Have been thinking about going to gas and was rather taken by the
Primus Gravity:

http://www.primus.se/

+'s: has preheating coil, piezo ignition, windshield and heatshield,
fuel line to separate the bottle from the stove, and the gas cannister
will work with my ancient Primus lantern

-'s: the stove weighs 265g, about the same as my FireJet shellite
stove.

All up comparing this gas setup to the shellite setup the weight
saving will only be an estimated 200g (tho this is not counting a
windshield for the FireJet).

I appreciate that this model is prob. heavier than others on the
market.

Can anyone recommend a lighter model of gas stove that still has a
fuel line and preheating coil, and pref. uses Primus compatible
cannisters?

Advice appreciated.

Nice concept, but execution a bit iffy imho.
Sheet metal legs are not too bad, but air holes underneath are only so-so.
OK with gas, poor with shellite, no-no with kero.
Tested at backpackinglight.com

ANY screw-thread gas canister is compatible. ANY.

Cheers
Roger Caffin

On May 3, 3:27 pm, "Roger Caffin" <r.caf...@tpg.com.au> wrote:

Thanks Roger.

Was looking at the gas only model.

I've done some more reading since the post above and can see now that
weight goes up when you separate the stove and have to have stove and
legs etc.  I'd thought separation was important if you used a
windshield so as to avoid overheating the canister.  But if you take
care a canister-top stove is OK?

Should also have said that I was looking to replace the shellite stove
for all conditions:  hot summers to snow camping.  Is this too
ambitious?

Roger, you spoke favourably of the Coleman Powermax in a review of
another stove on backpackgeartest.com ... is it still made?  Goof for
sub-zero temps too?

TIA,

Ern

Hi Ern

Ah yes. OK.

Lawyer-driven crap.
There is an article on this subject at www.backpackinglight.com, but
subscription needed.
To summarise: ALL screw-thread canisters are rated to routinely handle at
least 50 C, by law. You get an 'ouch' reaction when you touch something much
over 40 C. In a controlled test, I had to take a canister to ~100 C before
it blew up. So provided you can touch the canister, it is safe. So - when
cooking, use a good windscreen (or your pot may never boil), and monitor
your stove and canister. As simple as that. Some of us have been safely
doing this for 10+ years, in the vestibule of our tent.

Not really, but not optimal for summer weight. However, in winter an upright
canister stove WILL die: the canister cools too far down.

In spring-summer-autumn I use my beloved upright Snow Peak GST100. The Vargo
Jet-Ti is also good. There are plenty of other small uprights, but many of
them have faults. The Pocket Rocket has bendy pot supports for instance.

In winter (snow) I switch to a remote canister stove - usually a Coleman
Xtreme with a Powermax canister, but the Xtreme is now out of production
(damn). The next best alternative is a Coleman Fyrestorm Ti imho. This uses
screw-thread canisters, which is actually more convenient as the Powermax
canisters are hard to get (but ARE still in production). It is kinda wierd
that it is Coleman who makes the two finest remote-canister stoves for snow
use specifically with inverted canisters!

After that, there are several other remote canister stoves on the market
these days which are reasonable, including the Gravity, the EtaPower, the
Kovea (something), the Snow Peak (something), the MSR Windpro and so on.
These other remote canister stoves do NOT include operation with the
canister inverted in their instructions, but I have tested them all.

Cheers
Roger Caffin

Good stuff.

Many thanks for going to the trouble.

Cheers,

Ern

Roger
please supply more info re -

The Pocket Rocket has bendy pot supports for instance ???

Phil.

If you have a look at the pic on the MSR website you can see that the pot
supports are long thin bits of sheet metal held at the bottom by small
rivets. I found, and many others have also found, that the supports can bend
sideways under the load of a full cooking pot with a bit of aggressive
stirring.

In addition, the design of the burner makes the flame fairly concentrated so
there is a higher risk of burning your pot. The CO emission level is a lot
higher than I like too - almost dangerous, especially at a simmer. This
published information is available at
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/stoves_tents...

There are far better stoves (more robust, lower CO emission, better flame
spread) on the market imho.

Cheers
Roger Caffin