I was outside all day splitting firewood (something I should have done in July, but, well... yaknow...
Anyway, I was watching the street lamp quite a bit, as it is about 100 feet from where I do my firewood stuff. The 3x5' flag that is mounted on the same pole as the lamp was standing out straight for a good part of the day due to the 10-15 MPH breeze, but the street lamp flame hardly wiggled. The flame looked very calm as I grew accustumed to all summer and fall.
About 6PM the street lamp went out. I ran out there to see what was up and found that it went out because the tank was empty. Yahooo!! empty, rather than for some other reason!!!
I also checked out the Kirkman #2 and found that it went out sometime today as well. I checked it's font and found that it was pretty much empty as well, except for some water that was sitting on the bottom (no purple stuff in the #2)...
So I gave both the Kirkman # 2 font and the Kirkman #300 tank a really good bath in soap and water, followed by an IPA rinse. The wicks got a good soaking as well. I also brought in my RR Kerosene can and gave it a good cleaning too. They are all down in the basement drying out near the wood stove.
Tomorrow I will fill them all back up and see what happens.
I am still trying to figure out what this red-ish-purple-ish (pink?) stuff was. This morning there was a lot of it sitting on the top of the kero in my kero can. I put a paper towel in there and parts of the towel instantly became dark pinkish colored. Oddly enough when the paper towels sat for a while and dryed out the pink color totally went away.
Since these are runing 24/7, I guess I will have to mark my calendar and give these two a good bath every three months or so. If that is all it takes to keep them running, no big deal. I wonder if such a schedule was standard practice 50-100 years ago?
Rick
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