So I've been using a jetboil since my house mate game me his old one about three years ago. Obviously enough, I love the speed and self-contained nature of it but the weight, lack of temperature control and that useless PS plastic knob are downsides. As a result I've been reassessing titanium pot and other burner options.
So, I was weighing some of my existing bits of gear trying to decide whether the trade-offs were worthwhile when something occurred to me. The jetboil pot is pretty much identical to my old Macpac pot aside from the heat exchanger, which adds 40g. The burner is twice as heavy as my Kovea at 120g. But most of the advantage seems to be in the HX - the kovea burner is basically better in every way and half the weight.
So my question is: am I an idiot who's gonna blow himself to bite-size chunks or a low-key genius?
JetBoil pot ghetto installed on Kovea titanium stove
I'm no engineer but can't see why this wouldn't work safely - the bits taking extra heat load are the pot stand arms and burner itself, ie bits that already take heat and are designed for it. Airflow will be a bit lower than with a "normal" pot of the same size but plenty of people use them with reflectors and windshields... and much wider based pots.
Obviously the jetboil also has a little reflector and lower plastic windshield, but at 50% of the weight I'm happy to compromise on performance.
The kovea burner directs the flame outward rather than directly up, but my old setup was a pot with the same diameter so all the heat that went outside the base of the pot was lost - this should at least transfer some via the heat exchanger fins.
Stability-wise, the three pot stand arms nest quite snugly into the fins. If it becomes a long-term solution I'll probably bend three of the fins slightly to widen the gap and mark them on the outside of the pot. To install, I rotate the arms to separate two of them, place through the jetboil base then fully open the three arms and nestle into the fins. Removal is simple enough... Cold.