Lamp oil

With the onset of winter I always try to be prepared should we have a big power outage like back in '08. That time we were without power for a day and a half which was quite bearable with minimum supplies but if it'd have lasted much longer we wouldn't have been so well off. These days I keep more supplies around just in case. One of those supplies is kerosene, the other is lamp oil.
I use lamp oil because kerosene by itself smells pretty bad, even in the Aladdin lamps that are designed to burn it. This is especially noticeable in the summer time, when its warm the lamps will off gas a little and can really stink up the room. To fix that issue in the summer I drain the kerosene out and put just a bit of lamp oil in.
Lamp oil is derived somehow from wax, when you put out a lamp burning lamp oil it smells like you're melting crayons. The problem with anything made from wax is that it has a relatively high temperature at which it'll turn solid, its waxing temp if you will. So to get around that I've been mixing some kero with my lamp oil. This also helps to control costs, the lamp oil is SUPER expensive, like $5 a quart. Kerosene at the hardware store is expensive too but at $10/gallon its about half the price of lamp oil. I can get Jet A at a local airport for $4/gallon, Jet A is basically very low sulfur kerosene, it burns well with low odor on its own. I haven't Jet A in an Aladdin lamp yet but I've burned a lot in Colman and Tilley lamps and friends assure me its good in wick lamps too. Using Jet A my cost comes way down and I think I can reduce the percentage of lamp oil since the Jet A doesn't smell too bad anyway.

Anyway on a recent evening I picked up a new bottle of lamp oil, its the big one on the right in the picture. The little bottle in the middle is full of a 50:50 mixture of lamp oil and kerosene, the kero came from the bottle on the left which you can now see is marked "Jet". I refilled the kero bottle with Jet A because its easier to pour out of than a bigger jug. The big bottle has about 30 percent kero and 70 percent lamp oil.

I took this picture this morning, the temps were hovering just about freezing although the interior of the garage hadn't really warmed up yet. You can see the large bottle with the 30:70 mix has turned solid, its real hard, like ice. The smaller bottle is still liquid, no sign of gelling or waxing at all.

So the extra percentage of kero in the smaller bottle is clearly doing its job.

Here's the result:

Burning well, basically no scent. There was a little smell when I first lit the lamp but once it warmed up all the way the smell was gone. I've had it burning for about four hours now and its steady as a rock.

New Toy

I don't remember if I've talked about Tim before, he's my neighbor Bill's brother in-law and is a self-styled picker like the guys on TV. I met him a couple years ago at a party at Bill's place and brought him over to see the lanterns. He figured he could make some money trading in lanterns but quickly got hooked. Now he's got a collection bigger than mine. Occasionally he runs across something he's not into and I get the chance to grab it.

Most recently he put a post on Facebook of a bunch of stuff he'd bought which included an Aladdin lamp. I've got an Aladdin lamp and they're very cool so I told him that if he didn't want it I'd bite. So a couple days later (after a small monetary exchange) this shows up:

The fount is aluminum and theres no mantle but the glass is perfect. I broke out the Mothers Polish and managed to produce:

The aluminum polished up pretty nicely, theres one scratch I can't do much about and without a buffing wheel it'll never be great but right now its a fine five footer. I put some kerosene in it and it lit right up although I forgot to get pictures. The next step is to buy a mantle and it'll be ready to go.

I also picked up some lamp oil from my local hardware store, supposedly it'll burn cleaner and help prevent flare-ups. I'll give it a try over the next couple days.

Aladdin Lamp

Fred gave me an Aladdin lamp for Christmas.

If you've never seen an Aladdin they're the pinnacle of wick lamp technology. Really they're a blend of wick and pressure lamp tech as the round wick heats a mantle which is coated with a chemical (commonly thorium) that fluoresces when heated.

Here it is pretty much as delivered:

Of course being a dope I jumped right in and lit it up. I also thought at the time that it was amber glass. Turns out the old kerosene had oxidized to that lovely amber color. My rush to light it sucked that rotten kero into the wick and ruined it. I could get it lit but it wouldn't burn right and smelled and didn't give much light. Wednesday I finally remembered to order a new wick and today it arrived. I ran right out and installed it with some fresh kero and an hour later it lit right up.

Heres the second time I lit it:

It throws about the same light as a 40 watt bulb but its a soft white light. Its very steady and makes no noise though it does give off quite a bit of heat which is nice on a cold evening.