Part 1 of a 3 part series detailing how to make flat wicks for oil lanterns. Apologies for some of the editing; I'm having a bit of trouble with my equipment at the moment.
Great explanations and instruction. Good sound, no annoying music, good lighting. The all plant based thread, I hadn’t thought of it, saved me money and time. Thank you.
Hi there, great video, I have been using cut strips off of old jeans, I find that if I feed 2 at a time, they keep together even without stitching and the blue dye doesn't seem to affect anything! Great video again!
thank you, Ive just bought a kosmos burner oil lamp, it takes a 2 and 1/8 inch wide wick which is impossible to find and those that i can find do not ship internationally, will be trying this tonight
As long as you don't live in the Middle East, India or Africa, check Miles Stairs Wick Shop. He'll mail internationally except to the aforementioned places.
Pleasure Hope :) The wick in the video is still going strong; we've started using the lantern again as it's moving into Winter here, so when doing the evening chores outside it's dark. Cheers Duncan
The wick making brought me, but I am intrigued by your lamp. Is it a DIY or commercially made? Any identifying markings? Thanks for whatever info you can supply.
G'day Richard, The lantern is a rusty antique I picked up from a junk shop and was missing the front door. I made a replacement out of copper sheet with an acrylic window (didn't have a suitable piece of glass, and my glass cutting skills were not good :) ). It has no markings. The air intake and chimney exhaust perforations are quite decorative each being rows of two curved sided diamonds joined together at one end (wish I could put drawings in the comments). The reflector is a disk of 0.5mm aluminium I hammered into a dish on a wad of canvas and riveted to the back of the lantern. I focused it by measuring the distance from the lamp wick to the lantern's back wall, and then frequently checked it, with the oil lamp sitting on it's own, on the table, and holding the reflector I was making at that distance and, I think, aiming towards a mirror across the room and seeing if the whole reflector lit up in the reflection. If there were any parts that did not, I would gently work on them with the domed hammer to bring them to shape. Hope this is a help. Cheers
@@duncanmcharg thank you so much for the response. It was nice hearing about your journey with this lamp. I had hoped that you could give me someting more to go on to begin a search for one like it. I will use your description and I appreciate your efforts 👌 . I have gotten reinterested in oil lamps over the last year as part of my emergency lighting and heating plan but not at a collecter level. Finding one like yours could send me down that path. Thanks!
Does anyone make lanterns just like that anymore that are functional? Id love to have one just like that. If n9t do you know if its possible to make one yourself?
G'day Zaku, I'm afraid I don't know. I keep an eye out in second hand shops for old lanterns. This one was missing the front door, so I made one out of some copper sheet and fitted an acrylic window in it (probably would be better to put in a glass one but I didn't have any suitable at the time. The acrylic is going fine so far). If you found a small wick holder with oil reservoir you could make a metal frame/cage to go around it and put glass in the sides. Hope this helps. Cheers
I'd buy good German lamp wick, expensive but worth the expense, I use it for my flint and steel rather than char cloth. Though I have gotten on to Chinese lamp wicks now, so much cheaper.
Best way to make char cloth: make it into pellets. Get some denim, roll it really tight like making cinnamon rolls from scratch (where you have a long "snake" of solid denim.) Tie a few thin denim strips around it to keep it rolled tight. Put in a sealed can with a small (1/8" or so) hole poked in it and throw in fire. A flame will begin shooting out of the hole when carbonization begins. When the flame stops, remove from fire and cool. You'll have a "snake" of solid char cloth. You can break this into little pellets, almost like tiny charcoal briquettes, to catch your spark. Works WAY better than flat, plain char cloth as it creates a VERY LARGE ember, and it takes a spark as easy as flat char cloth. You can thank me later.
@@American-PlagueI tried that and didn't like it. The best charcloth I am finding for light tinder (not harsh tinders like pinecones) is cheesecloth, the open weave allows air to flow through it and as you blow the ember it produces sparks that shoot through your tinder bundle, I can blow a teased up jute tinder bundle into flame in under a second using cheesecloth charcloth and do it consistently on video.
@@American-Plague and that's what it's all about mate, go with what works for you and what you like. Cheesecloth has its uses, as I said it's about the best I've used for light tinders but almost useless on harsh tinders, so it's a tradeoff and a lot of people miss that important point about the trade-off. Most of this stuff has a trade-off and there isn't one perfect solution that fits every application.
@waveman0 Yep! 😎 👍🏻 I can totally see the trade off where cheesecloth charcloth (say that 10 times really fast...lol) would work better on light tinder. I wish the internet existed when I was really young. I was always fascinated by exactly how DID people make fire with sticks and how DID people make stone tools and other things of that nature, but that type of information was a little harder to come by before internet, or at least wide spread internet, especially these days where it's in your pocket. Technology aggravates me sometimes but it does have advantages.
