A practical use for a Coleman lantern

Stacking wood by Coleman light...

Its hard to tell in the picture but the pile the lantern is on is tall, too tall really, over six feet. While we were on vacation last week the rear of the piles fell over. The left most pile is leaned up against a tree. I'm guessing we had some wind which caused everything to let go. Monday I made it into three shorter piles...

Wood rack part: many

If you've read back through the archives you'll realized I'm somewhat obsessed with storing firewood. The original mk1 firewood rack at camp had about had it so it was time...

This is actually two mk2 mod2 firewood racks. While the rack at home hadn't rotted out it didn't have a top so my wood would end up wet. Its almost just as easy to cut out two firewood racks at once as it is to cut one. You can see on the right where I started assembling one, thats actually a mistake, the block should go inside the long 2x4s, the way its built in the picture the uprights will be too close together...

The mod2 version features a less steep roof pitch which should result in better wood coverage, its one piece for the uprights and of course the 4x4 blocks underneath. Everything except the roof is pressure treated.

The original mk2 model had a plywood roof with metal roofing over it, this one just has the metal roofing but has twice as many stringers (as in I put them on proper 16" centers this time) to make it strong.

It sits on the same site as the original mk1 and while it doesn't hold quite as much wood it will keep the wood it has much drier and cleaner.

Since cold weather has arrived in central MA I've been using up the wood in the mk1 wood rack at my house in preparation for installing the second mk2 mod2 there, I still need to source the metal roofing. One of the design specs in this one is to make it work with a single sheet of roofing and fortunately I'd thought to bring my angle grinder to camp to cut the roofing. This also ensures we have good overhangs front and back, the roof structure is 27"x48", the metal roofing is 32"x52", that will make sure the wood is covered and the roof structure itself is protected.

The next structure I need to work on at camp is the shower house. When I originally built it I didn't think about roof overhang so the rear wall never really dries out. Thats awful hard on the OSB sheathing. My solution is to put metal roofing over the existing asphalt shingles. That roof is 48"x79" so I want more like 54"x83" for the roof. Metal roofing comes in 36"x96" sheets so I think I can make it with just two sheets. We've got some scraps from the camp roof if I make a mistake...

Wicks away!

Remember that Dietz wick lantern? I finally took a little time and put it back together.

I didn't paint everything on it, I figured the heat would be hard on the paint.

In retrospect I probably should have painted the ring under the fuel cap and the part under the burner but the lack of paint does add some visual interest.

One of the kinda nice things about wick lanterns is that something has to be really wrong before it won't light...

I also took a minute to put a new wick and mantle on my aluminum Aladdin

Aladdin mantles burn off differently than Coleman, where a Coleman mantle kind of smolders the Aladdin flashes off with a woof! Much more exciting than I expected. I'm pleased with this lamp it puts out more light than the other one I have which is no huge surprise as that one has a mantle that was on it when I got it. Aladdin mantle production was stopped for a couple years and only resumed in like 2012, AFAIK they're now made by the same people who make Peerless mantles.

On the whole the wickies are fun but I don't think you need to worry about me switching over to them, the light output is quite low and theres no noise so they don't excite me in the way that pressure lamps do...