not sure how. China can be confusing.

Cheers

[Jerry Adams]

I like abusing language, but I would never say “melted” rather than the more accurate “heated to the point it starts to lose strength” : )

https://www.aisc.org/steel-solutions-center/engineering-faqs/11.2.-steel-exposed-to-fire/#9370

“The strength of steel remains essentially unchanged until about 600°F. The steel retains about 50% of its strength at 1100°F. The steel loses all of its capacity when it melts at about 2700°F. However, for design purposes, it is usually assumed that all capacity is lost at about 2200°F.”

The World Trade Center collapsed even though it got nowhere near the melting point of those steel beams, but it got hot enough they started to sag, then fell off the brackets that connected them to the sides of the building

I think Titanium melts at a little higher temperature than steel but has a similar loss of strength as it gets hot

Could a butane flame could get above 1100 F, where steel loses half its strength?

Since only a few BRS 3000ts fail, they must have an alloy that has a lower melting temperature?  Aluminum has a much lower melting temperature, maybe the bad BRS 3000ts use an alloy with more aluminum?

 

[Roger Caffin]

As far as I could see, the damage to the BRS-3000T stoves looked like this:

* The tip of the pot support had rotated downwards as indicated by the red arrow.
* But the pot support was still rigid, and the rotation extended down as far as the blue arrow.
* In fact, the support lug and rivet pointed to by the green arrow was where ALL the bending had occurred. That ‘ring’ around the burner column had been distorted badly. The best description I can give of the damage was that it looked as though the pot support had been forced downwards, hard, to bend the support ring. But that support ring does NOT get very hot – the flames are well above that area. They had better be – or you would get flame entering the air holes.

I have no knowledge as to what really happened, but there was NO melting or even softening and bending of the pot support arm. NONE. It was straight.

Cheers

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

It’s necessary that we always go back to what Ryan Jordan says about the metal used in the supports. BUT…..BUT did he test the metal or did he rely on HikinJim’s expertise. Did he ask Roger for his help?

Here’s what Ryan said:

The problem is that the pot supports simply don’t hold up under extended heat (due to poorly hardened metal parts). We’d heard anecdotal evidence (we suggest you read our extensive forum conversations about this stove) but didn’t want to believe it until we replicated the malfunction ourselves. The pot supports on our first sample melted. And the pot supports on our second sample melted. In fact, the pot supports on 4 of 7 of our samples melted. Yes, we were so curious about this that we purchased 7 of them. You’re welcome.

His link to “extensive forum conversations” consisted of 2 pages relating to the BRS.

HikinJim’s title of the thread is an eye catcher for sure “another one bites the dust”

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

Jun 10, 2019 at 11:34 pm#3597101

Roger Caffin

What we really need is a good photo of a failed BRS-3000T and the pot supports. Just give me one photo and I should be able to tell what happened.

Cheers

Roger, Send him a pm and see if you can get his attention. Tell him I’ll purchase his deformed units so I can have them professionally anylized to determine what caused them to fail. I’ll pay shipping charges. I’ll pay shipping charges to send them to you in Australia if you prefer going that route.

 

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