Kelly Kettle stove adapter

 14 Feb 2022

     There was some talk about Jetboil and boiling water on the Overland Bound forum; https://www.overlandbound.com/forums/threads/jet-boil.42168/

I said that I use a Kelly Kettle and the point was made that due to fire danger in the Western USA wood burning was often banned, as was wood gathering.

Well it got me to thinking, How to use my kettle with my Coleman single burner white gas stove?

I own the 54oz Base Camp model in stainless. Here they are side by side;

 

And me holding the kettle above the stove;

The base of the kettle is bigger than the stove. I knew I would need a ring with a lip on it to hold the kettle and some sort of legs to keep the flame lower in the chimney. Since there wasn't anything premade in my possession I would have to make something. Starting with a scrap of flat sheet I marked out the rim of the kettle;

Found the center and marked out for the ID to clear the stove burner,

They were cut out with my jigsaw, so not perfect......Next using some 1/8" x 3/4" x 3' bar I had and doing some pre-bending around a steel dog bowl, I clamped and tacked the bar to the ring. The whole time I was thinking of how to do the legs...I did not want some permanent monstrosities spanning the 5" distance needed. I wanted folding, but couldn't dream up a way to fold. be sturdy, fit the curve.

I gotta admit, if you don't see the inside it looks good!

So for legs I decided on something removeable. Using 5/16" x 18 tpi 5.5" bolts and 5/16" x18 coupler nuts. 

Setting it all up with a multitude of clamps the nuts were welded to the side of the ring evenly spaced out. Lucky for my poor math skills the circumference of the ring is 21", so dividing by 3 got me an even 7" distance apart! which I marked and then clamped the nut at.

Once done the bolts were screwed in and the adapter set up to see if it worked. You can see that I put the bolt threads all the way in, this gives me some adjustability of height and leveling the ring on uneven ground/surfaces.

With the kettle on the controls for the stove are still accessible.

The view down the throat;

Next a couple coats of High temp silver paint.

Then a try out. I set up the stove as usual and got it pumped up and going, filled the kettle with water that was around 50°F and set the kettle on the adapter and looked at the clock. I didn't care about seconds so rough timing.

A look down the lit throat;

The outside air temp was around 45F. Keep in mind this is 54oz/1.59l not the .8liter Jetboil. I had the fuel wide open and it was 400F at the top of the throat in 8 min when it started to simmer and I could see steam coming out.

At around 10 min it was around 550F at the throat and a roiling boil achieved.

Well, if nothing else I proved it could be done. I also think that with shorter bolts other types of single burner free standing stoves could be used, such as the MSR whisperlite. Likely cannister stoves also.

Fun project! Now to sell the idea to Kelly Kettle..........