Neat collection and I love the fact that several are multi generation family owned items. With the frequency of families moving that has become unusual. Do you have any of the old bright oil lamps such as the circular wick lights or the wick and mantle combination oil lamps like the Aladdin?

Nice collection DBSAR!

This is getting a very cosy subforum with all the antique stuff

I have only two kerosine lanterns, but they are not the least. I could not find the other small one but here I do show the most relevant kerosine lamp of all times (IMHO of course ) : the Feuerhand 276 BABY special, mit sturmkappe, Schott Mainz Jena'er glass, works in any weather condition:

Left to right, a whale oil lamp without its works and what appears to be a simple Middle Eastern lamp.

The whale oil lamp is a family heirloom. The note is in my mother’s handwriting. It is from her side of the family. I don’t know whether it was bought by her parents as an antique or whether it was has been passed down since it was current, the early 19th Century, in her mother’s family. The works are missing. I suppose is was an Argand lamp. Perhaps it was converted to kerosine or electric incandescence and the conversion became obsolete or broke and was discarded. The inside is still wet from being washed.
The other is from some yard sale of flea market. It appears to me to be a very small and simple oil candle-like light from the Middle East or Southern Asia, complete except for wick and oil.
(The bottle with the candle and the vase are my work, in reduction fired stoneware. The salt and pepper shakers are Delfts, Holland earthenware.)

Thanks to this new section on BLF I know of the existance of whale oil lamps

Nice glazes Fritz! (I made stoneware glazes for a while as a hobby, but never experimented with reduction firing the oven. Since 10 years ago I don't have a workshop for it anymore)

From my reading I get the impression that wick type lamps were relatively low power typically, in the few CP to 200 CP/Lumens range. Only designs like the center draft circular wick and Aladdin designs got any where near the 200 Lumens output while flat and round wick lamps were typically closer to the 10 to 30 Lumens range. Is this correct?

The most powerful wick type lamps were probably those used in Lighthouse lanterns. From some pictures I have seen it looks like they often used multiple circular wicks of increasing size from the center in a center draft arrangement. These would be 19th century lamps I presume? Any one have any references or photos of such lamps and their outputs or information on the highest power lamps prior to the center draft circular wick designs?

A circular wick type was invented by Argand. It apparently eliminated most of the smoke from whale oil lamps. In Norway, I saw old kerosine lamps with flat and round wicks. The ones with round wicks had much smaller bulges around the flame in their chimneys, which looks as though they worked much better. The wick itself was actually flat, but it was fed upward throw a circular hole that bent it in a circle.
Lamps are incandescent like simple electric lights, so the key to efficiency is temperature. The chimney makes it brighter by drawing air. But if there is too much air, there are no carbon particles, like a gas stove. It is the carbon lamp black in the flame that radiates the light. Then there needs to be enough air and heat farther up in the flame to burn away the lamp black, or everything nearby will turn black and absorb the light, like the old part of the Norwegian farm house or a lamp chimney when the lamp has been turned too high. The flow needs to be laminar. If the wick is too high or there is too much flow for any other reason, the flow becomes turbulent, and then there are spots in it where carbon escapes. That happens to non-smokeless candles if the wicks are not trimmed in time. In smokeless candles the wick bends over and burns to the proper length at the edge of the flame where there is both air and heat.

DBSAR wrote:

Fritz t. Cat wrote:

A circular wick type was invented by Argand. It apparently eliminated most of the smoke from whale oil lamps. In Norway, I saw old kerosine lamps with flat and round wicks. The ones with round wicks had much smaller bulges around the flame in their chimneys, which looks as though they worked much better. The wick itself was actually flat, but it was fed upward throw a circular hole that bent it in a circle. Lamps are incandescent like simple electric lights, so the key to efficiency is temperature. The chimney makes it brighter by drawing air. But if there is too much air, there are no carbon particles, like a gas stove. It is the carbon lamp black in the flame that radiates the light. Then there needs to be enough air and heat farther up in the flame to burn away the lamp black, or everything nearby will turn black and absorb the light, like the old part of the Norwegian farm house or a lamp chimney when the lamp has been turned too high. The flow needs to be laminar. If the wick is too high or there is too much flow for any other reason, the flow becomes turbulent, and then there are spots in it where carbon escapes. That happens to non-smokeless candles if the wicks are not trimmed in time. In smokeless candles the wick bends over and burns to the proper length at the edge of the flame where there is both air and heat.

A design similar to the Aladdin Lamp Kerosene wick design?

Way back in the 70’s we had the 3 day week. It’s a long and political story that lead to the Winter of Discontent in 1978. There’s a ton of stuff to read if you want to.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week

Basically, the 3 day week means the lights went off, not many people had televisions, cooking wasn’t electric, heating and cooking were gas.

So we lit Tilley, Vapalux, or other old paraffin lamps and heaters instead. The most famous clean burning paraffin heater being the Aladdin.

Every petrol station here had an Esso Blue pump for filling cans with clean burning paraffin (clean kerosene) for our lamps, heaters and stoves. And as it is today, it’s an up yours to anyone telling me I have to pay ‘the man’ to have to cook and heat on domestic supply.

This Vapalux belonged to my dad who was a vet (animals not Vietnam). As a child I helped him deliver calves, find lost sheep and lambs, watch piglets being born, and light us playing Monopoly or cards round the table at night.

And here it is hissing and glowing to this day. Always a pleasing thing is this lantern

Over in the US you still have Miles Stair, an old connection of mine for importing CountyComm stuff to the UK, an Endtimer, survivalist, and an enthusiast of this wonderful old tech.

http://www.milesstair.com/

http://www.endtimesreport.com/

Any UK residents can find a similar love for all things lighting, heating, cooking at Base-camp. There are two people (Mike and Amanda) who run it, husband and wife, massively knowledgeable on all of it. If you phone and want to chat, make a big mug of tea and have biscuits in your pocket, these chats can take literally hours. Proper old school people, I love them.

https://www.base-camp.co.uk/

here is a Youtube channel with oil lamp explanations:

Wow, since this thread is de-necro’d. This is an oil lamp from the 1800’s my great grandparents used to use. I ended up with 4 family oil lamps which my grandmother all had converted to electric (in the late 50’s I believe). All original globes and chimneys

Lampe-Pigeon

!!

!!

Non, je ne parle pas couramment le français ; juste un peu

lampliter wrote:

Lampe-Pigeon

!!

!!

Non, je ne parle pas couramment le français ; juste un peu

That’s a beautiful lamp there, French classic.

I have this old Matador oil lamp:

Could use some cleaning and would probably work.

Found this oil lamp at the city dump. Whoever threw it away, set it beside the dumpster hoping someone would take it and put it to use. There was no chimney and an old nasty wick. The lamp was covered with old oil varnish, was all yellow, and it smelled really bad. I spent some time cleaning it out with acetone and some other things. Bought a new wick, and a new chimney. Bingo, works perfect.

RobertB. Great save

Noice!

I am still looking for a “Aladdin” Brand lamp that is used. New ones are insanely priced.

To those that have never seen one. In a few short words, they are very bright in comparison to other oil lamps.

I have two Aladdin Lanterns and keep them for the nostalgic memories since we used them before electrical power was available where we live. If you run them at too low a brightness, they emit noticeable soot, but otherwise they are great because they can be very bright and quiet (completely silent with a nicer tint compared to white gas Coleman Lanterns).

We have not used the Aladdins recently because unfortunately the replacement "Aladdin Lox-On Mantles" became too expensive (over $30 each) and difficult (if not impossible) to obtain. If anyone knows of a reliable source for the mantles (that is not Ebay), please let me know.

We now use two "BLF LT1" li-ion battery lanterns for power outages and enjoy using them even when we have power. I also occasionally fire up the calcium carbide Miners Lamp that I used as a kid (which was way brighter than the flashlights of that era) and are always surprised it still works like new and that calcium carbide rocks can still be obtained fairly easily. The big disadvantage of the Miners Lamp is that while you have some limited control over the brightness, you don't turn it OFF after it is ON and once you add water to the calcium carbide you need to clean and reload for the next use.

The Big Oil Lantern Thread is a Great idea. Thanks DBSAR.
I find old oil lanterns very interesting.

To celebrate the revival of the big oil lantern thread I made a picture of my smallest one.

lets also get Roostre to fire up one of his Aladins. Those monsters are really bright in comparison to the single wick oil lamps.

Yes I am a fan of the Aladdin lamps so to give a comparison, here is a short video (made by Aladdin of course.)

https://youtu.be/Bw7dUgebWHg

strayz wrote:

lets also get Roostre to fire up one of his Aladins. Those monsters are really bright in comparison to the single wick oil lamps. :D

The supply of mantles I purchased in case there was a Y2K disaster ran out several years ago and I had not even thought much about the Aladdins (which have become decorations) until “The Big Oil Lantern Thread !” was revived.

Like the mantles for the Coleman White Gas Lanterns, the Aladdin Mantles are very fragile after their first use and eventually get holes in them and need to be replaced, but the Aladdin Mantles are hard to find and very expensive compared to the Coleman Mantels.

shedding some light on the aladdin mantle lamps

Are those Thorium mantles?