Posted by Rick K on March 25, 2008, 8:02 pm
For the last 6 months, I have been burning the following out in my yard:
3 traffic guards (painted red/white/blue, with cooresponding red/white/blue globes
1 Dietz 8-day
1 late model Handlan 2000
1 Dietz Steel Clad, with various "furnace cement modified" Adlake burners.
The traffic guards, the 8-day, and the Handlan 2000 (true utility lanterns) are about as close to maintenence free as one can get. I fill them about once a week (a traffic guard on "low" will burn 7 days), rinse out the founts with isopropyl alchohol, scrape the carbon out of the burners and trim the wicks every 2 months, and they just sorta burn with little more effort than that.
The Steel Clad (New York Model).... a railroad lantern forced into some sort of road utility service, is a slightly different animal. I can run it with a 1/2 inch flame during the night, a shorter flame during the day, and get two entire nights between fillings. There is no way that they were ever used for more than a single night of road marker use in their day. An unmodified burner can not be "cut back" substantially without flickering to the point where it would go out, so one night is about all one would get out of a single filling.
Warmup characteristics of a "Steel Clad" are such that they need to be babied for the first 1/2 hour or so. There is no way that a large string of them could be maintained cost effectivly. On the other hand, the "Traffic gard", Handlan 2000, and the Dietz 8 day could be kept burning for many days per filling, so there would be little need to ever deal with a warm-up period. They could be refilled while burning and would just keep on going with no regular adjustment at all.
Flipping the coin a bit... we have had some fairly severe wind storms here in New England this winter. The Traffic Gards, 8-day, and Handlan 2000 have all be extinguished one or more times in the 30-40 mph wind storms we have had here this winter. At the same time, the Steel Clad hardly flickered and never went out. I guess the railroad heritage put somthing into them that gave them a plus in the wind catagory.
Also, the Steel Clad is useful for general area illuminmation as well, whereas the true "utility lanterns" are simply illuminated markers and shed little useful area lighting.
So, that is a summation of my winter of utility lantern experience.
My next project is a kerosene street lamp. I will post pictures as work progresses.
Rick
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