Butterfly #2412 Kerosene Brass Pressure Stove

Stove comparison chart

Recently, I’ve become obsessed with stoves.

In researching a variety of them, I came across this kerosene stove.

Thinking it looked gorgeous in the photo, but seeing only 7 reviews, I decided to bite the bullet and take a risk.

The stove arrived today, and while it took a while to arrive, unboxing it showed that it was just as stunningly beautiful as the photo.

It is rather large for a portable stove, and while it’s true that technically, you could take it apart and stuff it in a backpack, frankly, the build quality is such that you probably wouldn’t want to.

The stove top grate is held by 3 metal legs, but these metal legs don’t slip into and out of the slots at the base easily. When I finally got the legs inserted, there was still some wiggle room, making the stove top grate a little wobbly. Not unsafe, but definitely wobbly. At this point, while still wobbly, it was clear that removing them would require pliers and I’m not about to risk damaging this stove using a hard metal tool. I could have a towel or some material in between to reduce the chance of damage, but since I never plan to take this camping, I’ll just leave them in. Since I couldn’t get the legs out easily, and planned to leave them in, I decided to tackle the wobbly problem and used a rubber mallet to lightly tap the legs further in for a more firm fit. Which…you know…now means I’ll never get those legs out.

The base tank is a little tricky too. The instructions say you can’t fill it beyond 3/4 if you want it to be effective, but the fill hole is so small, it’s hard to tell where the 3/4 mark is. Wish there was some mechanism to see, maybe a buoy tied to a pin, or a glass tube indicator like they have on asian hot-jars.

the stove top is also a little disappointing when holding it because it is not solid brass. I expected it to be solid and heavy like that of a cast iron stove top, but it is actually a brass plate that is cut and bent into tubes to create the stove top shape.

Once I got the stove stand legs so firmly in place that everything fit tightly, it was also easy to see that it’s not perfectly flat/horizontal. It’s actually slanted about a half degree or so. Not enough for pots to fall off, but certainly enough to irritate anyone obsessed with precision.

The burner is also a little off. There is an intentionally loose guiding wall that goes around the burner. You drop it in and that creates the vertical funneling direction of the flame. It’s a little like a metal napkin holder, just smaller, and slightly conically shaped at one end.

In usage, the circular flame comes out through the top, broken by three small anchors or walls, creating essentially a circular frame broken into three “sides”. The lack of precision resulted in one side shooting out a strong flame, one side shooting a mediocre flame, and the remaining side shooting out no flame. That lack of precision, the uneven ring of flame, is a tad annoying, but it still worked, so I guess I can’t complain too much.

In testing, I following the instructions, and everything worked just fine.

– pour in the kerosene (I used Klean-heat kerosene alternative because I had some handy)
– close the cap
– fill pre-heating bowl (priming plate) with alcohol
– light it, and wait until the flame dies down.
– Pump the pressure pump
– light it.

Worked like a charm.

Perhaps it is because it’s kerosene, or perhaps it has to do with the lack of precision at the burner, but boiling a small 32oz pot took well over 10 minutes.

To adjust the flame, it’s a balancing act between letting some of the air pressure out through the air pressure release valve, and pumping the pressure pump. by futzing with the two, you can adjust the flame to your desired heat level. A process that seems particularly useful in simmering.

When the flame is actually going and you have a pan or pot or kettle on top, you can’t see the flame because the guiding wall ring blocks the view from the side, and whatever you place on top blocks a view from above.

But you can hear it blasting away, and the ring does turn bright red.

The roaring sound is loud, but not nearly as loud as a modern day multi-fuel stove. I have the Optimus Nova+ and the Primus Omnilite and both of those are much louder than this kerosene stove.

To turn the stove off, just open the pressure release valve all the open and leave it there. You will hear the air pressure releasing and simultaneously show the flame getting weaker until it goes it.

When turned off, the instructions say to leave the air pressure valve open a little so that fuel doesn’t leak up through the burner jet. If you’re in cold weather, I wouldn’t worry about it too much, but if you place it where temperatures can change and warm up (e.g. leaving it overnight and the next morning as the ambient temp rises, the warmer weather builds pressure in the tank), than leaving the air pressure valve slightly open would probably be smart.

All in all, I found operation to be very easy. The key is to follow the steps in the correct order. But assuming you do that, you shouldn’t have any problems with this stove.

Despite its quirks and the obvious lack of quality control and precision, I can’t help but admire this stove.

I have others and those will be my primary go to when car camping or backpacking.

But this kerosene stove has the distinct advantage of being both extremely stable and also having the best stove top.

As such, if ever there is a problem at home, and I want to do some light cooking without firing up the bbq grill, this will likely be my go to stove.

And it really is a thing of beauty, so I plan to use this every once in a while and will enjoy every minute of using it.