I love my piezo igniter.
I had one on my early Firemaple FMS-105 stove, and then one on the D-Power stove I got back in 2015 mentioned here
http://bushwalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=20780Sure they can stop working when they get wet like when you suffer a pot boil over. But a quick blow to clear out the water gets it working again. Mine on the Dpower stove worked well for 4 years regular usage.
A friend donated their non-working FMS117T to me for parts so I cobbled together a Titainum Dpower stove (using the titanium legs and pot struts from the FMS117T, but keeping the Dpower burner and stem, and the piezo igniter). This brought the weight of the stove down.
The weight of an original FMS 117T is about 98g. The Dpower piezo attachment is 10.5g. My franken-Dpower-Firemaple stove with piezo is 125g (vs the original 140g). So removing the piezo attachment brings my remote hose stove to 114.5g (much closer to the original FMS 117T weight).
The piezo on the stove worked well until late in 2019 when I hiked around the Caucasus mountains in Georgia. Outside Mestia I met a South Korean family who were doing an overland expedition trip from Korea to Paris (via China, Mongolia, over the Parmir pass, Russia, through the various "stan" countries into Georgia before going through Turkey and up the Balkans to Europe). Amazingly they did it in a Kia station wagon, with three kids under 8 years old.
Anyway, they saw me preparing my basic hiking food, and invited me to eat with them. One of their stoves wasn't working so I lent them my stove and gas. However this being a Korean family feast involved cooking for longer periods than I usually used my stove for. The Stove was used for almost an hour (with a larger pot being used than I typically use), and the heat was a little too much for the plastic pusher of the piezo igniter. It now still clicks but not consistently despite my efforts to shave some melted plastic off.
Keithy's Franken-Dpower-Firemaple stove with slightly melted piezo pusher.
![FrankenDpower.jpg](./download/file.php?id=59800&sid=c15b1a43c3e25b20651b5ede310fbd12)
- FrankenTitaniumDpower
- FrankenDpower.jpg (92.42 KiB) Viewed 31965 times
Keithy's repurposed piezo igniter Years back I previously owned a Kovea Ki-1007 piezo igniter (I think this is rebadged as the MSR piezo igniter as well). That weighed around 12g. it didn't get much use with my remote stove, but when I got the FMS118T Fireblade 2 stove without a piezo, and the tiny BRS3000T for shorter and lighter trips I couldn't find my Kovea piezo igniter.
It looked like this:
![31IVuMpHDiL.jpg](./download/file.php?id=59799&sid=c15b1a43c3e25b20651b5ede310fbd12)
- Kovea Piezo
- 31IVuMpHDiL.jpg (14.25 KiB) Viewed 31965 times
So I scouted around the house to see what I had. I found I had an empty butane torch with piezo igniter. The refill valve was damaged so it was no longer refillable. I cracked it open, used a hot knife to cut off as much of the plastic as I could, covered the opening with gorilla tape, and how I have this small igniter that lives in my pot. Works well for gas stoves, and I have to hold it like this to not burn the hairs of my hands.
This now weighs around 18g and lives in my pot. I was going to take the cap and chain off (cap and chain are 1.3g each) so I could save another 2.6g, but the chain works, and cap keeps the igniter part dry.
![Repurposed Piezo Igniter.jpg](./download/file.php?id=59801&sid=c15b1a43c3e25b20651b5ede310fbd12)
- DIY repurposed Piezo igniter
- Repurposed Piezo Igniter.jpg (56.83 KiB) Viewed 31965 times