Companion forum thread to:

Lightweight Integrated Canister Fuel Stoves State of the Market Report 2011: Part 3 - Wrap Up and Reviews of Individual Stoves

Edited by addiebedford on 10/19/2011 08:25:42 MDT.

A nice, concise summary of your testings and experience with these stoves. Thanks for another superb SOTMR!

FYI: Detailed Failures of Jetboil Sol Ti

Thanks for the link, Hendrik.

So far, I have used the Sol four times at over 11,000 feet at freezing without any issue, although I have found it harder to light at those altitudes. I think failures of the starter tend to be fairly common, even with the older versions of the Jetboil.

I have no explanation to why the 'fins' on the cup would be damaged like that.

I had some issues with lighting my jetboil Ti, but it seemed to be related to how much wire was hanging out of the lighter rather than altitude. It seemed to me that the ignition wire slowly melts and gets shorter. I used a pair of pliers to pull more wire out of the insulating sleeve and everything was fine. I've used the stove for about 50-person-days at various temps as low as 28F and altitudes up to 12,400 with no problem. In fact its cold performance is much better than any other canister stove I've used. -Bill.

Hi Hendrick,
My theory:
If your sol pot had failed to make a connection between the pot and that fin in manufacture, that fin would not have lost heat to the pot quickly enough and so it melted. I expect the fins are spot welded? If that one missed welding effectively perhaps the pot would have no mark where there ought to be a weld mark.

Piezo igniters are a crapshot above 8000 feet and get worse from there. It has nothing to do with Jetboil and everything to do with the properties of piezo ignition.

The melted fin is another story....

thanks for the series

converting BPLers one jetboil at a time ;)

Derek wrote

If your sol pot had failed to make a connection between the pot and that fin in manufacture, that fin would not have lost heat to the pot quickly enough and so it melted. I expect the fins are spot welded? If that one missed welding effectively perhaps the pot would have no mark where there ought to be a weld mark.
-----

And looking at the image very closely, I can't see a weld mark at that fold point.

Cheers

The melted fin on a jetboil Ti is interesting. If the heat exchanger was made of titanium, it shouldn't be possible to melt it with a stove. On the pictures, it looks more like a burned aluminium.

I'm really curious how it is attached to to the Ti pot. Such a combination of metals can hardly be welded or brazed.

The link to the Sol Ti Failure I posted - that wasn't mine. Benjamin told me about it on Twitter, and there have been a few people who have reported problems with corrosion (funnily they're all from the UK/ Scotland - probably just their weather causing the problems :D ). Just wanted to show that it isn't perfect for all situations, and that there's problems with it.

Click here to see my Sol Ti Review - including a video for those of a more audio-visual nature.

To further lighten the Jetboil Ti, is it possible to remove the worthless Piezo lighter component?

A proper enclosing cone (like a gas powered caldera cone) with a remote stove (and possibly all metal gas pipe into cone to withstand the heat) would seem to have the possibly of being lighter than heat-fin based systems. Tony Beasleys cone stove uses steel pipe: would a such addendum / part 4 to this test / series of articles be useful?

Yeah, I mentioned this to Trail Designs, but they were worried about overheat problems and limiting to a single type of stove, ie a remote burner stove, as well as some minor considerations (for example, supplying a longer handle on the burner adjustment.) As documented by Roger C., a top mounted stove could overheat and explode, hence your requirement for a remote stove. In Rand's case, he cited a potential for filling the cone with unlit gas and having someone hold a match to it. Slightly exciting... In the case of a WG stove, things could be worse than exciting.

It appears reasonable that using the sides of a pot as well as the bottom can replace a ribbon folded and welded against the bottom, but surface area(the part that picks up heat) is actually reduced. As far as overall efficiency is concerned, the wind reduction, et al (losses due to the innefficiency of titanium heat transfer, heat lost out the sides and not recovered, etc) likely mean they will perform as well as a heat exchange system in the field, though.

The failure apears to be a melted titanium alloy. I suspect that the stove was used in a fairly strong wind, concentrating heat in one area. I *believe* this could account for the melt of an off quality alloy. Titanium does not conduct heat as well as aluminum, so it could build up over time. It appears that the spot welds were near the outside of the pot. They could have failed to bond properly. Also, the alloys might not have been thuroughly mixed. Having a fairly high Aluminum component might have reduced the melting point and also caused a weak weld joint.

> The failure apears to be a melted titanium alloy.
If we are talking about any common Ti alloy, permit me to express extreme (and I do mean extreme) doubts. I work with Ti alloy, including at red heat, and melting it is beyond my dreams.

The way the metal has melted LOOKS like aluminium.
Spot welding aluminium is not easy. Spot welding Aluminium to Ti, would be extremely difficult to do. The temperatures needed for Ti would melt Al.

Strange. I would love to know just what the metals are.

Cheers

I had a problem with the Sol Ti when the heat exchanger fins started to melt. At the time I had let food burn on the bottom of the pot. I asked a Jetboil representative about this and was told that the fins are aluminium and not titanium and that the problem was that titanium didn't conduct heat fast enough so if there wasn't liquid in the pot it could get so hot that the fins would melt. The Jetboil guy said this wasn't a problem with the aluminium Sol as aluminium conducts heat much better.

"Strange. I would love to know just what the metals are."

Might it be a brazing operation? Just curious.

Roger, any chance you'll be measuring the CO levels for the Jetboil Sol? Looking back through the archives, I see you found low levels for the Jetboil Helios, but since that's an inverted canister with a liquid feed, I suspect the emissions could be quite different.

I have a 130g ,8litre esbit/gelert kettle with a corrigated base (I think the gsi ketalist may be derived from it: http://www.gsioutdoors.com/products/pdp/halulite_ketalist/ but I dont know what its base is like):

Perhaps this would be a lighter/simpler/cheaper way of getting some of the advantage of a heat sink pot for less weight (presuming use of a windscreen).

> any chance you'll be measuring the CO levels for the Jetboil Sol?
Not for a little while I am afraid - I have a pile of reviews to complete and so little time.
I also have to recover 15+ years of data (like everything!) lost when two disks (main & backup) both got damaged by lightning while I was overseas.
And I don't have a Sol at present.

Cheers