Brett,

From my understanding of the article, either a heat conductor like Roger made with the brass strip, or a pre-heat tube, would seem prudent to prevent liquid fuel spray in some conditions (below freezing temps?). I think bottom line is that the butane needs to boil/vaporize at some point before it hits the burner head.

This article and posts have been very informative - I am learning a lot! Keep it coming everyone.

> The Brunton adapter would allow me to invert my canister for winter use, but none of my stoves have pre-heat tubes. Is this a problem? Would liquid fuel spray everywhere in an expanding fireball?!
That's the whole point of this article. How to use the Brunton adapter plus a small modification to convert your summer upright stove (without pre-heat) to a winter stove with preheat.

Cheers

You can also get the stove stand from Cabelas. It is $20 plus tax.

Roger,

First ... great article!

Second ... is it easy to disassemble the Brunton stove stand if I wanted to try making replacement legs?

You can also get the stove stand from Cabelas. It is $20 plus tax.

or $23.73 shipped from Amazon

> is it easy to disassemble the Brunton stove stand if I wanted to try making replacement legs?

Dead easy.
Grab the top and bottom parts of the central cylinder and unscrew.
Reassembly - get the legs in the right order! And include the spring washer.

Cheers

Roger, do you know if anyone is stocking these down here?

Sorry, no idea. Check with Brunton, or do what many do: buy over the web.

Cheers

Great feature Rodger, its cool to see my question from a few months back written up into a full on feature article. Thanks!

Rogger:
I know this is off topic but I could not help notice that in the picture of you on Mt Jagungal, you appear to be wearing a packa rain jacket/backpack cover. If I am right perhaps you might share with us your opinion of this unique product. I have been considering buying one but could never find anyone who's opinion I trust who owned one. Thanks for your continuing efforts in the DYI arena.

Hi Mitchell

Yes, the poncho is similar to ThePacka unit, but the design of ours is actually my own. I guess it should be another MYOG article one day.

In addition to wearing them on Mt Jagungal here in Australia, we (my wife and I) wore these ponchos through France for 3 months, in some pretty bad weather. See http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/caffin_gear_list_revisited.html
'Bad weather' included lots of heavy rain and some snow.

However, I think the basic CedarTree Packa design is good, and very versatile. The sole deficiency is that you can't make a shelter out of it - but I much prefer a light tent anyhow.

Cheers

Because it looks same as the one I bought in China few years ago for under $5, at least on photo. Mine was made by an Chinese camping stove brand Huofeng. I guess this Brunton stove stand was either copied or most probably just relabeled of that Chinese product. The only difference is that Chinese version come with an additional pipe/head fitting for long "spray can" butane canister. which allow me to use cheap butane canister in summer, it so cheap you can get pack of four for $1.99 compare to the over $4 for an screw-in canister. I've seen a Hongkong store sell the stand on Ebay for $1.99.
Also Kovea have a similar stove stand.

Edited by jas123 on 05/14/2008 01:06:49 MDT.

Roger,

How would stailess steel conduct versus the brass? Where I work we have all kinds of stainless clamps that look like they will fit and lots of stainless sheet also.

Since most of it would be prefabricated it could save me time, but I'm willing to build from brass from scratch.

Edited by lightingboy on 05/14/2008 16:30:18 MDT.

not Roger here but this gave me an excuse to look for numbers to go with the vague advice I have long heard that stainless steel is a poor heat conductor.

This Source lists stainless's thermal conductivity coefficient as 16 vs 109 for brass. So for one made of brass would conduct about 6.8 times the heat energy as an identical sized piece of stainless.

That is a big diff .... but whether or not stainless would fall short of the NEED would require an actual test.

Edited by jcolten on 05/14/2008 17:44:36 MDT.

Hi Patrick

Jim has given you the thermal conductivity numbers (thanks Jim!). What difference it would make in practice ... dunno.

EDIT Nov-2008: I doubt the SS would work. Brass is a minimum for the block. Copper is required for the fin.

I think the block of brass probably makes a better contact than a stainless clamp would. Does it matter? Dunno! But brass was easier to machine than SS. :-)

Try it and let us know?

Cheers

Edited by rcaffin on 11/19/2008 02:26:42 MST.

I am wondering if all I would need to do to a wind pro stove from mountain safety research would be add the insert in the line. The unit already preheats the fuel tube with the burner and it would seem all one needs to do is "cut back" the liquid fuel coming through the hose and you would be cooking with less muss and fuss than this make over uses???? It is a good fix for on canister top stoves though.

Pat,
My winter stove is an inverted MSR WindPro with no modifications (other than inverting the canister).

Works like a charm!

Thank you! It just all looked like it would work ok. The whisperlite might have to find a new home .

I use an inverted windpro for winter aswell, but when the temps drop really low (-20 ish) it still seems to suffer. Not sure if it is the fuel or if it is just so dang cold that it takes forever to heat the water?!

Hi Pat

I have used a WindPro with an inverted canister on a multi-day snow trip. The only trouble I had was some sort of gunge build-up at the valve. I do NOT know what caused this, and have never had this trouble with other stoves. I suspect it may have been too much grease around the O-rings - which wouldn't matter when the stove is being used with the canister upright of course.

Actually, the preheat tube on the WindPro is excessive, but the stove is simply a converted SimmerLite.