I bought a Jetboil Minimo  to have a compact water boiler, and to work with the freeze dried pouches in case of a short-term event. It’s also handy if we need to evacuate, although I can’t see why we would need to.  The Minimo is a great product, it’s rare for me to find something that isn’t lacking in some way but this is one of them. Zero complaints, but of course I wanted to have the option to run a standard propane cylinder vs the expensive canisters. There are a few adaptors out there, but they don’t work with the Jetboil base and seem dodgy. Web searching turned up the key point that the gas threads are 7/16-28, which is of course not standard. But, a common radio connector IS, so I found one on a old cable. Don’t know the brand, but it’s a TNC female for RG-58 with a crimp sleeve. This fit the gas port PERFECTLY (see below).

I used an 1/8 pin punch to press out the Teflon sleeve, you will need to remove it to have a port for the gas. It presses out from the end opposite the threads. One that’s done, it can be attached directly to a 1/8 ID rubber hose via the handy barb if you can a straight on path.  Since I wanted a low profile, I used an 1/8 NPT F-F right angle fitting, drilled out on one end to accept the TNC. That gets filed to clean the plating off, and soldered in. The right angle is then soldered to a piece of sheet metal, which is artfully bent to fit the plastic base.

I used an 1/8 NPT hose barb to fit the hose (more on that later).

Top view

I used a lathe to turn the TNC body to 0.430, this fit the right angle but it looks like it would fit with a slightly larger drill.

Show time

Once I got it all together, I cranked it up and got a gas leak at the barb threads. Added thread tape, and YEAH BABY flame.  Added a pot of water, and noticed it took a while to boil, and had an orange flame at the tip. OK, so maybe a jet change? I turned up to full, and it went “plop” and winked out. No gas flow. I used compressed air and blew the jet out backwards without dismantling it fully, and back in business.  I think there was swarf in the hose, but after this it worked great (stoichiometric flame and rapid heating). No difference between propane and the butane/propane mix, at room temp. In base camp Everest, probably not the case but that’s not a concern for me.

First test (with swarf). You can see the Bernzomatic extension hose…

Second test (swarf removed)

Houston, we have a go for boil

The hose is a Bernzomatic extension kit, it’s 14 bucks at Home Depot and was exactly what I needed for this. Just whack the hose at the point you want, and attach to the barb. Saved me a ton of effort fabbing a custom part from a hand torch.

You may notice 22 LR reloading stuff in the pic, that’s a whole ‘nother topic.  Basically I’m trying to make a custom quiet pest round, using unfired Aguila Colibri brass and loading shotgun powder. I either get a *%$@# cannon blast noise or a pathetic droopy trajectory.  Yes, I have tried ALL the available subsonics and they are either way too loud or Airsoft realm.  I’ll figure it out, eventually.  Will involve Red Dot or Blue dot powder….