Interesting observation @BenniHanna, thanks. I have both Jon-e's and still some VM&P naphtha so will give this a try. Now that we have warm weather where I live, I don't need it right now, but may still try it before cold weather comes back.
Hey Jim, if you really want to get those jon-e hand warmers up to peak performance, you can change out the old platinum catalysts with new ones. There's a fireplace product called "platinum bright embers" and it's an EXTREMELY good catalyst replacement. In fact, you can get the hand warmers hotter than when they came out of the factory. It's not cheap but for 20-30 bucks, a few grams of the stuff is enough for a dozen or so replacements (set for life basically) You can also add carbon felt right on top of the reservoir where the cotton is. By covering the cotton with carbon felt, it prevents the cotton from charring and depositing soot onto the platinum catalyst, which can permanently reduce heat output. Also be sure to never get liquid fuel on the catalyst!
I picked up a lot of hand warmers, including a couple of brand new Jon-e's at estate sales along with some boxes of burners branded for Sears and J.C. Higgins(also Sears). These burners don't hold a candle to the Jon-e burners so I'll keep the 'platinum bright embers' in mind as that sounds very interesting.
I modified clone of the 8r so that it would burn kerosene It was simple to do and works quite well. No pictures, sorry. All I did was wrap a length of copper wire around the valve stem and then fed it up into the burner. I clipped off the end, bent it into a U and positioned it in the center of the burner. I preheat with white gas before opening the valve for the kero. Not to rush. Once burning, it works just fine.
And it's especially easy to convert a kerosene stove to a petrolburner: just put gasoline in it. The question, as always, is why?
