Also would be cool to see him talk about those type that are some kind of liquid sealed inside a glass ball and made to be thrown at the fire to put it out. Also the newer style of that were you throw it and it explodes to cover everything.
To be fair kerosene isn't that flammable. A puddle of room temperature kerosene won't light without a wick. Heated kerosene on the other hand does give off enough vapours to ignite.
@@marc-andreservant201 True. But a couch, tablecloth, carpet, etc. will serve quite adequately as a wick. It's not known if the Chicago fire of 1871 was really started by a lantern but the reason that many believe it was is because it is a very real possibility.
Growing up without electricity back in kenya, we used to use this Dietz lamp as our ever day source of light. Kerosene was the fuel we used and it took a great toll on our eyes and lungs because we had to use it for homework also. I can say it's a very very durable. We still have our lamp my dad bought back in '93.
I grew up in the U.S. but the infrastructure in my area was so bad that there were times I had to rely on these as a light source for months at a time. These are very durable, I still have the same one my grandpa bought in the 50's.
As someone that's actually used oil lamps for lighting, there's a trick to setting the wick height properly. If the lamp is smoking the wick is too high. Lowering the wick slightly will reduce the light produced. Counterintuitively, continuing to lower the wick will actually make the light brighter. Our usual procedure was the lift the wick high to light it and then lower the wick until there was barely any flame at all, then raise the wick slowly for the desired brightness. If it's smoking you've raised the wick too high! ETA: Forgot the most important part, those final height adjustments must be done with the chimney in place!
I may or not have noticed this, we used to keep a few oil lamps on hand in case of power failures. One thing to keep in mind when using an oil lamp, is what is above the lamp. We could have had a kitchen fire because we didn't think about cabinets being above the lamp.
When lighting those lanterns, it's usually considered best practice to leave the flame low for the first five minutes to allow the lantern and the fuel to warm up a bit, then come back and raise the flame to your desired level. Allows the glass to warm up more slowly, and helps avoid coming back to a smoking lantern with a tall flame (and possibly a broken globe).
Quick note: glass is very good at blocking infrared. You can tell the temperature of the glass, but not see through it. I learned this when using IR-based night vision equipment in the Army.
@@alex.thedeadite Pedantry ahead: It is aluminum oxide (Al2O3), not just aluminum, which forms the mineral “corundum”. This is that special glass. Is is technically not “sapphire” because it does not contain the contaminates that give it the colors we associate with sapphires. This is also the case with ruby, which is corundum contaminated with chromium. Nonetheless, it’s all the same stuff and is obviously called ruby or sapphire glass because marketing and it’s easier to understand. Not that it makes much of a difference anyway, same is same.
I've used these a lot for lighting small festival sites (deploying ~100 at a time). I found that turning the wick down isn't a good way to turn the lamps off, mainly because if you turn too far the wick can slip out of the rollers and end up in the fuel tank. It's hard to fish them out, so a better way to turn them off is to simply lift the glass and blow. The other advantage of this is that the wick is perfectly positioned next time you light it.
Then the glass would have to absorb the IR or reflect it back. If it absorbs the IR, then it would re-radiate it, making it detectable outside. Have observed the latter with quartz glass window of Morso woodstove. If you rapidly open the door and point IR thermometer at it (either side), you see T reading same as with door closed. If the glass reflected IR back, you'd likely get into thermal runaway.
@@jacquesblaque7728 in addition to conduction through the glass, as you mentioned, there is convection. Specifically, the exhaust air can (and likely does) carry a lot of heat with it. The fact that the top of the lamp where the exhaust comes out is so hot suggests quite a bit of heat is carried out that way.
Thanks for taking the time to make these videos. Great content for the physical science nerds. In the 70's I drove a 1966 Chevy Impala station wagon with a 289 V8 and 2 barrel carburetor. On fall mornings you could feel the additional horse power produced by the cold morning air. Even my friends (passengers) noticed that the beast had a little more zip than normal.
FYI, the shape of the bell shaped wick shield is also a guide for trimming the wick - trim it to match the curve of the bell and you get a flame that reduces the 'ears' at the ends and produces less soot.
I don't know if anyone has ever mentioned this. But I like the 'uncurated' candor of these videos. It's cool on your main channel how knowledgeable and detailed you can be, but it's also nice to see you being more like a normal person. Stuttering, rephrasing, etc. I enjoy your content and hope you keep on exploring things with us.
Every day that passes I feel more and more confident that he's actually an ancient vampire obsessed with watching technology develop and remember fondly what the world used to be like. "Oh boy! I can't believe I got to visit the TC set!!! I'm your biggest fan! Can I take your picture with my cool retro SLR camera? Wait, why can't I see you through the viewfinder???"
Oil lamps do still have a place. I live in earthquake country in an area with overhead lines. So, in spite in being in the States, electricity loss is a reality. I keep "classic" oil lamps for the sake of near zero maintenance reliability. Dry cell battery lamps are fine until the batteries leak. Lithium batteries can be charged, but can also be overcharged, or forgotten to charge, or be too old to hold a charge. Mantle lamps aren't the most durable things. Tying on a fresh mantle at midnight to the flame of a match is not my idea of fun. Propane is under pressure, can leak, quite the hazard. Kerosene has a roughly 5 year shelf life as it can take on water from the moisture in the air. Paraffin lamp oil has no definitive shelf life. My oldest lamp was filled by my grandmother some time in the late 1950s and will still light today with no fuss. Come the day of a shaker that cuts power for a week or two, or yet another summer of rolling blackouts, I'm completely confident I will have light. (^_^)y
@@ImnotgoingSideways The unavoidable bulging is due to the chemistry, the explosions due to ill-fitting accus used. Modern phones, accus, and chargers refuse to move more power once the capacity is reported full (in the case of chargers once the receiving power drops enough), they can't be overcharged by simply keeping to push more.
I agree, it's a smart move to have at least one old, simple, reliable, thing that you can turn to if the usual systems stop working. I bought electric lights and plenty of batteries after hurricane Sandy knocked out power all over the New York Metro area in 2012. All of those batteries will soon be expired and so now I have to revisit my power failure prepping, take a deep breath, throw out all of those batteries and face having to pay for new ones, with the understanding that ten years from now, it's likely that I will have to throw all of them out too. But my Dietz lantern paraffin oil, candles, and fairy lamps, will work as good as new even 100 years from now.
the added pre-heating of the intake air helps in cold weather especially. You can observe this with a zippo on a really cold, but windstill day - lighting it produces a flame, that will quickly shrink and die. after a few lightings, the heat that was absorbed by the metal of the lighter will push the feed rate high enough to support a flame beyond just a few seconds.
This brings up a good point. Heating the air might have more to do with simply not freezing than it does with reaching a higher temperature. It keeps the water vapor from freezing to the bottom of the globe, and it keeps the fuel warm enough to travel up the wick. Maybe. You'd have to cut the tubes on one to test it, and I'm not gonna do it with mine.
Kerosene freezes at about -40°F Which sounds unrealistically cold, unless you are in Canada or Alaska. It would be cool to see one intact lantern and one with the tubes cut off in a freezer and see when each one stops working.
Canadian here, at my cabin, we use deitz lanterns. Can confirm that a frozen lantern is an absolute bitch to light. Hot blast lantern would light in 5 seconds in a -40c cabin. The cold blast lantern takes up to 20 seconds, allowing the hot lighter flame to "warm up" the combustion air ever slightly enough to get going. Hot blast was full brightness after a moment, cold blast took up to 5
@@andrewmorton9683 I've found that the with the common mantle style lamps here, propane for newer and white gas for older models have their winter cold start struggles as well. White gas pump styles are hard to use with gloves, and propane can be a bit slow to start in -40 as well (even though it shouldn't be)
Yes, the IR wavelength associated with "heat" does not pass through glass. Which is why CO2 lasers can cut glass, they operate in the deep IR spectrum that glass is opaque to.
Except that co2 laser wavelength is 10um, while the(wavelength of the) peak of black body radiation for a candle flame is an order of magnitude smaller. (Candle flames are near IR, co2 lasers are mid IR) IR easily passes through glass, as you will find out sitting behind glass when the sun shines. Glass is famous for not passing (much) UV though.
@@oscargr_ so why does a car trap so much heat when you leave it in the sun? My understanding was that visible light and UV could pass, hit something, convert to a lower wavelength and would then bounce off the glass trapping the energy inside.
@@AmityPost The absorption spectrum of glass is not a smooth line. Though, as far as I can tell middle to long IR waves don't pass so easily. I doubt that fluorescence is a big effect with most materials in car upholstery. What does happen (I believe) is that both visible and near IR pass through the glass, get absorbed by all surfaces in the car. These surfaces increase in temperature, that warms up the air inside the car. And the warm air is trapped. Another factor is probably that the roof an doors get hot on the outside by absorption. And thermal isolation of cars is probably not that great, so the inside also gets warmer through conduction. Feel free to disagree though.😁 Edit to add that not all glass is the same. (And that UV-A and UV-B are not the same) And that car windows get very warm in the sun. And those (also) heat up the interior through conduction.
@@AmityPost the heat won't travel straight through the glass, but it will pass through slowly by heating up the glass (and the metal) and coming out the other side. If you look at a car (that's been running for a while) under a thermal camera the glass will be pretty much a solid color, since it's warm, even though IR isn't going straight through (so you can't see the people inside).
Side note: I don't think the length of the air intake tubes is *just* to act as shock absorbers. By putting the intakes right next to the exhaust, it's hard to get any substantial pressure differential between the two, which helps with reducing any kind of buffeting even if the wind is e.g. blowing upwards. A set of tubes coiled around the base would still have the dampening effect, but you could still get sustained pressure differentials.
Great videos, always entertaining and informative. On your comment about newer cars already having cold air intakes, you are correct, at least on my 2017 Dodge Charger, 3.6L. This vehicle already has a cold air intake that takes air from underneath the front of the vehicle, up through a CLOSED filter canister, and then into the engine. I went on Amazon and bought a name brand cold air intake for this Charger and if you look at customers’ pictures you will see that this particular intake air filter is partially open to the engine compartment and right next to the coolant overflow reservoir. This reservoir and the engine compartment can get very hot relative to the ambient air temperature. Using an OBD2 scan tool and looking at the vehicle’s air intake versus ambient temperature sensors, I found that in stop and go traffic, the factory installed cold air intake system gave about 10°F above ambient, while the purchased system ran closer to 20°F above ambient. At highway speeds, they pretty much read the same. On the other hand, the new system had a larger filter area and the sound it made was amazing. After insulating the metal air intake runner, and the air filter from the overflow reservoir, about a 4° improvement was actually gained over the factory cold air intake system.
These lanterns bring memories from more than 60 years ago. My parents had some kerosene lanterns left over from a party and as children we had lantern parties on Summer nights. Each child got one to carry around the yard and looked for night crawlers while chasing fireflies.
@@machintelligence but when I was a kid there were thousands of them. Every night, every summer. I haven't seen more than a few dozen at a time in recent years.
@@toastiesburned9929 artificial lights have had a negative impact on their mating. That combined with insecticide use and other factors has reduced their population.
This video just made me realize that I belong to a completely different generation! I also felt that all this was common knowledge ( I was born in 1962 and spend a lot of time visiting the family country farm).
If you have the thermal camera I think you do: 1. You might be able to select a different temperature range to get values above 150 C. 2. You can adjust the alignment of the IR and visible images. 3. The latest app update, if you don't have it already, added optional automatic spots for the coldest and hottest points.
The situation with the tipped lantern probably wasn't all that dangerous, although yes, you should definitely have taken the safety measures you mentioned! Kerosene won't generally sustain a flame on its own, since its flash point is significantly higher than room temperature. This means it needs a sustained heat source to allow it to form a flammable vapour - that's what the wick is for. Without the wick, any flame would just rise away from the liquid without heating it any further. If you tried to run a hurricane lantern it on petrol/gasoline with a flash point far below room temperature I expect the whole thing would just erupt into a fireball. I bet it would make a good video. However, unexpected things can happen - maybe it drips down on the carpet, or you splash it on your clothing. Or maybe the kerosene you have happens to have a flashpoint towards the lower end of the range and a piece of the burning wick falls down, etc, etc.
Yes! It could have been dangerous dripping onto carpet which can act like a wick. Here in Canada we can only get low flashpoint kerosene so things are a bit more dangerous here. Also, there are several TH-cam videos showing how hard it is to ignite kerosene with a flame.
I had a paraffin lamp leak onto a plastic surface, the paraffin caught fire almost immediately from the flame inside the lamp - I assume we only get it as a low-flashpoint fuel here Side note: I luckily had a brick to put on top of the flame and put it out
I kinda expected the plastic to melt, either from the heat or from the fuel dissolving it. I don't know if kerosene is the same, but gasoline will eat right through some plastics.
Kids these days... By the time I was 10yo, through diligent experimentation ;-) I had a thorough understanding of the flashpoint of various flammable liquids. Kerosine: no good Petrol (Australian for gasoline): excellent Metholated spirits: excellent Turpentine: no good
I mostly agree with your hot/cold air intake idea. I think it's mostly for cold climate. I used one last winter. It clearly works much better after it warms up. If I didn't pay attention, after about 10 or 20 minutes I would have to turn the wick down or it would completely black out the globe with soot. It was 0°F at night when we started the lanterns and started a fire the first night. The wick was gelled up and took a little bit of time to light
Regarding the odor: Apparently there are very sublte design differences between different makes of hurricane lanterns. Both the cheap knockoff one I bought at the hardware store and my Dietz (that I have since misplaced...) were VERY smelly. My Feuerhand brand lantern though? Practically odorless.
Ever read the book '3 Men In A Boat' ? 'Sometimes a westerly oily wind blew, and at other times 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 paraffine oil. And that oil oozed up and ruined the sunset; and as for the moonbeams, they positively reeked of paraffine'
I've had a few Feuerhands (3), but they used thin metal (this was 15 years ago) that rusts very easily... I've had perforations and leaks, too. Learned my lesson and went to Dietz about 6-7 years ago. If the paint on a Dietz gets chipped, you slap more on. You can strip them and do full repaints pretty easily, too. Never had a metal problem on a Dietz, and no leaks. My lanterns are outside all year long - they get snowed on in the winter and baked in the summer. No problems ever. As for the stink, well, that's subjective, but it's hard to be bothered by it when you're outside, even if I do notice any smell. (I try not to smell the thing.)
@@randynovick7972 Question: I happen to own one of these Dietz that belonged to my grandfather. It works nice even today, but it has a tendency to soot the entire glass after maybe 45-70 minutes. Any ideas on why this might be happening?
If you trim the wick curved slightly humped up in the middle you can adjust the flame higher before soot is produced and get much more light out of the lantern, it takes some practice to get it right.
I replaced all my wicks with carbon felt and sewn in some copper thread to provide thermal feedback. I used only two threads in the middle and down the length of the wick. I also added 1/2" extra wick for the length just in case. It is just enough to keep the wick kinda hot but only warms the fuel. I tried these in two hurricane lanterns (using lamp oil) and they work perfectly. Those wicks NEVER burn up, never need trimming. Even your grand kids won't have to trim or replace them. If they ever clog due to using say citronella oil or scented oil, simply remove the wick and BURN IT. Burn well but not hot enough to melt the copper wire. Once done, wick is like brand new again. You set the wick to the correct height and never adjust it again (just blow it out). If you used multiple copper threads (think speaker wire strands) you can use thicker oil like veg oil and even olive oil. However, that might not be good if you switch back to lamp oil or kerosene. I never tested that. Thermal feedback warms/heats the wick & oil, thinning it out a bit causing it to vaporize more readily. The oil doesn't burn the vapors do at and above the wick. If ANY lamp or lantern is so hot where the fuel compartment is that you cannot touch or hold it, you have a bad problem. Using denser oils will always be the same lighting difficulty copper wire or no copper wire. If you want it brighter, then cut any wick into a goal post shape or spoon shape. Does make a neat flame effect. Copper wire is optional. Especially with lamp oil or kerosene unless it is -40 degrees where you use it.
Nice! 👍👍 I have about 10 of these lanterns, have used them in power outages for years, and had no idea the globe would tilt back like you demonstrated at 3:20.
I’ve got one hanging next to me and one of the old Victorian round wicked table lamps on the other side, and I’ve always been too anxious to ever actually put fuel in them. I was so excited when this series of vids dropped
While pressurized fuel and mantles produce more light and are more efficient they are also fragile and require more maintenance. Mantels are very fragile (try replacing in the dark). The pumps wear out and generators require cleaning. Meanwhile the Dietz style lantern only requires wick trimming and replacement. I use Coleman lanterns (pressurized and mantels) when camping but always have kerosene lantern backup too.
There are also nonpressurized mantle lanterns, most notably Aladdin brand. They're quite bright and need no pumping and thus no pump seal failure. They're a bit pricey though.
@@asafoetidajones8181 still a fragile mantle involved. And that's a big issue in emergency and a significant expense to someone that can barely afford fuel for the lamp.
@@TEDodd they're nice lamps - I have one - but they're pretty much indoors/stationary only. Nobody would take one camping in the first place anyway; they have a large unshielded glass chimney as well as a large glass shade. Basically a vast improvement over a dead flame "oil lamp" as opposed to a better version of a pressurized mantle lantern. And pressure Mantles are fine as long as you don't plan to move the lantern much; hang it up in a tree or set it somewhere stable when you set up camp and leave it there, figure on a new mantle every time you pack up.
I have been around these lanterns for many many years and never had an inkling they were so complex. As has been mentioned by others I suspect that the heating of the air is primarily for the purpose of causing the fuel to evaporate, especially in cold environments.
Heated air rises. Less dense. Lighter. Evaporation, which rises, is in gas form (changed from solid or liquid). If the air flow is traveling down the 2 tubes to the wick...it's being DRAWN.(vacuum) Just a guess. The purpose of the tubes are to supply air to the chimney chamber to more completely burn the soot. Maybe? Thanks!👍
@Les Not just different fuels, but different lanterns. Most examples I've seen in film (whether from knowledge on the part of the set dressers or happy accident) use older styles of lamps and lanterns.
If people are commenting about the hair... You got it, flaunt it. As a 'thinning' man myself if I could grow my hair like that I would. Much respect for the hair but mainly the great videos. Thanks for the dishwasher video, you changed the way I use mine.
I used the cold blast design as a kid to read at night while outside camping. I can tell you that as it heats up the flame does get bigger and you have to lower the wick some to adjust it. I always assumed it was because the whole lantern got warmer and made the kerosene flow through the wick easier. Loved the videos! I would like to see one on the Aladdin lamp or mantle lamps in general. Thanks!
Dietz still made lanterns in their Syracuse, NY factory until 1992. The migration of operations to Asia went over a longer period than you implied. The old factory was recently converted into luxury apartments after being abandoned for over 25 years
TKOR has an awesome video about mixing pool chlorine and another cheap, relatively common household chemical to produce an *aggressively* exothermic reaction, aka spontaneous combustion. If you choose to recreate this video, it's really really important to buy the right kind of pool chlorine. The wrong kind will spontaneously combust in about 12 minutes instead of 1, and instead of an impressive jet of flame, it produces OCEANS of dense smoke that smells like a chlorine-soaked mattress fire at a paint factory. And you kind of can't put it out. I was outdoors, but the house windows were open. Not my finest hour.
@@DaddyBeanDaddyBean I don't plan to try it. I was joking about the smoke screen but do want to see videos on it as I am curious to see just how dense of smoke it is compared to the homemade smoke screens TKOR made before.
The term I think you were looking for is "volumetric efficiency"; the phrase "Low Tech". which is "not bad", also comes to mind; it's worth noting that Turbo or Supercharged vehicles typically have an Inter-cooler for the same reasons ... Love your channel, the level of detail is thorough whilst concise, while your sometimes self-effacing humour (Eng UK sp.) is both entertaining and refreshing, keep it up ... 😎
FYI, there is a wick trimmer tool! When using a scissor it’s very hard since there is oil on the wick and you can’t make a straight cut. If the wick isn’t straight cut then it will flame and soot will cover the glass reducing function! I had to use these in real life, most likely you end up running out of kerosene and burning the wick tip….
Living partly off grid, and loosing power often, I have a large collection of oil lamps and lanterns. I switched most of mine over to 90% on road diesel with 10% clean K1. That small amount of clean K1 helps reduce the wick from charring up. Diesel being cheaper than the clean K1 shown in the video, and cheaper than the red die kerosene. I have tried several fuel types, and found this to be the most cost effective, and reliable option.
Never gotta leave out them deets even if you think we might now it already! I imagine many are of the same opinion but we dont always watch a video to learn something new, but to hear your well wrote and spoken videos with all those ever so sneaky puns! Love your channels and keep up the fantastic content!
When people say “cold air intake” they probably mean a “short ram intake” which removes some restrictions and baffles. This comes with a little more power but a lot of people do it for the sound gains that you get.
Short rams when they were popular took in warm air, cold air intakes added length to get to a colder spot, typically down low...more of an improvement back in the 90s when the stock intakes were more restrictive
There was a video on TH-cam some years ago where some guy who had just bought a brand new AMG with a cold air intake went through a large puddle and the engine hydraulic-locked and destroyed itself. The water coming in bypassed the little trap that Mercedes had for these sorts of things. Even though the car cost 6 figures, the insurance company totaled it when they got the estimate to buy a brand new engine, ship it, and install it.
@@Markle2k That sucks. I don’t see why they totaled it unless it bent rods or broke heads. If it didn’t than they could take the spark plugs out and air it out or suck the water out. Then change the oil and it’s good to go.
@@swedish_brick_enjoyer Oh boy. You need to google “hydraulic lock engine” and “interference engine”. There is a reason why they turn the props through on aircraft radial engines. The oil would leak through the piston rings and fill the combustion chamber on the bottom cylinders . Just engaging the starter motor could squish the air past the rings on the compression stroke and cause the pistons to slap into the incompressible liquid. Bent connecting rods was result. The mechanics, if finding resistance, would have to do exactly what you prescribe: remove the spark plugs and drain the oil out of the bottom cylinders. Now, imagine what happens when the engine already turning several thousand rpms sucks in a slug of incompressible water.
One of my favourite bits about this channel is the admission that you're speculating, and guessing rather than adamantly asserting that you're right. Also the hair.
In regards to Aladin lamp Oil, its not pure kerosene. It does have an "oily' scent when used in a hurricane lamp, but the actual substance burns much more cleanly than any other lamp fuel ive found
The performance from a cold air intake from the after market is usually just because it's larger and easier to pull air in witch also adds more oxygen into the mix . In most cases the factory intake is decent , for most applications unless you are racing. You can smooth out the air path in alot of cases inside the stock airbox and tube to gain similar improvements . The clean burning of a diets lamp may be improved although impractical by a small fan and shroud pushing air in , you could even power it with a thermal couple .
I bought a genuine made in Germany version fromAmazon and it is and incredible made Lamp and for one so small it is very bright, with 0.34L of fuel it will burn for 20 hours, So with 4 litres /1 US gallon it will burn for 234.2 hours and in a small room it not only supplies Light but it also supplies Heat, I really enjoyed this series of videos,So well done, Thumbs Up.
Personally, I love parallax. It gives you perspective, small and large- simultaneously. Lovely. *Edit* I also like how the logo absorbed so much more heat than the glass. Another layer of parallax and fun times with thermal conductivity.
I had one of these in my car's trunk that I used when camping. It fell over and spilled. It took over a year for the smell of kerosene to go away, even after cleaning it.
In all honesty, the wire basket around the glass actually works very well in protecting the glass from an impact. My lantern got blown off the table and fell onto the concrete with no damage. The brand is different but the design / style is the same as the blue Dietz in the video. Mine is red and the brand is "World Famous".
To really test the benefit of pre-heating you should test them outdoors in winter. It probably doesn't make a big difference, but you get it free without really complicating the lantern. The beauty of these is that they are cheap, simple and durable. You can have a few on shelf for years and when the winter storm hits and you loose power, they are ready to go. There are more sophisticated lanterns that I too recommend for regular use, but the ones with a glow sock are delicate and the ones with battery have poor shelf life.
The Aladdin lamps and most Coleman laterns out there use thoriated cloth, so they will burn much brighter as the thorium oxide attacks the fuel. Not sure if it functions as a catalyst or not, but it definitely burns brighter.
The lever to lift the globe should not be used on its own. Grab the carry handle and the ring on top of the chimney the squeeze. That allows you to take the vast majority of the spring pressure up in the other hand, the lever which lifts the globe will then have very little resistance. If you don't do that it will eventually bend.
@@user-xu2pi6vx7o I've never seen that happen, I've been using a variety of these lamps for 20 years now but I guess it's possible. I've always been gentle with the globes. Most the time I don't actually use the lift lever. I lift the chimney up rotate the globe out of the way, light the wick and if you're quick you can get it all back together before much soot forms inside the globe.
This was my thought too. I don't know much about the physics of combustion but I know seems harder to get dry wood kindling to light and stay lit when it's very cold outside.
I imagine that once the flame is going any fuel that's on the wick will quickly be heated enough to evaporate and burn. Getting it started might be slightly tricky.
15:40 The glass doesn't pass this long wave IR radiation. Instead you're just seeing the temperature of the glass itself. It's also the reason why PIR sensors can't look through windows.
A lot of people who use kerosene lamps don't even have something like these, they make do with what is effectively the top of a tiki lantern, just a can with a lid and a wick poking out, so the smoke and the fumes are worse. I got a pair of GravityLights from their IGG campaigns and it was kinda disappointing they decided not to go through with that mechanism, but I guess solar and batteries are just too cheap to pass up now. You also have to factor in the cost of the kerosene... it doesn't get much cheaper just because it was offloaded somewhere in the third world, so people are spending a significant portion of their income just to have a tiny amount of light.
So I loved your other video and was hoping for one on this channel, but I think I looked right before you posted it and so I didn't see it until today. Right after that I turned on The Four Feathers from 1939 and guess what? There's a hot blast style hurricane lantern in an officer's tent! Absolutely the greatest moment of my life, and I had to tell someone.
These run extremely well with paraffin oil, though they do seem to burn slightly better with kerosene. I use these lights outside my house. I really like the glow they put off and they honestly put out plenty of light. I have some lamps inside my house for when we have hurricanes, they produce more than enough light.
That's what I call a cautious and well controlled demonstration of a moderately effective safety feature. But I've set myself on fire plenty of times. Some of them were even entirely accidental and extremely shocking.
@@AmityPost as a person who as a kid accidentally got doused in gasoline when he was allowed to fuel up the car, I can't say I have no :P anyhow just thought it was funny how he reacted and realized that wasn't too smart haha.
I own two of these lanterns. One of these is a car headlight made by Dietz. It's dated December 1897. The New York Central Lines Dietz lantern is dated 1927. They both have the same wicking systems. Amazing that the technology went unchanged for so many years.
You've got to remember the flashpoint of kerosene is only 100F. There doesn't need to be a lot of heat exchanged at the chimney for the effect to work. On the subject of kerosene vapor, have you ever seen the Holley Vaporizer that was used on 1927 Ford Model Ts or Fordson tractors? It used the exhaust gasses from the engine to heat a thin steel plate which the atomized fuel was drawn over to completely vaporize the fuel (before being mixed with the air). On the Fordson, the engine would be started on gasoline, and once the engine had warmed up, the fuel would be switched to kerosene (there being two fuel tanks, a small one for gasoline, and a big one for kerosene). The Model T only used a gasoline tank of course, but that didn't stop people from figuring out it could be used the same way as the Fordson tractor.
hey, don't let the hair haters get you down. everyone knows there is a direct correlation (and possibly causation!) between crazy hair and being good at explaining stuff!
I would love to see a comparison of the hotblast to the hurricane in very cold weather (obviously at a more conducive time of year). I have a hypothesis that the preheating may be useful in freezing weather, especially -10°C or lower. Although it's very possible that it would be difficult to light the lantern in weather cold enough to significantly effect the ability of kerosene to vaporize.
Preheating air, even a little, increases the efficiency of the burn. That's been understood for many years. It's like starting a cold engine. More fuel is required until it's up to temp. Colder intake air = more fuel use. Hotter, less. Look at how those Coleman gasoline stoves work. A catalyst sits right over the flame and actually preheats the fuel.
As fuel needs to vaporise to burn, preheating fuel makes sense but the heat capacity of air is so little that warming the air makes little sense to me.
Wonderful topic! 😀 🪔 I suspect another reason, besides constructive advantages, why the fresh air is sucked in at the top of these lamps is to limit the chimney effect in order to stabilize the flame.
The oil lamps in lanterns are much better than flashlights or LED lights.. Flashlights in LED lights are used for certain occasions but oil lanterns can burn a long time. An emergency oil lamps are always the best choice.
Mantles are extremely fragile. A mantle lamp is more efficient, but also less resilient. Flashlights and electric lanterns are even more efficient, but depend on the batteries, which either a one time use item, or discharge themselves while in storage.
Heat output during a multiple days coldsnap poweroutage. Table lamps are most preferred for me personally, lanterns stiiiiink when they're burning and should stay in the barn where the odors can escape
We are still using those in Vietnam now (like right now at my house). We use in the occasion of blackout (which happens like once every 3 months or so). I have the leds but these run a lot longer than the leds which really give me a peace of mind, and I dont have to worry about forgetting to charge my leds
Quality content, pretty accurate information. I am a lantern collector, and enjoy them quite a bit, my self. Dietz was offering these up till 2020, when they defaulted to the Chinese government, because of tax issues. So, they are in a limited operation as of now, and the W.T. Kirkman company in Ramona is not sure where they stand as of now, but hopefully they will bounce back. Anyway, one of the reasons Dietz did move to Hong Kong by 1957 is that in the US by the mid 1950s, banned the use of oil or kerosene burning lanterns on the nation's roadways. so, enters the battery operated flashers used on barricades for road construction we know today. Utilities and construction crews relied on kerosene tubular lanterns for a majority of their warning lantern needs. So, when the order went into effect, Dietz lost a lot of their business. So, knowing that China, as well as India still relied on kerosene burning lanterns, they found their larger market was there. Dietz continued to operate into the 1990s at their Syracuse factory, that they manufactured lanterns and other lighting equipment since the late 1890s. Yes, there are far greater and economical means to light one's home or space for either camping or emergency/power outages, yet there's just a warm quality of light that these do give off. I guess I'm old fashioned but, I do burn one or two hot blast lanterns, with a very clean burning fuel, such as Klean Heat, a very refined kerosene type fuel, available at most quality hardware stores, as well as Medallion which is even more refined and practically odorless. Since I live in the state of California, the weather here as many know is mild, and I keep a window open and a cross flow of air, to keep fresh air coming in, I rarely smell the lanterns as they burn. The self snuffing feature on these is really incase someone knocks it over, it's cool you demonstrated how it works, sadly the locking burner on the current production Little Wizard is really not a great seal, to keep fuel from leaking out. Thankfully the flash point of Kerosene is pretty high, and even a lit match into a puddle will not ignite it. I have a video uploaded where I demonstrate the self snuffing feature on an antique Dietz I have, a hot blast in fact...the air chamber on that lantern is soldered to the fount, and the burner rests in a snug metal cup, so it creates a little better seal to keep any leaking, to a minimum. Enjoy the videos, really fun content and I think a lot of great advice and information is presented. As for these tubular lanterns, I find them better for ambient light, which ads a nice cozy feel to any outdoor deck/patio or campsite. :-)
I love those small additions like the globe lifter and the ability to flip up the globe completely. Those are the things you know where born of experience. :)
You know what would make a good series of videos? Fire extinguishers.
And how certain ones are more ideal for different fires (example: co2 will extinguish most fires but materials like paper could reignite)
Let's not forget about big data centers that used to have the Halon systems
Especially after this video. He could do with a few.
Both ironically and unironically!
Also would be cool to see him talk about those type that are some kind of liquid sealed inside a glass ball and made to be thrown at the fire to put it out. Also the newer style of that were you throw it and it explodes to cover everything.
"Wift-licking" sounds like an activity that'd be prohibited by law in several states.
But not Alabama.
See also Twitch streamers.
It sounds like someone with bad spelling doing a search on pornhub.
@@user-xu2pi6vx7o Especially Alabama. Sorry, Dude.
That's how snakes smell.
Kudos for not editing out the "dumb" part, as it shows just how bad things can go. You may have saved somebody's home and/or life.
For real. Dude just said "fuck it" to ego in favor of still demonstrating how dangerous something is. Respect.
To be fair kerosene isn't that flammable. A puddle of room temperature kerosene won't light without a wick. Heated kerosene on the other hand does give off enough vapours to ignite.
@@marc-andreservant201 True. But a couch, tablecloth, carpet, etc. will serve quite adequately as a wick. It's not known if the Chicago fire of 1871 was really started by a lantern but the reason that many believe it was is because it is a very real possibility.
Is it a good idea to put loose kerosene in an enclosed garage to evaporate? Any ignition sources like a gas water heater out there?
@@Toramt Fire hazards aside, kerosene fumes are probably not good for your lungs.
Growing up without electricity back in kenya, we used to use this Dietz lamp as our ever day source of light. Kerosene was the fuel we used and it took a great toll on our eyes and lungs because we had to use it for homework also. I can say it's a very very durable. We still have our lamp my dad bought back in '93.
Same for me in the West Indies in causes our nose to block up and coughing when we do our home work
I grew up in the U.S. but the infrastructure in my area was so bad that there were times I had to rely on these as a light source for months at a time. These are very durable, I still have the same one my grandpa bought in the 50's.
As someone that's actually used oil lamps for lighting, there's a trick to setting the wick height properly.
If the lamp is smoking the wick is too high.
Lowering the wick slightly will reduce the light produced.
Counterintuitively, continuing to lower the wick will actually make the light brighter.
Our usual procedure was the lift the wick high to light it and then lower the wick until there was barely any flame at all, then raise the wick slowly for the desired brightness. If it's smoking you've raised the wick too high!
ETA: Forgot the most important part, those final height adjustments must be done with the chimney in place!
Wicked!
"used"
D:
...BEGONE!!!
Is it odd that I noticed these tricks without actually knowing half of what I know now?
I may or not have noticed this, we used to keep a few oil lamps on hand in case of power failures. One thing to keep in mind when using an oil lamp, is what is above the lamp. We could have had a kitchen fire because we didn't think about cabinets being above the lamp.
@@TestarossaF110 What is wrong with 'used' ?
The hair combined with the jacket and tshirt gives me unhinged college professor vibes, I like it.
It's the perfect aesthetic for the channel, that's for sure.
"Another video? what is he talking about this time?"
"Dietz nuts again"
“Whiffed licking”
Golly!
Exposing the wick...
No heat pump present though.
@@Richardz It is now.
When lighting those lanterns, it's usually considered best practice to leave the flame low for the first five minutes to allow the lantern and the fuel to warm up a bit, then come back and raise the flame to your desired level. Allows the glass to warm up more slowly, and helps avoid coming back to a smoking lantern with a tall flame (and possibly a broken globe).
Quick note: glass is very good at blocking infrared. You can tell the temperature of the glass, but not see through it. I learned this when using IR-based night vision equipment in the Army.
The good thermal cams use transparent aluminum (synthetic sapphire glass)
Yeah. I think he's got another recent video on that.
@@alex.thedeadite Pedantry ahead: It is aluminum oxide (Al2O3), not just aluminum, which forms the mineral “corundum”. This is that special glass.
Is is technically not “sapphire” because it does not contain the contaminates that give it the colors we associate with sapphires. This is also the case with ruby, which is corundum contaminated with chromium. Nonetheless, it’s all the same stuff and is obviously called ruby or sapphire glass because marketing and it’s easier to understand. Not that it makes much of a difference anyway, same is same.
Yep, every nerd in engineer glasses turns into a badass with aviators in infrared.
Makes sense considering a green house or a closed car in the summer.
I've used these a lot for lighting small festival sites (deploying ~100 at a time). I found that turning the wick down isn't a good way to turn the lamps off, mainly because if you turn too far the wick can slip out of the rollers and end up in the fuel tank. It's hard to fish them out, so a better way to turn them off is to simply lift the glass and blow. The other advantage of this is that the wick is perfectly positioned next time you light it.
The thermal camera can't see the flame because glass is not transparent in the IR specter
Cool info
@@n27272 Or warm info...
Was just about to comment this :P
Then the glass would have to absorb the IR or reflect it back. If it absorbs the IR, then it would re-radiate it, making it detectable outside. Have observed the latter with quartz glass window of Morso woodstove. If you rapidly open the door and point IR thermometer at it (either side), you see T reading same as with door closed. If the glass reflected IR back, you'd likely get into thermal runaway.
@@jacquesblaque7728 in addition to conduction through the glass, as you mentioned, there is convection. Specifically, the exhaust air can (and likely does) carry a lot of heat with it. The fact that the top of the lamp where the exhaust comes out is so hot suggests quite a bit of heat is carried out that way.
"None of you, don't do that."
Instructions unclear. Burned neighborhood down.
Just thinking that lmao
As a Dietz nut, this video helped a lot
Something came in the mail today
Dietz nuts
Gotem haaaa
HA GOTTEM
You get pleasure out of this?!?!?!!!
well, to be fair, we all do...
Nice hair.
@@androiduberalles why is that funny? It’s just annoying and stupid.
Thanks for taking the time to make these videos. Great content for the physical science nerds. In the 70's I drove a 1966 Chevy Impala station wagon with a 289 V8 and 2 barrel carburetor. On fall mornings you could feel the additional horse power produced by the cold morning air. Even my friends (passengers) noticed that the beast had a little more zip than normal.
"Unless your car is extraordinary terrible... or electric... "
I laughed so hard I emitted greenhouse gases.
This comment is fuckin amazing.
Methane
You win the internet for this week.
@Colin Hessler or he just breathed out CO2 is also a green house gas
there's a difference?
FYI, the shape of the bell shaped wick shield is also a guide for trimming the wick - trim it to match the curve of the bell and you get a flame that reduces the 'ears' at the ends and produces less soot.
Absolutely! Figured this out with personal experimentation 50 years ago. People still look at me weird when they see how I trim wicks.
I like this guy's hairstyle. Seems like it has a personality of its own.
If it grows any longer, it will start its own youtube channel
Personality of its own?
That hair is one “rinse and reapply” away of becoming sentient! 😆
Mozart 2.0
Technology Combextra
He needs to change the oil.
I don't know if anyone has ever mentioned this. But I like the 'uncurated' candor of these videos. It's cool on your main channel how knowledgeable and detailed you can be, but it's also nice to see you being more like a normal person. Stuttering, rephrasing, etc. I enjoy your content and hope you keep on exploring things with us.
Every day that passes I feel more and more confident that he's actually an ancient vampire obsessed with watching technology develop and remember fondly what the world used to be like. "Oh boy! I can't believe I got to visit the TC set!!! I'm your biggest fan! Can I take your picture with my cool retro SLR camera? Wait, why can't I see you through the viewfinder???"
I support this hypothesis. It also explains the hair! We know your secret, Alec!
@@Kaaputenen Haha, I was going to say that! LOVE that widow's peak! ^_^
It's all coming together...
Little Eddie Munster all grown up...
He doesn't seem to rembember the Dietz lamp all that fondly...
"I might die in a fire, but that's how committed I am to you the viewer"
Oil lamps do still have a place.
I live in earthquake country in an area with overhead lines. So, in spite in being in the States, electricity loss is a reality. I keep "classic" oil lamps for the sake of near zero maintenance reliability.
Dry cell battery lamps are fine until the batteries leak.
Lithium batteries can be charged, but can also be overcharged, or forgotten to charge, or be too old to hold a charge.
Mantle lamps aren't the most durable things. Tying on a fresh mantle at midnight to the flame of a match is not my idea of fun.
Propane is under pressure, can leak, quite the hazard.
Kerosene has a roughly 5 year shelf life as it can take on water from the moisture in the air.
Paraffin lamp oil has no definitive shelf life. My oldest lamp was filled by my grandmother some time in the late 1950s and will still light today with no fuss.
Come the day of a shaker that cuts power for a week or two, or yet another summer of rolling blackouts, I'm completely confident I will have light. (^_^)y
Non rechargeable lithium cells are your answer. Have a shell life of over 10 years
Overcharge protection chips exist for a reason.
@@rautamiekka Then tell manufacturers to use them. Otherwise, iPhones wouldn't bulge and Samsungs wouldn't burst, right?
@@ImnotgoingSideways The unavoidable bulging is due to the chemistry, the explosions due to ill-fitting accus used.
Modern phones, accus, and chargers refuse to move more power once the capacity is reported full (in the case of chargers once the receiving power drops enough), they can't be overcharged by simply keeping to push more.
I agree, it's a smart move to have at least one old, simple, reliable, thing that you can turn to if the usual systems stop working. I bought electric lights and plenty of batteries after hurricane Sandy knocked out power all over the New York Metro area in 2012. All of those batteries will soon be expired and so now I have to revisit my power failure prepping, take a deep breath, throw out all of those batteries and face having to pay for new ones, with the understanding that ten years from now, it's likely that I will have to throw all of them out too.
But my Dietz lantern paraffin oil, candles, and fairy lamps, will work as good as new even 100 years from now.
the added pre-heating of the intake air helps in cold weather especially. You can observe this with a zippo on a really cold, but windstill day - lighting it produces a flame, that will quickly shrink and die. after a few lightings, the heat that was absorbed by the metal of the lighter will push the feed rate high enough to support a flame beyond just a few seconds.
This brings up a good point.
Heating the air might have more to do with simply not freezing than it does with reaching a higher temperature.
It keeps the water vapor from freezing to the bottom of the globe, and it keeps the fuel warm enough to travel up the wick.
Maybe. You'd have to cut the tubes on one to test it, and I'm not gonna do it with mine.
Kerosene freezes at about -40°F
Which sounds unrealistically cold, unless you are in Canada or Alaska.
It would be cool to see one intact lantern and one with the tubes cut off in a freezer and see when each one stops working.
Canadian here, at my cabin, we use deitz lanterns.
Can confirm that a frozen lantern is an absolute bitch to light.
Hot blast lantern would light in 5 seconds in a -40c cabin.
The cold blast lantern takes up to 20 seconds, allowing the hot lighter flame to "warm up" the combustion air ever slightly enough to get going.
Hot blast was full brightness after a moment, cold blast took up to 5
@@maxman1244 The last time I was in Canada, we used a mantle lamp. Don't they work in the cold?
@@andrewmorton9683 I've found that the with the common mantle style lamps here, propane for newer and white gas for older models have their winter cold start struggles as well.
White gas pump styles are hard to use with gloves, and propane can be a bit slow to start in -40 as well (even though it shouldn't be)
Next week, all about fire extinguishers.
Yes please! Also, very important.
Haha, yup!
I would seriously enjoy this, HOWEVER, please partner with some firefighters (either your local FD or ones that already do youtube videos.)
Yes, the IR wavelength associated with "heat" does not pass through glass. Which is why CO2 lasers can cut glass, they operate in the deep IR spectrum that glass is opaque to.
Except that co2 laser wavelength is 10um, while the(wavelength of the) peak of black body radiation for a candle flame is an order of magnitude smaller.
(Candle flames are near IR, co2 lasers are mid IR)
IR easily passes through glass, as you will find out sitting behind glass when the sun shines.
Glass is famous for not passing (much) UV though.
@@oscargr_ so why does a car trap so much heat when you leave it in the sun?
My understanding was that visible light and UV could pass, hit something, convert to a lower wavelength and would then bounce off the glass trapping the energy inside.
@@AmityPost The absorption spectrum of glass is not a smooth line.
Though, as far as I can tell middle to long IR waves don't pass so easily.
I doubt that fluorescence is a big effect with most materials in car upholstery.
What does happen (I believe) is that both visible and near IR pass through the glass, get absorbed by all surfaces in the car. These surfaces increase in temperature, that warms up the air inside the car. And the warm air is trapped.
Another factor is probably that the roof an doors get hot on the outside by absorption. And thermal isolation of cars is probably not that great, so the inside also gets warmer through conduction.
Feel free to disagree though.😁
Edit to add that not all glass is the same.
(And that UV-A and UV-B are not the same)
And that car windows get very warm in the sun. And those (also) heat up the interior through conduction.
@@AmityPost the heat won't travel straight through the glass, but it will pass through slowly by heating up the glass (and the metal) and coming out the other side.
If you look at a car (that's been running for a while) under a thermal camera the glass will be pretty much a solid color, since it's warm, even though IR isn't going straight through (so you can't see the people inside).
Glass isn't glass. The type of glass determines which wavelengths pass through, are absorbed, or reflected.
TC: "And now I will tip this lamp over on my desk."
Me: "...that went exactly how I expected."
Side note: I don't think the length of the air intake tubes is *just* to act as shock absorbers. By putting the intakes right next to the exhaust, it's hard to get any substantial pressure differential between the two, which helps with reducing any kind of buffeting even if the wind is e.g. blowing upwards. A set of tubes coiled around the base would still have the dampening effect, but you could still get sustained pressure differentials.
That is a really good point.
Glad to see another video for me and my fellow Dietz Nuts!
Great videos, always entertaining and informative. On your comment about newer cars already having cold air intakes, you are correct, at least on my 2017 Dodge Charger, 3.6L. This vehicle already has a cold air intake that takes air from underneath the front of the vehicle, up through a CLOSED filter canister, and then into the engine. I went on Amazon and bought a name brand cold air intake for this Charger and if you look at customers’ pictures you will see that this particular intake air filter is partially open to the engine compartment and right next to the coolant overflow reservoir. This reservoir and the engine compartment can get very hot relative to the ambient air temperature. Using an OBD2 scan tool and looking at the vehicle’s air intake versus ambient temperature sensors, I found that in stop and go traffic, the factory installed cold air intake system gave about 10°F above ambient, while the purchased system ran closer to 20°F above ambient. At highway speeds, they pretty much read the same. On the other hand, the new system had a larger filter area and the sound it made was amazing. After insulating the metal air intake runner, and the air filter from the overflow reservoir, about a 4° improvement was actually gained over the factory cold air intake system.
Me seeing you tipping over a lit kerosene lamp indoors: “Did I just watch a near-death experience of my favourite YT channel?”
Or at the very least a near-insurance-claim-denial experience.
Nah it is not as bad as it shows in the movies... but it can happen also.
At least since that triac blew up
@Les I know, that’s why it is a substance of choice for fire breathers.
Still, there is a great potential for disaster.
Just needs a cameo appearance of everyone's favorite character, the Explosion Containment Pie Dish.
These lanterns bring memories from more than 60 years ago. My parents had some kerosene lanterns left over from a party and as children we had lantern parties on Summer nights. Each child got one to carry around the yard and looked for night crawlers while chasing fireflies.
What happened to fireflies? I have not seen any in years
@@vinquinn It depends on where you live. They are way more common in the Eastern USA. You can find them in Colorado along streams in wet years.
@@machintelligence but when I was a kid there were thousands of them. Every night, every summer. I haven't seen more than a few dozen at a time in recent years.
@toasties burned the use of insecticides has devastated insect population.
@@toastiesburned9929 artificial lights have had a negative impact on their mating. That combined with insecticide use and other factors has reduced their population.
This video just made me realize that I belong to a completely different generation! I also felt that all this was common knowledge ( I was born in 1962 and spend a lot of time visiting the family country farm).
If you have the thermal camera I think you do:
1. You might be able to select a different temperature range to get values above 150 C.
2. You can adjust the alignment of the IR and visible images.
3. The latest app update, if you don't have it already, added optional automatic spots for the coldest and hottest points.
The situation with the tipped lantern probably wasn't all that dangerous, although yes, you should definitely have taken the safety measures you mentioned! Kerosene won't generally sustain a flame on its own, since its flash point is significantly higher than room temperature. This means it needs a sustained heat source to allow it to form a flammable vapour - that's what the wick is for. Without the wick, any flame would just rise away from the liquid without heating it any further. If you tried to run a hurricane lantern it on petrol/gasoline with a flash point far below room temperature I expect the whole thing would just erupt into a fireball. I bet it would make a good video.
However, unexpected things can happen - maybe it drips down on the carpet, or you splash it on your clothing. Or maybe the kerosene you have happens to have a flashpoint towards the lower end of the range and a piece of the burning wick falls down, etc, etc.
Yes! It could have been dangerous dripping onto carpet which can act like a wick. Here in Canada we can only get low flashpoint kerosene so things are a bit more dangerous here. Also, there are several TH-cam videos showing how hard it is to ignite kerosene with a flame.
I had a paraffin lamp leak onto a plastic surface, the paraffin caught fire almost immediately from the flame inside the lamp - I assume we only get it as a low-flashpoint fuel here
Side note: I luckily had a brick to put on top of the flame and put it out
I kinda expected the plastic to melt, either from the heat or from the fuel dissolving it. I don't know if kerosene is the same, but gasoline will eat right through some plastics.
Kids these days...
By the time I was 10yo, through diligent experimentation ;-) I had a thorough understanding of the flashpoint of various flammable liquids.
Kerosine: no good
Petrol (Australian for gasoline): excellent
Metholated spirits: excellent
Turpentine: no good
@@ataphelicopter5734 Picturing someone fighting a fire with a brick is a great mental image
I mostly agree with your hot/cold air intake idea. I think it's mostly for cold climate. I used one last winter. It clearly works much better after it warms up. If I didn't pay attention, after about 10 or 20 minutes I would have to turn the wick down or it would completely black out the globe with soot. It was 0°F at night when we started the lanterns and started a fire the first night. The wick was gelled up and took a little bit of time to light
Regarding the odor:
Apparently there are very sublte design differences between different makes of hurricane lanterns. Both the cheap knockoff one I bought at the hardware store and my Dietz (that I have since misplaced...) were VERY smelly. My Feuerhand brand lantern though? Practically odorless.
Same for me! I also have a Feuerhand :) also tipping it over doesn't lead to so much mess. But I think he overfilled his lantern.
Ever read the book '3 Men In A Boat' ?
'Sometimes a westerly oily wind blew, and at other times 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 paraffine oil.
And that oil oozed up and ruined the sunset; and as for the moonbeams, they positively reeked of paraffine'
Most likely it is just better designed and manufactured lanterns provide better airflow and therefore more complete combustion.
I've had a few Feuerhands (3), but they used thin metal (this was 15 years ago) that rusts very easily... I've had perforations and leaks, too. Learned my lesson and went to Dietz about 6-7 years ago. If the paint on a Dietz gets chipped, you slap more on. You can strip them and do full repaints pretty easily, too. Never had a metal problem on a Dietz, and no leaks. My lanterns are outside all year long - they get snowed on in the winter and baked in the summer. No problems ever. As for the stink, well, that's subjective, but it's hard to be bothered by it when you're outside, even if I do notice any smell. (I try not to smell the thing.)
@@randynovick7972 Question: I happen to own one of these Dietz that belonged to my grandfather. It works nice even today, but it has a tendency to soot the entire glass after maybe 45-70 minutes. Any ideas on why this might be happening?
If you trim the wick curved slightly humped up in the middle you can adjust the flame higher before soot is produced and get much more light out of the lantern, it takes some practice to get it right.
Regarding air intake: to paraphrase Randall Munroe, "From the flame's point of view, all air is cold."
What If, toaster in freezer, right?
@@canadajones9635 You got it!
But there is no such thing as cold only lack of heat.
@@zutaca2825 🤦♂️
@@goat3898 Yeah and there's no such thing as a shadow either yet somehow I can still point them out to you all day
I replaced all my wicks with carbon felt and sewn in some copper thread to provide thermal feedback. I used only two threads in the middle and down the length of the wick. I also added 1/2" extra wick for the length just in case.
It is just enough to keep the wick kinda hot but only warms the fuel.
I tried these in two hurricane lanterns (using lamp oil) and they work perfectly.
Those wicks NEVER burn up, never need trimming. Even your grand kids won't have to trim or replace them.
If they ever clog due to using say citronella oil or scented oil, simply remove the wick and BURN IT. Burn well but not hot enough to melt the copper wire.
Once done, wick is like brand new again.
You set the wick to the correct height and never adjust it again (just blow it out).
If you used multiple copper threads (think speaker wire strands) you can use thicker oil like veg oil and even olive oil.
However, that might not be good if you switch back to lamp oil or kerosene. I never tested that.
Thermal feedback warms/heats the wick & oil, thinning it out a bit causing it to vaporize more readily.
The oil doesn't burn the vapors do at and above the wick.
If ANY lamp or lantern is so hot where the fuel compartment is that you cannot touch or hold it, you have a bad problem.
Using denser oils will always be the same lighting difficulty copper wire or no copper wire.
If you want it brighter, then cut any wick into a goal post shape or spoon shape.
Does make a neat flame effect.
Copper wire is optional. Especially with lamp oil or kerosene unless it is -40 degrees where you use it.
Nice! 👍👍 I have about 10 of these lanterns, have used them in power outages for years, and had no idea the globe would tilt back like you demonstrated at 3:20.
Same!
I’ve got one hanging next to me and one of the old Victorian round wicked table lamps on the other side, and I’ve always been too anxious to ever actually put fuel in them. I was so excited when this series of vids dropped
Mine is antique, the globe we found is slightly too tall, so it doesn't tilt unless you take the wick/wick lifter out first.
While pressurized fuel and mantles produce more light and are more efficient they are also fragile and require more maintenance. Mantels are very fragile (try replacing in the dark). The pumps wear out and generators require cleaning.
Meanwhile the Dietz style lantern only requires wick trimming and replacement.
I use Coleman lanterns (pressurized and mantels) when camping but always have kerosene lantern backup too.
Well said. If you think you may get into a SHTF situation where you may be off-grid more than a couple of days, hurricane lanterns are your best bet.
There are also nonpressurized mantle lanterns, most notably Aladdin brand. They're quite bright and need no pumping and thus no pump seal failure. They're a bit pricey though.
Oops lol.. commented before I saw they were already mentioned
@@asafoetidajones8181 still a fragile mantle involved. And that's a big issue in emergency and a significant expense to someone that can barely afford fuel for the lamp.
@@TEDodd they're nice lamps - I have one - but they're pretty much indoors/stationary only. Nobody would take one camping in the first place anyway; they have a large unshielded glass chimney as well as a large glass shade. Basically a vast improvement over a dead flame "oil lamp" as opposed to a better version of a pressurized mantle lantern. And pressure Mantles are fine as long as you don't plan to move the lantern much; hang it up in a tree or set it somewhere stable when you set up camp and leave it there, figure on a new mantle every time you pack up.
I have been around these lanterns for many many years and never had an inkling they were so complex.
As has been mentioned by others I suspect that the heating of the air is primarily for the purpose of causing the fuel to evaporate, especially in cold environments.
Heated air rises. Less dense. Lighter. Evaporation, which rises, is in gas form (changed from solid or liquid).
If the air flow is traveling down the 2 tubes to the wick...it's being DRAWN.(vacuum)
Just a guess. The purpose of the tubes are to supply air to the chimney chamber to more completely burn the soot. Maybe?
Thanks!👍
The amount of thought and engineering that went into these things is incredible
funny, in all western movies, if lantern falls over, whole house burns
*correction:
Whole Galaxy explodez
@Les Not just different fuels, but different lanterns. Most examples I've seen in film (whether from knowledge on the part of the set dressers or happy accident) use older styles of lamps and lanterns.
Lies. It's really just the cow playing with matches.
Well, the glass has to break, and you need a conveniently placed set of thick drapes as well.
The cow did it on purpose for the insurance money.
This natural way of you presenting is refreshingly your best. Loving it.
If people are commenting about the hair... You got it, flaunt it. As a 'thinning' man myself if I could grow my hair like that I would. Much respect for the hair but mainly the great videos. Thanks for the dishwasher video, you changed the way I use mine.
I used the cold blast design as a kid to read at night while outside camping. I can tell you that as it heats up the flame does get bigger and you have to lower the wick some to adjust it. I always assumed it was because the whole lantern got warmer and made the kerosene flow through the wick easier. Loved the videos! I would like to see one on the Aladdin lamp or mantle lamps in general. Thanks!
This video is quite illuminating
I did have a burning desire to know more on the subject.
Hopefully you can wick up some knowledge from this video
This video was lit!
Dietz still made lanterns in their Syracuse, NY factory until 1992. The migration of operations to Asia went over a longer period than you implied. The old factory was recently converted into luxury apartments after being abandoned for over 25 years
Feels like the entire West is being turned into luxury apartments...
I wish I could say carefully tipping over a lantern was the dumbest thing I've done..
Agreed. Although he said it was up there, but not "the dumbest".
TKOR has an awesome video about mixing pool chlorine and another cheap, relatively common household chemical to produce an *aggressively* exothermic reaction, aka spontaneous combustion. If you choose to recreate this video, it's really really important to buy the right kind of pool chlorine. The wrong kind will spontaneously combust in about 12 minutes instead of 1, and instead of an impressive jet of flame, it produces OCEANS of dense smoke that smells like a chlorine-soaked mattress fire at a paint factory. And you kind of can't put it out. I was outdoors, but the house windows were open. Not my finest hour.
@@DaddyBeanDaddyBean What is the wrong kind of chlorine? Kind of cool to know what can make a nice smoke screen when needed, haha.
@@mrgw98 Googling around a bit, I believe it must have been dichloro-s-triazinetrione, aka "dichlor". Don't do it. Seriously.
@@DaddyBeanDaddyBean I don't plan to try it. I was joking about the smoke screen but do want to see videos on it as I am curious to see just how dense of smoke it is compared to the homemade smoke screens TKOR made before.
The term I think you were looking for is "volumetric efficiency"; the phrase "Low Tech". which is "not bad", also comes to mind; it's worth noting that Turbo or Supercharged vehicles typically have an Inter-cooler for the same reasons ... Love your channel, the level of detail is thorough whilst concise, while your sometimes self-effacing humour (Eng UK sp.) is both entertaining and refreshing, keep it up ... 😎
FYI, there is a wick trimmer tool! When using a scissor it’s very hard since there is oil on the wick and you can’t make a straight cut. If the wick isn’t straight cut then it will flame and soot will cover the glass reducing function!
I had to use these in real life, most likely you end up running out of kerosene and burning the wick tip….
You can do a good job with high quality fabric shears but regular scissors are terrible.
Living partly off grid, and loosing power often, I have a large collection of oil lamps and lanterns. I switched most of mine over to 90% on road diesel with 10% clean K1. That small amount of clean K1 helps reduce the wick from charring up. Diesel being cheaper than the clean K1 shown in the video, and cheaper than the red die kerosene. I have tried several fuel types, and found this to be the most cost effective, and reliable option.
Tipping the lantern was one of the scariest things I've seen. I'm so glad that the worst of it was some spilled fuel.
Never gotta leave out them deets even if you think we might now it already! I imagine many are of the same opinion but we dont always watch a video to learn something new, but to hear your well wrote and spoken videos with all those ever so sneaky puns! Love your channels and keep up the fantastic content!
When people say “cold air intake” they probably mean a “short ram intake” which removes some restrictions and baffles. This comes with a little more power but a lot of people do it for the sound gains that you get.
Short rams when they were popular took in warm air, cold air intakes added length to get to a colder spot, typically down low...more of an improvement back in the 90s when the stock intakes were more restrictive
Ya, and there are also mods to reduce the pressure of the air, making it easier to draw (the reverse hood scoops you sometimes see).
There was a video on TH-cam some years ago where some guy who had just bought a brand new AMG with a cold air intake went through a large puddle and the engine hydraulic-locked and destroyed itself. The water coming in bypassed the little trap that Mercedes had for these sorts of things. Even though the car cost 6 figures, the insurance company totaled it when they got the estimate to buy a brand new engine, ship it, and install it.
@@Markle2k That sucks. I don’t see why they totaled it unless it bent rods or broke heads. If it didn’t than they could take the spark plugs out and air it out or suck the water out. Then change the oil and it’s good to go.
@@swedish_brick_enjoyer Oh boy. You need to google “hydraulic lock engine” and “interference engine”. There is a reason why they turn the props through on aircraft radial engines. The oil would leak through the piston rings and fill the combustion chamber on the bottom cylinders . Just engaging the starter motor could squish the air past the rings on the compression stroke and cause the pistons to slap into the incompressible liquid. Bent connecting rods was result. The mechanics, if finding resistance, would have to do exactly what you prescribe: remove the spark plugs and drain the oil out of the bottom cylinders. Now, imagine what happens when the engine already turning several thousand rpms sucks in a slug of incompressible water.
One of my favourite bits about this channel is the admission that you're speculating, and guessing rather than adamantly asserting that you're right. Also the hair.
In regards to Aladin lamp Oil, its not pure kerosene. It does have an "oily' scent when used in a hurricane lamp, but the actual substance burns much more cleanly than any other lamp fuel ive found
The performance from a cold air intake from the after market is usually just because it's larger and easier to pull air in witch also adds more oxygen into the mix . In most cases the factory intake is decent , for most applications unless you are racing. You can smooth out the air path in alot of cases inside the stock airbox and tube to gain similar improvements . The clean burning of a diets lamp may be improved although impractical by a small fan and shroud pushing air in , you could even power it with a thermal couple .
"For grins and giggles" aw you're so wholesome.
I bought a genuine made in Germany version fromAmazon and it is and incredible made Lamp and for one so small it is very bright, with 0.34L of fuel it will burn for 20 hours, So with 4 litres /1 US gallon it will burn for 234.2 hours and in a small room it not only supplies Light but it also supplies Heat, I really enjoyed this series of videos,So well done, Thumbs Up.
How I wish I could give you 20 extra thumbs up for cheerfully eating crow about the safety of tipping over the Dietz lantern.
Here I thought you were going to tip it over in the garage!
"Oh, he's just gonna do it here... at least he's got that metal tray... oh, it's a platics box lid... "
@@catfish552 yeah, the explosion containment pie dish needs an upgrade.
Alec, I wish my hair was as cooperative and tidy as yours.
Fuck man same
I would just settle for "as present."
Personally, I love parallax. It gives you perspective, small and large- simultaneously. Lovely. *Edit* I also like how the logo absorbed so much more heat than the glass. Another layer of parallax and fun times with thermal conductivity.
I had one of these in my car's trunk that I used when camping. It fell over and spilled. It took over a year for the smell of kerosene to go away, even after cleaning it.
In all honesty, the wire basket around the glass actually works very well in protecting the glass from an impact. My lantern got blown off the table and fell onto the concrete with no damage.
The brand is different but the design / style is the same as the blue Dietz in the video. Mine is red and the brand is "World Famous".
Before your video I never realized those were pipes, I just thought they were structure to connect the top and bottom
When he said wift licking I thought about the old Orbit gum commercial, especially the line "You lint licker"
I only clicked because i saw that hair and needed an explanation, thanks for getting it out the way in the first 15seconds.
But much like the government after 9/11 he didn't explain anything about what really happened
To really test the benefit of pre-heating you should test them outdoors in winter. It probably doesn't make a big difference, but you get it free without really complicating the lantern. The beauty of these is that they are cheap, simple and durable. You can have a few on shelf for years and when the winter storm hits and you loose power, they are ready to go. There are more sophisticated lanterns that I too recommend for regular use, but the ones with a glow sock are delicate and the ones with battery have poor shelf life.
That tipping over thing... You're going to give me a heart attack, Alec.
@Les That room he records in is carpeted. The floor is just one big wick.
The Aladdin lamps and most Coleman laterns out there use thoriated cloth, so they will burn much brighter as the thorium oxide attacks the fuel. Not sure if it functions as a catalyst or not, but it definitely burns brighter.
It should be mentioned that they also consume the fuel a lot faster, esp. the Aladdin lamps.
The lever to lift the globe should not be used on its own. Grab the carry handle and the ring on top of the chimney the squeeze. That allows you to take the vast majority of the spring pressure up in the other hand, the lever which lifts the globe will then have very little resistance.
If you don't do that it will eventually bend.
Or you could just flat out shatter the bulb, under some freak circumstances with perhaps cracked or flawed glass.
@@user-xu2pi6vx7o I've never seen that happen, I've been using a variety of these lamps for 20 years now but I guess it's possible. I've always been gentle with the globes.
Most the time I don't actually use the lift lever. I lift the chimney up rotate the globe out of the way, light the wick and if you're quick you can get it all back together before much soot forms inside the globe.
These lamps and a startled cow are the #1 leading cause of barn fires.
I'd be very curious to see if the preheating makes a difference when it's freezing cold. Like so cold that the fuel evaporation is too slow otherwise.
to me this sounds like a reasonable reason for this construction
This was my thought too. I don't know much about the physics of combustion but I know seems harder to get dry wood kindling to light and stay lit when it's very cold outside.
I imagine that once the flame is going any fuel that's on the wick will quickly be heated enough to evaporate and burn. Getting it started might be slightly tricky.
Personally I think the "Tip" experiment was great. Good information. Thank you.
Enjoyed your input.
15:40 The glass doesn't pass this long wave IR radiation. Instead you're just seeing the temperature of the glass itself. It's also the reason why PIR sensors can't look through windows.
My folks had one of these lanterns for camping, years ago. A neat device, but I am very glad they're no longer necessary in this part of the world.
A lot of people who use kerosene lamps don't even have something like these, they make do with what is effectively the top of a tiki lantern, just a can with a lid and a wick poking out, so the smoke and the fumes are worse. I got a pair of GravityLights from their IGG campaigns and it was kinda disappointing they decided not to go through with that mechanism, but I guess solar and batteries are just too cheap to pass up now.
You also have to factor in the cost of the kerosene... it doesn't get much cheaper just because it was offloaded somewhere in the third world, so people are spending a significant portion of their income just to have a tiny amount of light.
It's not just about getting them off a petrochemical treadmill. It's about the pollutants being released into the home causing lung disease.
So I loved your other video and was hoping for one on this channel, but I think I looked right before you posted it and so I didn't see it until today. Right after that I turned on The Four Feathers from 1939 and guess what? There's a hot blast style hurricane lantern in an officer's tent! Absolutely the greatest moment of my life, and I had to tell someone.
Technology Connections: “That verbiage probably works”
Narrator: “According to some specialist, it didn’t”
These run extremely well with paraffin oil, though they do seem to burn slightly better with kerosene. I use these lights outside my house. I really like the glow they put off and they honestly put out plenty of light. I have some lamps inside my house for when we have hurricanes, they produce more than enough light.
Aladdin Lamp fuel is expensive. Well have you seen how many genies must be liquidised to get it in the first place?
How many babies need to be liquidized to make baby oil?
It is sad that people might need to use these, but I found a tiny hurricane lantern at a store for 6.50 the other day and I am absolutely delighted.
"How to use, more info, and further thoughts on hurricane (Dietz) lanterns"
or
"How Technology Connections, almost, blew himself up"
These are clearly the word of two men who have never almost blown themselves up or set themselves on fire.
That's what I call a cautious and well controlled demonstration of a moderately effective safety feature.
But I've set myself on fire plenty of times. Some of them were even entirely accidental and extremely shocking.
@@AmityPost as a person who as a kid accidentally got doused in gasoline when he was allowed to fuel up the car, I can't say I have no :P anyhow just thought it was funny how he reacted and realized that wasn't too smart haha.
I own two of these lanterns. One of these is a car headlight made by Dietz. It's dated December 1897. The New York Central Lines Dietz lantern is dated 1927.
They both have the same wicking systems. Amazing that the technology went unchanged for so many years.
quick side note: hot air intakes for lanterns/heaters work better in cold climates.
Maybe we should call them "warm air intakes"
It's not that the air needs to be hot, so much as it is that the air can't be freezing cold.
Thanks for the video! It would be interesting for your take on the Eccles safety lamp and it’s variants used back in the day down mines.
The hair is a lot, sure, but I'm kind of digging it too.
Yeah, right? If I had to choose between a bald Alec and an Alec with a lion's mane, the latter would win hands down.
@@vincentguttmann2231 So no Alec bald win for you?
@@catfish552 I mean, that hair now is an entity separate from Alec, so technically he's bald under the hair.
I've been digging the hair for a long time, glad the public finally caught up
You've got to remember the flashpoint of kerosene is only 100F. There doesn't need to be a lot of heat exchanged at the chimney for the effect to work. On the subject of kerosene vapor, have you ever seen the Holley Vaporizer that was used on 1927 Ford Model Ts or Fordson tractors? It used the exhaust gasses from the engine to heat a thin steel plate which the atomized fuel was drawn over to completely vaporize the fuel (before being mixed with the air). On the Fordson, the engine would be started on gasoline, and once the engine had warmed up, the fuel would be switched to kerosene (there being two fuel tanks, a small one for gasoline, and a big one for kerosene). The Model T only used a gasoline tank of course, but that didn't stop people from figuring out it could be used the same way as the Fordson tractor.
hey, don't let the hair haters get you down. everyone knows there is a direct correlation (and possibly causation!) between crazy hair and being good at explaining stuff!
I would love to see a comparison of the hotblast to the hurricane in very cold weather (obviously at a more conducive time of year). I have a hypothesis that the preheating may be useful in freezing weather, especially -10°C or lower. Although it's very possible that it would be difficult to light the lantern in weather cold enough to significantly effect the ability of kerosene to vaporize.
Preheating air, even a little, increases the efficiency of the burn. That's been understood for many years. It's like starting a cold engine. More fuel is required until it's up to temp. Colder intake air = more fuel use. Hotter, less. Look at how those Coleman gasoline stoves work. A catalyst sits right over the flame and actually preheats the fuel.
As fuel needs to vaporise to burn, preheating fuel makes sense but the heat capacity of air is so little that warming the air makes little sense to me.
Wonderful topic! 😀 🪔 I suspect another reason, besides constructive advantages, why the fresh air is sucked in at the top of these lamps is to limit the chimney effect in order to stabilize the flame.
The oil lamps in lanterns are much better than flashlights or LED lights..
Flashlights in LED lights are used for certain occasions but oil lanterns can burn a long time.
An emergency oil lamps are always the best choice.
Mantles are extremely fragile.
A mantle lamp is more efficient, but also less resilient.
Flashlights and electric lanterns are even more efficient, but depend on the batteries, which either a one time use item, or discharge themselves while in storage.
Heat output during a multiple days coldsnap poweroutage.
Table lamps are most preferred for me personally, lanterns stiiiiink when they're burning and should stay in the barn where the odors can escape
Thank you for this second video. I really enjoyed this mini series.
Images of Mrs. O’Leary's cow flashed through my head, when you tipped over the lit lantern.
Don't worry, there's no drapes or piles of straw nearby.
We are still using those in Vietnam now (like right now at my house). We use in the occasion of blackout (which happens like once every 3 months or so). I have the leds but these run a lot longer than the leds which really give me a peace of mind, and I dont have to worry about forgetting to charge my leds
Quality content, pretty accurate information. I am a lantern collector, and enjoy them quite a bit, my self.
Dietz was offering these up till 2020, when they defaulted to the Chinese government, because of tax issues. So, they are in a limited operation as of now, and the W.T. Kirkman company in Ramona is not sure where they stand as of now, but hopefully they will bounce back. Anyway, one of the reasons Dietz did move to Hong Kong by 1957 is that in the US by the mid 1950s, banned the use of oil or kerosene burning lanterns on the nation's roadways. so, enters the battery operated flashers used on barricades for road construction we know today. Utilities and construction crews relied on kerosene tubular lanterns for a majority of their warning lantern needs. So, when the order went into effect, Dietz lost a lot of their business. So, knowing that China, as well as India still relied on kerosene burning lanterns, they found their larger market was there. Dietz continued to operate into the 1990s at their Syracuse factory, that they manufactured lanterns and other lighting equipment since the late 1890s.
Yes, there are far greater and economical means to light one's home or space for either camping or emergency/power outages, yet there's just a warm quality of light that these do give off. I guess I'm old fashioned but, I do burn one or two hot blast lanterns, with a very clean burning fuel, such as Klean Heat, a very refined kerosene type fuel, available at most quality hardware stores, as well as Medallion which is even more refined and practically odorless.
Since I live in the state of California, the weather here as many know is mild, and I keep a window open and a cross flow of air, to keep fresh air coming in, I rarely smell the lanterns as they burn.
The self snuffing feature on these is really incase someone knocks it over, it's cool you demonstrated how it works, sadly the locking burner on the current production Little Wizard is really not a great seal, to keep fuel from leaking out. Thankfully the flash point of Kerosene is pretty high, and even a lit match into a puddle will not ignite it. I have a video uploaded where I demonstrate the self snuffing feature on an antique Dietz I have, a hot blast in fact...the air chamber on that lantern is soldered to the fount, and the burner rests in a snug metal cup, so it creates a little better seal to keep any leaking, to a minimum.
Enjoy the videos, really fun content and I think a lot of great advice and information is presented. As for these tubular lanterns, I find them better for ambient light, which ads a nice cozy feel to any outdoor deck/patio or campsite. :-)
I love those small additions like the globe lifter and the ability to flip up the globe completely. Those are the things you know where born of experience. :)