Wednesday, November 25, 2009

And 7...

I just can't stop myself. Last Monday I bought a Wenzel 1887 lantern. I haven't got a pic yet but its a Petromax type lantern (Butterfly and Brite-lyt are other brands). Found it on Craigslist for $35.
The Wenzel is a Chinese made copy of a German design.
A 600cp (candle power) kerosene burning monster the Petromax design provides two methods for preheat, theres an alcohol cup just like Coleman used but theres also a crazy blowtorch arrangement that shoots fire at the generator...

This lantern was made on the cheap and the pump is TERRIBLE. Plus you need a LOT of pressure to make the blowtorch work so its a huge hassle to get the thing running. The pump leather is thin so it doesn't make a great seal and if you push too fast the air slips by...
Brite-Lyt has 2 solutions for that, one is an updated pump which uses an o-ring arrangement, the other is a schrader valve so you can use a regular tire pump. I ordered both. Figure the schrader valve is better because I can use a bigger volume pump (or electric compressor) but the pump will be good if we're out camping with no other pump available.

The glass is broken and I guess this is a common problem with Wenzel lanterns which were, as I mentioned before, made on the cheap. Brite-lyt makes some big claims about their glass so I grabbed one.

Finally I don't have any 500cp mantles, my 249 is the brightest single mantle lantern I had before this so I tried one of my Peerless 24A mantles, it worked okay but was clearly too small. I ordered some of the Brite-lyt mantles but probably should have waited, the online guys say they're junk. I need to call Leacock Coleman and order some more #24A mantles anyway as I want to try one in a 200A, they carry a #111 that should work well.

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