A question and a tip about hurricane lamps.

I always keep a good stock of hurricane lamps in my house for power cuts, they are great for cheap lighting and give off a nice bit of warmth too.

This week in preparation for winter, i gave mine a check over and noticed that the fuel level had dropped in a few. Upon closer inspection it appeared that i had a leak in some of them, but i was struggling to see where abouts.

I have bought some cheaper ones, and recently i bought a better quality one, but had the same problem. The lamps do not have a maximum fill level indicator on them, so i just filled them right up to the top of the filling hole, like you would in your gas tank.

However, i have traced the leak to the where the bottom of the handles are connected.....see the red circles to see where exactly my fuel is leaking....



The filling hole seems to be just at the same level as the enitire joint of these handle bases, and i traced the leak to there. So my tip is to check yours if you think you are losing fuel, and my question is.....is there usually a recommended level to fill lamps like this?

As a fix i'm going to epoxy the joints all the way around, see how i get on with that.

Thanks,

CX.

Good tip , and thanks for sharing it !

My oil lamps are antique glass ones. I love them ! Another reminder to all is to make sure you have extra wicks. During the recent storms I was only able to use two of the four lamps I have because I hadn't bothered to check the wicks this season, and I really thought I still had some extra wicks in the utility drawer. Easy thing to overlook.

So, with winter approaching, lets all check those lamps so we're ready.

Again, thank you for that tip and advice.

reply to post by seaside sky


Good point about the wicks.....have got a few spare in the cupboard but a few more won't hurt.

Cheers.

CX.

Ran into the same issue as you from leakage. I did buy a few recently and they did give a warning about fill levels. If I recall exactly it is about half an inch lower than the fill hole. I of course said hell no and filled it up to the fill hole level. About 10 minutes later I saw the puddle. So its not just you, carefull where ya fill em to.

i fill mine just to the top of the side wall. also, I use old t shirts for wicks. cut em a couple inches wide then fold them til they fit in the wick slot. they last almost as long as store bought ones as long as you dont let your fuel run out.

reply to post by CX


I have some of these, even some mini ones only a couple inches tall. All mine are antiques. They aren't hard to find and they don't cost much. Neither does fuel. Course, you can put a lotta different things in there to burn too. We tried some crappy perfume in a mini one and even it burned.

It has never occurred to me to store these filled. We store ours clean, right next to the fuel, in fuel safe containers.

If you did that, it'd probably be safer. And at least if one of your lamps got knocked over, you'd not lose the fuel that was in it.

Good topic.