Tilly Lamp - magnificent success - more Tilly Lamp tips needed

dylanwinter

dylanwinter

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Joined
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Location
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www.keepturningleft.co.uk
It appears I broke two of 10 universal commandments of small boat sailing when it camre to dealing with Tilly


as you know they are cardinals one through ten

In this case I obviously broke Cardinal 7

and I can never really forgive myself for cheating on it -

"always use clean fresh fuel - throw away the dirty stuff - it is nothing but liquid trouble"

I bought some parffin today - beautiful stuff it is - looks like olive oil

the colour of honey

nothing like the gunk I was feeding her with


The other is the second universal commandment of small boat sailing -

cardinal 2 in fact

and that is

"patience is your best friend...................under most circumstances"

the other eight we all know already and are not worth repeating here

needless to say they are most reasonable and beautfully written bits of sailing folklore that their versacity and perspicacity is beyond doubt

it was the posts from vyv cox which reminded me that I had forgtotten to apply Cardinal 2

make sure the reservoir is swimming in meths before putting it on the lamp to ensure the vapouriser is fully heated. I never open the valve until the pre-heater has almost gone out.

so when I applied the advice from Saint Vic

Tilly lit herself very nicely



Two questions

how many times a night will Tilly he need a thoroughly good pumping

the other is to do with unguents

paraffin is hateful crawling creeping moving around stuff

meths and petrol evaporates... paraffin likes to linger on rags, around funnels and will seek to escape through the thread of the tightest bottle where it seeks to spread itself all over the outside


How do I keep the lamp, the boat and myself fragrant?

plastic bags, rubber gloves, an oily rag

Dylan






I am only just starting out on this path

I am a mere acolyte at the feet of those who can bring 40 decades of experience to these difficult and complicated matters

some snaps and a film are somewhere

Dylan


tillylamptriumph-267x300.jpg
 
 
Talking about Paraffin

Paraffin tales from Three Men In A boat;

We join "J" (Jerome) and his friends Harris and George in Chapter Four during their planning of a two week rowing boat trip up the River Thames from London to Pangbourne at the end of the 19th century:

" 'Begin with breakfast.' (George is so practical). 'Now for breakfast we shall want a frying pan' - (Harris said it was indigestible; but we merely urged him not to be an ass, and George went on) - a teapot and a kettle, and a methylated spirit stove.' 'No oil,' said George, with a significant look; and Harris and I agreed. We had taken up an oil stove once, but 'never again'. It had been like living in an oil shop that week. It oozed. I nevel saw such a thing as paraffin oil is to ooze. We kept it in the nose of the boat, and, from there, it oozed down to the rudder, impregnating the whole boat and everything in it on its way, and it oozed over the river, and saturated the scenery and spoilt the atmosphere. Sometimes, a westerly oily wind blew, and at othertimes an easterly oily wind, and sometimes it blew a northerly oily wind, and maybe a southerly oily wind; but whether it came from the Arctic snows, or was raised in the waste of the desert sands, it came alike to us laden with the fragrance of paraffin oil. And that oil oozed up and ruined the sunset; and as for the moonbeams, they positively reeked of paraffin. We tried to get away from it at Marlow. We left the boat by the bridge, and took a walk through the town to escape it, but it followed us. The whloe town was full of oil. We passed throught the churchyard, and it seemed as if the people had been buried in oil. The High Street stank of oil; we wondered how people could live in it. And we walked miles upon miles out Birmingham way; but it was no use, the countryside was steeped in oil. By the end of that trip we met together at midnight in a lonely field, under a blasted oak, and took an awful oath (we had been swearing for a whole week about the thing in an ordinary, middle class way, but this was a swell affair) - an awful oath never to take paraffin oil in a boat again - except of course, in case of sickness. Therefore, in the present instance, we confined ourselves to methylated spirit. Even that is bad enough. You get methylated pie and methylated cake. But methylated spirit is more wholesome when taken into the system in large quantities than paraffin oil. " We then rejoin the three men in Chapter Ten on the first night of their boating trip whist they prepare their camp for the night, when they reveal a novel way to compensate for their meths stove's lack of power: "We put the kettle on to boil, up in the nose of the boat, and went down to the stern and pretended to take no notice of it, but set to work to get the other things out. That is the only way to get a kettle to boil up the river. If it sees that you are waiting for it and are anxious, it will never even sing. You have to go away and begin your meal, as if you were not going to have any tea at all. You must not even look round at it. Then, you will soon hear it spluttering away, mad to be made into tea. It is a good plan, too, if you are in a great hurry, to talk very loudly at each other about how you don't need any tea, and are not going to have any. You get near the kettle, so that it can overhear you, and then shout out, 'I don't want any tea, do you, George?' to which Geprge shouts back, 'Oh, no, I don't like tea; we'll have lemonade instead - tea's so indigestible.' Upon which the kettle boils over and puts the stove out. We adopted this harmless bit of trickery, and the result was that, by the time everything else was ready, the tea was waiting. We then lit the lantern and squatted down to supper."

With thanks to Strikealight
 
Tilly lamps are best left outside......noisy smelly things in my opinion...but....as a 'combined source of heat & light'....second to none...it may kill you but at least you will be quite cosy when it happens.

BTW...I once saw a video of a bloke who heated his office with three or four tea lights in a bread tin covered by a flowerpot ....nutty sod as I recall...but it seemed to work......why not give him a call ??

Failing that....pleanty of Bovril/ Rum / Brandy....in that order !
 
My father in law was a health physics monitor at a nuclear plant.
When he found that we had spare Tilley mantles in our luggage he made us put them in the garden shed.
He may have been over reacting, but be aware that they are radioactive when unburnt.
 
I think the problem is that you were trying to fast track, you proved your competence with candles, and then went straight to pressure lamps, would have been better to spend a little time with hurricane lamps.

Yes, different lamps do have different characters, a good lamp once found is nurtured.

The smell of both meths and paraffin when using them on a boat is something I've never resolved, I think you have to live with it.
 
Lots of things from the past were radio-active, when I served on nuclear submarines as you joined your watch was removed for testing as the minor radiation from luminous dials would upset the monitoring systems.

Whether Tilly lamps meed pumping over the evening depends on quite how long the evening is. On the longer nights we used to pump up once or twice an evening. As a ten year old it was my task to fill and prepare the lamps every night, and one soon got the hang of it. The basics of success are clean fuel, not a problem 50 years ago, do not hurry the preheat, always start with full fuel tanks and never touch the mantle. Wick based paraffin lamps with mantles gave an even more pleasant light and less heat so they are worth looking for.
 
You need to heat it for a minimum of one minute in warm weather and 1 minute and a half in cold weather. Always use meths to preheat never anything else.
The old mantles were radioactive. The new ones are not.

Pumping: Pump 40 times when Tilley is alight. Then later as the pressure falls it will begin to splutter and lose brightness. Pump up immediately with 20 strokes. If later it suddenly goes out usually the vaporiser is hot enough and if you re pump quickly it will light up again.
Be careful with the glass. It has a habit of breaking if bumped when hot.
I have a plywood box I made out for it with a lid. Do not store the Tilley and the funnel and the clamp together because sods law one of these will bump the glass and break it. Store them separately, the clamp in the jar with the lid tightly shut, together with the other two items in a small cardboard or wooden box.
 
I use a Coleman Dual Fuel Lamp. Kicks out wonderful warmth. The light isnt at all harsh and once primed it lasts for a leisurely bottle of wine. There is no whiff at all from the Coleman fuel I get at my local camping shop and reassuring hiss of the lamp reminds me of childhood summer holidays...
 
Euphonyx said:
I use a Coleman Dual Fuel Lamp. Kicks out wonderful warmth. The light isnt at all harsh and once primed it lasts for a leisurely bottle of wine. There is no whiff at all from the Coleman fuel I get at my local camping shop and reassuring hiss of the lamp reminds me of childhood summer holidays...
Click to expand...

Meant to ask can you use the same odourless fuel in a Tilly!?
 
Vara said:
The smell of both meths and paraffin when using them on a boat is something I've never resolved, I think you have to live with it.
Click to expand...

I use lamp oil (priced at very slightly less than the bottled tears of Mother Teresa) in my cabin lamps because it has practically no smell. Does it work in pressure lamps, though?
 
dylanwinter said:
how many times a night will Tilly he need a thoroughly good pumping
Click to expand...

That all depends on how full the reservoir is when you start. If it's almost full you won't need many strokes to get up to pressure, but the relative size of the air space will increase fast and you'll have to pump more often. If it's fairly empty you'll need a lot of pumping to get it started but it will then require much less attention. For an evening in my last boat, which was heating and lit by Tilley lamp over the winter, I would normally go for compromise and start with the reservoir half full.
 
DanTribe said:
My father in law was a health physics monitor at a nuclear plant.
When he found that we had spare Tilley mantles in our luggage he made us put them in the garden shed.
He may have been over reacting, but be aware that they are radioactive when unburnt.
Click to expand...

ITYWF they are still radioactive when burnt!
Possibly more dangerous due to radioactive particles particles then being shed, with a risk of ingestion.
 
VicS said:
ITYWF they are still radioactive when burnt!
Possibly more dangerous due to radioactive particles particles then being shed, with a risk of ingestion.
Click to expand...

I think there may be a small degree of over reaction with all these assumptions of radioactivity. Perhaps we should put all our watches in nuclear bunkers for safe keeping. Maybe cover and pack them in with cat litter too; yes it's radioactive also.
Maybe you could fit in the Irish Sea as well, the most radioactive sea in the world; well actually, the only one.
 
SAMYL said:
I think there may be a small degree of over reaction with all these assumptions of radioactivity. Perhaps we should put all our watches in nuclear bunkers for safe keeping. Maybe cover and pack them in with cat litter too; yes it's radioactive also.
Maybe you could fit in the Irish Sea as well, the most radioactive sea in the world; well actually, the only one.
Click to expand...

I'd have thought an over reaction too but I'm not qualified to disagree with a Health Physics Monitor.
I dont know what assumptions you refer to. Other than in countries where its banned gas mantles contain thorium, which is radioactive.
ITYWF that luminous clocks and watches these days generally use phosphorescent rather than radioluminescent paint so probably only your diving watch that should be kept in its lead lined casket.
 
I know that this may seem a little odd to you "Tilley types" but I once heard that if you connected a bulb ( not the tulip type but an edison one) to a battery ,that gave out some form of light
Might be worth a try some time
 
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