gabby
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Post by gabby on Jul 11, 2019 14:41:57 GMT -8
That's a lovely picture, Rembrandt? But on inverting gas canisters in cold weather, a warning, make sure to light the stove when the canister is upright, warm it up in your hands if necessary but don't ever try to invert the canister before lighting in bellow freezing temps as liquid gas, butane or propane I don't know which can freeze or condense around the cold metal of the stove burner making you think no gas is coming out until you get ignition then big fireball. Yep, like any white gas stove, if you're going to use canister fuel in "liquid" form, you absolutely must prime to get the "preheat/vaporization" tube hot enough to do its job. I knew I'd left that out almost as soon as I posted all that "gabby yakky" stuff up there, but figured it was obvious. Nothing's really "obvious", so a hearty 'thank you' for pointing this out.
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Post by ukpacker on Jul 12, 2019 2:52:48 GMT -8
It was not obvious to me at all when I tested my Primus Gravity stove when it and the canister were well bellow freezing. The instructions have nothing to say at all about inverting the canister in cold temperatures but like many other users I assumed it is called Gravity because it has been designed with that facility in mind, the fuel pipe has a swiveling connection presumably to enable inverting of the canister without twisting the fuel pipe, comments online lead me to believe that many others too assume that it is called Gravity because it is designed as a gravity feed stove. There is a pre heat tube but it never occurred to me that that tube needs to be hot before the canister is inverted, I bought the stove some years ago after reading comments from outdoor journalists in the UK about liquid feed canister stoves, none of the articles I came across mentioned the possibility of liquid gas freezing to metal. Perhaps that was a result of few UK writers camping in the sort of low temperatures when this can happen, fortunately I was not using the stove anywhere near my tent when this happened otherwise I may not be here today.
Do the instructions with any other stoves commonly assumed to allow the burning of liquid gas mention this danger?
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rebeccad
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Post by rebeccad on Jul 12, 2019 12:04:25 GMT -8
ukpacker, I don’t have any experience with isobutane stoves that allow for the inversion of the canister, but I did use a Whisperlite with white gas for years. That had to be primed by letting fuel out into a priming cup and burning it off to heat the pre-heat tube. Then you could turn the gas back on and light the stove at the burner. If you were deft enough, you could turn the gas back on just before the flame when out in the priming cup and the thing would light.
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Post by ukpacker on Jul 12, 2019 12:39:09 GMT -8
With hindsight and in the absence of contrary instructions from the manufacturer I think the safe method with isobutane cannisters is to warm the cannister in jacket/pocket so the stove can be lit with the cannister upright, @ minus 20 c it will still burn for a minute or two then when the pre heat tube is hot the cannister can be inverted, though my experience was that fuel consumption was quite severe.
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gabby
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Post by gabby on Oct 9, 2019 15:33:43 GMT -8
About 3 days ago, when it finally cooled enough in Austin to make it comfortable to be outside (I know, I know: Texas doesn't get around to fall weather until November or so - then winter's all over by February), I took the Fire-Maple out to try.
I was somewhat upset to find that its flame was orange and yellow, not blue as I expected. And it remained a yellow-orange throughout the burn - long enough to boil a couple of cups of water. I don't know why this happened. Was it just that it was a new stove? Was it the fuel? I used a larger Snowpeak canister (220g) that was partially emptied.
Also, the swivel at the valve connection is really stiff. Trying to invert the canister after firing it up, I found that this just resulted in the fuel cable twisting. Yes, I could turn the swivel if I tried hard enough (not with the stove running, however), but my feeling is that using this stove in cold weather is a "prime and only then invert" situation, so the swivel should be somewhat looser to accommodate that sort of operation.
When I went out 2 days ago (it had gotten much cooler) to use my SVEA 123 to make breakfast (coffee and scrambled eggs with ham and cheese!), I took out the FMS 117H to test again. This time I used one of the smaller (110g) Snowpeak canisters and got a good solid blue flame. I'm nonplussed about the previous flame. I guess I'm going to have to check out that fuel canister with a different stove.
However, while playing with stoves on the ground all morning (I'm presuming), I did something to my back - so I suffered a lower back spasm in the afternoon that took me to my local doctor's clinic for an unplanned visit. I was in so much pain that my wife thought I had something more serious, like a kidney stone. So, 3 hours at the clinic to find it's just a back sprain - and I've spent the last couple of nights sleeping under the influence of large doses of painkillers and muscle relaxers. Feeling much better now, but there's some residual stuff going on that doesn't keep me from doing normal stuff.
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almostthere
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putting on my hiking shoes....
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Post by almostthere on Oct 9, 2019 19:50:22 GMT -8
I have the Olicamp stove mentioned, I have the gadget off eBay that allows transfer of fuel to one canister from another, and I have a Snowpeak Giga that's verging on 13 years old. (I have a shelf full of other stoves that rarely if ever get used.) I have not blown myself up. I get 16 oz cans of fuel and fill smaller canisters (cheaper per ounce that way) as I use a whole lot of fuel each year, especially for trail crew. Boil water and rehydrate is what we do on leisure trips, trail crew I have taken to making pizza and other cooked foods in a pan, using the Olicamp and a heat diffuser, with good results. I do not flip canisters upside down. A dish of water is adequate to keeping the iso mixes burning efficiently in cold temps. Put the canister in the water, doesn't matter that it's cold, just has to be water. another method of keeping the fuel canister going in very cold weather: the moulder strip.
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walkswithblackflies
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Post by walkswithblackflies on Oct 10, 2019 4:21:02 GMT -8
I feel so inadequate with my tuna can stove.
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walkswithblackflies
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Post by walkswithblackflies on Oct 10, 2019 4:25:57 GMT -8
Question: Is there anyway to transfer canister fuel at home from one canister to another, in essence refill or top off partial canisters? That's an excellent question for tigger.
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walkswithblackflies
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Post by walkswithblackflies on Oct 10, 2019 4:27:35 GMT -8
I suffered a lower back spasm Get better. Back spasms suck. Try stretching your shoulders/upper back and calves/hamstrings. I've found many times the problem resides in one of these areas, but expresses itself in the low back.
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tigger
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Post by tigger on Oct 10, 2019 6:27:38 GMT -8
Question: Is there anyway to transfer canister fuel at home from one canister to another, in essence refill or top off partial canisters? That's an excellent question for tigger. Yes, if you use an absorbent material like a bathrobe, it will transfer the fuel from one container to other flammable surfaces like private parts, garage doors, and leg hair.
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almostthere
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Post by almostthere on Oct 10, 2019 6:59:31 GMT -8
I feel so inadequate with my tuna can stove.
You're fine. Stoves are not Pokemon.
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almostthere
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putting on my hiking shoes....
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Post by almostthere on Oct 10, 2019 11:00:58 GMT -8
Question: Is there anyway to transfer canister fuel at home from one canister to another, in essence refill or top off partial canisters? That's an excellent question for tigger . Yes. There is a device you can order on eBay that defies the warnings on the canisters - with a dish of cold water, a dish of hot water, and two canisters, you can put fuel from one into the other. Not that the instructions tell you this - they are in Korean. You need a digital scale and weights of full and empty canisters before you start, so you can weigh throughout to avoid overfilling a canister.
I've been able to poke holes in and recycle a bunch of partially full canisters sitting around after getting as much out of them as possible, and buy 16 oz canisters to refill small ones, as the price per ounce is less when you buy big.
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rangewalker
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Post by rangewalker on Oct 12, 2019 8:45:18 GMT -8
They're a butane-propane mix as opposed to the isobutane-propane I normally buy (MSR, Jetboil, etc.) At 7K feet and around 40 degF, I was only able to use maybe a quarter of the canister. Had the canister upside down and my hands wrapped around it in an effort to warm it up I had the same experience twice, it takes me a double tap, to remember that butane-propane mixes are for beaches in summer. When I was in college in the early 70's, the evil logistics troll, would equip us with Bluet butane propane stoves in winter or Colorado high country, saving the liquid fuel stoves for the climbers. Lot of cold ramen those years, until we broke the rules and packed our own stoves. In Mexico, we could trade the Bluet canisters for beer and cigarettes. And I went hiking twice in the last two years with one trick pony WalMart Coleman canisters too...late night prep for trips when the good stores were closed.
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rangewalker
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Post by rangewalker on Oct 12, 2019 8:51:18 GMT -8
tramp69 : lovely demonstration or antique show? Svea 123, wood burning stove and deco perk pot.
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gabby
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Post by gabby on Oct 14, 2019 13:59:09 GMT -8
I lubricated the swivel with a shot of WD-40, though I felt I shouldn't have had to, and can now easily invert the canister. The stove still makes that "chuff-chuff" sound that I heard the first time I inverted the canister, but the flame I'm getting is nice and blue. I first heard the "chuff-chuff" sound while using my old Primus Gravity MF some time ago. Someone doing a review of the Gravity suggested that what we were hearing was "flash boiling" of the liquid fuel as it hit the hot evaporator tube. For whatever reason, I don't remember the Gravity MF making the sound when I used white gas - but the Gravity is not much fun with white gas, as it's quite a cranky primer, creating big fireballs before settling down to a solid blue flame. Maybe the sound was there, but, with all the other fuss, I just missed it. The Fire-Maple makes pretty much the same sound - like a small steam engine locomotive working very hard. FYI: Just to make sure this isn't simply a characteristic of inverted canister stoves, I fired up the Optimus Vega this morning, and it is either "chuff-chuffing" a lot more rapidly (so it's hard to hear distinctly) or there's nothing like that going on at all. The Vega is a relatively loud canister stove, but it's very predictable and reliable. As with most canister stoves in "gas mode", no problem to light - and it doesn't seem to mind having its canister inverted after 10 - 15 seconds, though the flame does get a bit higher. Solid stove. Nice wide burner.
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