Random Cool Tricks

Great idea. Should be made available commercially

 

i loved my peak 1 multi fuel. i am embarased i never thought of this.

 

This is what you do when you have no time to make things and your welder is too busy to make a rushlight holder from scratch. I took him an old pair of pliers (free) and these old pictures.

...and he made this. Well not exactly like this. I had to tweak it a bit, soften the edges, squash the jaws parallel. I'll still probably thin them down by about half, but they work.
When it's finished I'll wet it and throw it out in the yard to weather appropriately.

I had to sacrifice another pair of my good pliers that look the part already. He'll straighten, twist and curl it to be the second of a pair. This was the deal I made with the wood turner who made me these nine bases.

I can keep seven of my choice if I make him two complete rushlight holders with candle cups. I'm even throwing in the beeswax candles and will strip a sample rush for each.

I'm hoping I can work a deal with the real blacksmiths at the museum to make me about five rushlight nips of different styles if I give them their pick of the remaining seven bases.

I'm giving up (L to R) #2 and #9 in this first round.
They match the mass of the two modified pliers well and will look right and function perfectly. I burn mostly lighter pine splinters since they're everywhere here in Eastern NC and require only the labor to split them.

Light from splinters? You betcha!

 

Pretty danged cool there HD ,,
Not sure what all you do ,, but you said something about taking stuff to your welder ,, get yourself one of them Harbor Freight 130 dollar flux core welders ,, you can do a lot , without waiting on someone else to do it for ya,, I'm no welder ,, by no means ,, but it's a cool little hobby ,,

It seems them PBR drinkers are a dying breed,, And they get funny looks walking out the store carrying a case of PBR's ..
My Grandpa and Uncle raised me on Red White & Blues ,, PBR's ,, and Budwiesers ,,
, I'm just carrying on the traditions ,,

 

I have a case of PBR in bottles as a standing order every week at the package store. They have it waiting in a cart for me when I walk in.

It wasn't an electric welder I needed for this project. Just lots of heat and a hammer. Oh, ...and time. That's the thing I have the biggest shortage of. I found that my kerosene plumbers furnace made a decent forge and heated the jaws up nice and red so I could squash them parallel.

 

Yes sir ,, don't get me wrong ,, I'm sure you know what you're doing ,, I've only recently,, maybe in the last 5-10 years ,,realized how much I could have done if I'd have kept one of them old hand cranked forges Dad had laying around. And that 100+ pound anvil .

Just for the helluvit ,,about them PBR's ,, weekly ,,
Years back , my grandpa ,, would get up around 0400 every morning,, drink coffee ,, watch TV, he'd watch it ,, but couldn't hear it ,, or it would have been so loud ,, everybody else would be up ,,.at sun up ,, he'd walk out and asses what needed to be done in the garden . Come back in ,,, by 0900 ,, he'd open a beer ,, pour it in a frosted mug ,, drink his beer ,, and toke on a cigar,, or his pipe.
Not long after that ,, he'd have me out doing the garden assessments ,, usually by 12-1300 ,,, he'd call me up on the porch,, and tell me to go grab us a beer ,,, 1 for him ,, and 1 for me . I was 10-12 yrs old then . Those were probably the best beers of my life .
Which leads up to this ,,, Grandpa had a physical with his doctor 1 year ,, somewhere around his 75 or so yr old I'm guessing.
The Doc checked him out ,, Doc said ,, you're in pretty good health for a man your age ,, scribbling in his note pad ,, Doc asked Grandpa if he drank ,, Grandpa said yea ,, Doc said that's OK, a beer or 2 a day will help clear your system . Doc scribbles in his records ,,, then asks gramps ,, how much do you drink anyway ?? Grandpa said ,,, about a case a day ,, Doctor says ,, " Oh No ,, you can't be drinking like that ,, it's not good for you " ,, my grandpa said ,,, " You just said I was in pretty good health,, and I've been drinking like this for 20 yrs ,, that kinda shut the doc down,, the docs medical journals weren't worth shit after that .
Anyway ,, just reminiscing on my family,, thanks for the memories HD.
Here's to ya ,,,

 

I don't know if I've covered this before, but as upright mantle prices rise it's become more important to me. (I had #1 Son meet a man in a parking lot in Raleigh to buy five Aladdin mantles for $5 each. Probably looked like a drug deal, but I wasn't letting any mantles get away!)

A little dab of muffler putty at the junction of a mantle and mantle frame will extend the life of your mantle by years. I use my lamps and sometimes handle them less-than-gently when shifting a gallery around from lamp to lamp, and on any model mantle lamp this trick works.

Note how the delicate skirt of the mantle, that is essentially ash, is intact.

Without the putty to secure the mantle to the frame it would swing like a bell and smash all the skirt off. This is not only hard on the mantle, but a potential health risk. The thorium in the tiny bits that break off could get into the air, onto the dinner table or into your food where it could harm you. Tiny bits. Tiny risk. But given that they could do this tiny harm to you over and over millions and millions of times, it's a big deal.

I put a big blob on this Kero-Laddin (Coleman/Aladdin) frame. It works. Nobody will be staring at it when it's lit anyway.


This is my preferred putty. If this tube doesn't dry up and turn to dust before I do it's a lifetime supply. After the power goes out is not the time to learn about mantle lamps. They are a wonderful silent light source, and don't take long to master, but the learning curve is steep, especially in the dark.

 

GREAT info Sir
@hot diggity

 

I've been sitting on this one for a while, because it has risks. Life has risks. Don't be an idiot, and if you hurt yourself don't blame me. I told you there were risks. There are also rewards. Great time savings, mess and other risks.

This is my new favorite method for removing old, hard, cracked, inaccessible lantern and stove cap gaskets. I've burned them out, dug them out with screwdrivers and knives, drilled holes in them, and attacked them with nut picks. None of those techniques has been as successful as using 18 ga needles. These are from my vet, but you can get them at Tractor Supply Company or online. I'm undefeated on the last four cap gaskets I needed to change. (A Tilley, an Akron, a Bialaddin and an Aladdin PL-1) The needle will cut right through the most hardened gaskets I've found and when it hits the brass cap it bends and follows the cap around under the gasket, rolling it right out of the cap. Depending on the gasket they may be single use, but I have one that's beat three old gaskets, and they're cheap. Plenty useful for other stuff as well.

 

I'm gonna have to try that. I want to keep one in my camper but I figure the road is probably pretty hard on mantles. Especially the off-road, lol. Not that the newer mantles are any good anymore anyway. I ought to just sell all that stuff and use LEDs for everything. But I like my kerosene lamps, dammit! D:

 

Gender reveal party target stand.
Powder target, very effectively deployed with a shotgun.

It's a girl!

 

I had to replace a broken mantle on this Coleman 134 match lighting lamp tonight. As I did, I was reminded of some mantle tricks that I use often and with great success.

I never have a problem finding a mantle. The trouble becomes finding a mantle that's exactly the right size for the application. I covered the double tie Tilley and Bialaddin style earlier, so this is just for string tie mantles. You can alter the size in a couple ways. If all you have is mantles that are way too big you can tie them above the burner. Don't be afraid to use a bread tie wire if you think it needs to be tied to the burner cap. Paper and plastic bread tie coatings will burn right off, so don't worry about them.

If you need a mantle that's about 30% smaller you can burn-in the mantle while you light the lamp. A conventional burn-in, where you burn the mantle to ash with a match and let it cool before lighting will give you a mantle that inflates to its maximum size when the lamp is lit.

These tricks allow me to use mantles that aren't quite right, but are what I have a good stock of. This lets me save my old coarse weave thorium treated mantles for lamps that deserve something of better quality.

 

Living on the desert my solar was a bit weak at the time so we supplemented DC lighting with oil and to improve that we put shiny aluminum pie plates behind the lamps and my son made stands the hung on the walls, it literally doubled their out put.

 

works for candles as well.

 

The Christmas tree ninja.