Brunton makes a "Stove Stand' to accept Lindal threaded canister stoves like the Vargo Jet-Ti, Primus Crux, etc. Your stove screws into the 3 legged stand assembly and the canister onto the end of the braided hose. Now you have a remote canister stove when you need it, such as for car camping or baking with a BackCountry aluminized fiberglass baking hood.
The canister end of the hose has a small plastic knob for flame control for convienance so you don't have to burn your fingers adjusting your burner's normal flame control handle. You should turn your burner's flame control all the way on to have full range of adjustment back at the canister valve. Also included is a heavy aluminum foil wind screen. No more worries about overheating a canister when using a windscreen around the burner.
See? No need to buy a separate remote canister stove like an MSR WindPro. Brunton is so smart it often makes them sick.
I've not got one but without a preheat tube I don't see much benefit of a remote cannister as you still can't invert it for liquid feed in the cold. 'Backcountry Baking' doesn't seem to have much of a following in the UK....
ptc* reviewed it last winter and didn't sound too impressed either.....
Good point Matt but at least you can wrap the cannister to insulate it a bit and use a windshield that completely surrounds the burner. Has to improve stability too so perhaps ok if it isn't too expensive, you could get them on ebay shipping from HK a while back for a few quid.
edit, LOL, just read the PTC review, ok then it doesn't have to improve stability, might be better to just get a Gelert Inferno which does look stable
This Brunton Stove Stand setup is obviously for 3 season use, not winter. I'll use it car camping with the Brunton Flex burner as an addition to my MSR WindPro so we'll have two stoves to keep my wife happy. (That's my story and I'm stickin' to it. I'm not really a gearaholic - honest.)
I'd never even bother trying to use a canister stove in winter in our western U.S. mountains since I have an excellent MSR Dragonfly multi-fuel stove for that purpose - and my ancient SVEA 123.
As for the PTC review comment regarding the stand's legs being too easily moved from fully opened position I merely tightened the bottom brass bolt with a screwdriver to get the necesary friction. Problem solved. And the PTC comment that canister-top burners have no preheating tube, well... duh, ya can't turn them upside down to use them in winter in their original useage design anyway so why complain??
I usually take gear reviews with a grain of salt, until I've personally seen and used the gear. Ex. PETZL headlamps were reviewed to have their circuits burn up with the use of lithium batteries. Guess what? They do burn up W/ lithium batteries. The review was correct. Score one for an accurate review. But the PTC review was puting the Stove Stand to an unintended use, winter camping. 'Nuff sed.
...............the PTC review was puting the Stove Stand to an unintended use, winter camping. 'Nuff sed.
Eric
I don't see how you arrive at that conclusion, it's not unheard of to use a canister stove in winter in the UK, I'd go so far as to suggest that they outnumber Multi-Fuel stoves in spite of the disadvantages. That said it can potentially offer 3 benefits over a top mounted burner;
a. Stability
b. Allows the use of a wrap-around windshield
c. Allows you to insulate the canister
In practice the improvement in stability is debatable, a clip on foot for the cartridge does the same job. Points b & c are valid enough IMO. However depending on the cost/weight you might be better served by something like the Gelert Inferno which provides the advantages of the stove stand but also provides vastly greater stability as the burner is below the level of the legs/trivet.
" I usually take gear reviews with a grain of salt, until I've personally seen and used the gear."
Me too, but I set more store by them when I know the chap and know what sort of use and testing he puts kit through.
So, anyway, what advantages might there be of a remote cannister stove?
1. When car camping? How exactly does the means by which you got to your site suddenly make a remote cannister advantageous?
2. Baking. I'll accept this one, but as I said earlier backcountry baking is, to put it mildly, a niche activity over here! (Perhaps there's a great bit of kit that we're lacking? I think some kind of backpacking oven was imported to the UK for a year or two in the '90s, but it obviously didn't catch on.)
3. Using a windshield. Fine, but a foil windshield shielding 3 sides of a cannister mounted stove does a perfectly good 3-season job IMO, without risk of overheating.
I still think the main advantage of a remote cannister is in conjunction with a preheat tube to push / improve cold weather performance, including by inverting the cannister for liquid feed.
Insulating the canister, in my experience the canister gets a lot colder than the surrounding area, it tends to freeze the ground around its sat on. Surely this would mean that insulating it would keep it cold and make the performance worse.
P.S. I have one of these stove things, I only used it once before I bought a primus gravity in the sale, much better!
> Insulating the canister, in my experience the canister gets a lot colder than the surrounding area, it tends to freeze the ground around its sat on. Surely this would mean that insulating it would keep it cold and make the performance worse.
Correct; the latent heat of vaporisation has to come from somewhere. If you insulate the canister from its surroundings, it'll get cold (providing the surroundings are warmer than the boiling point of the gas; pretty likely...).
Using a remote canister means that the canister isn't warmed by conduction of heat from the burner, which is why a pre-heating coil is a good idea, and allows inversion of the canister to use a liquid feed.
The photo of Gelert remote canister stove in your link doesn't seem to show a preheating tube for cold weather. Yes, it's lower than the Brunton conversion stand, but so is my MSR Wind Pro. All I'm saying is that the Brunton Stove Stand is a less expensive way to use one's existing canister-top burner and get a remote canister stove. I mean, really, that's all I'm saying. Just a money-saving conversion kit.
But, again, your winter temps, northern Scotland excepted, are not as severe as western U.S. winter temps, or altitudes, so you can get away with inverted butane/propane mix canisters AND a preheating tube type stove. But one needs 100% reliability in wilderness conditions here and that's why my Dragonfly multi-fuel is always my winter stove - always.
On that note, I've tried many other liquid fuel stoves in the past, including multi-fuel Primus stoves, and, unless there's a new stove just out I haven't seen, the Dragonfly is absolutely the most easily controlled, lowest simmering stove I've come across. This is crucial not only in baking but in saving fuel when cooking. Yes, I do bake in winter. Long nights mean more time for this activity. And baked pizza, muffins, biscuits, and cakes really hit the spot in frigid temps.
The photo of Gelert remote canister stove in your link doesn't seem to show a preheating tube for cold weather. Yes, it's lower than the Brunton conversion stand, but so is my MSR Wind Pro. All I'm saying is that the Brunton Stove Stand is a less expensive way to use one's existing canister-top burner and get a remote canister stove. I mean, really, that's all I'm saying. Just a money-saving conversion kit.
You're right, it doesn't it's just lower and more stable I'd imagine. What the best option would be would come down to cost, I haven't seen the Brunton conversion part for sale here but I'd guess it'd be at the very least half the price of the Inferno and at that I would probably go for the Inferno on the basis that it's lower.
your winter temps, northern Scotland excepted, are not as severe as western U.S. winter temps, or altitudes, so you can get away with inverted butane/propane mix canisters AND a preheating tube type stove. But one needs 100% reliability in wilderness conditions here and that's why my Dragonfly multi-fuel is always my winter stove - always.
Wouldn't disagree with that, FWIW my own Multi Fuel is a Whisperlite Intl, never had a problem with it but it doesn't get used much now, thats not to say it won't if circumstances demanded it.
I might give it a blast tomorrow, just to get the smell
Personally I love my Optimus Nova (and sod the weight! ).
Have you used one Eric? I've not tried a Dragonfly. I just wondered though, because Chris Townsend has repeatedly given a 'Best Buy' tag to the Nova in group tests over here, and controllability was one of the big plus points he rated?
I'm a member of both BPL and BPLightweight and both thread's photos were very intersting, especially for the conversion to inverted canister. For sure I'll be making a preheating fin for my Brunton Stove Stand to work with my Brunton Flex burner. Clever idea and easy to fabricate.
Those conversions appear to solve the cold weather problem very nicely and at minimal cost.
