Jam Jar Oil Lamp

[Tink]

Found an image on the net while looking for something else.

Being a wet day off thought I'd give it a go.
Not much use for bushcraft perhaps but good for an extended power cut, bothy weekend or as a good Scout project. Might save a lot of candles.

End Result::

The How to To is here:
http://1inthehand2inthebush.110mb.com/Oil_lamp.htm

Tinky

 

[bushyboo]

nice lamp i think i might have a go at one

 

[Surrey Yeoman]

Me too!

I think I'll have a go at doing a posh one for the patio table!

.......Now where did the missus put that lead crystal vase?????

Yeoman

 

[falling rain]

You can also make a lamp from a couple of old beer cans.

Cut the first can in half horizontally with a thin sharp bladed knife. A SAK is perfect. Mark the can first to make sure it is a straight cut.
The top half of the can should be slightly longer than the bottom half, so cut the can just down from the center by about 10mm
Make a vertical slit in the top half with the knife running from bottom to about 10mm from top. This is so the flaps can be folded slightly to allow you to insert the top part of the can inside the bottom half (the bottom half will hold the lamp oil)
Twist the ring pull back on itself so it is over the hole you drink from.

Take the second can and cut horizontally ALMOST all the way around the base of the can (as a guide cut along the line where the printing on the can ends and the silver alu starts. This will keep the cut straight)
cut around the base except leave around a 20 mm uncut.
At right angles cut vertically up the can and trim off the top of the second can (the end with the drinking hole) completely.
You should now have a 20mm wide strip of can with the base still attached.
This part will act as a reflector for the flame.
Flat fold the strip all the way up to the base of the can so you are left with roughly a 10mm X 20mm square of can attached to the base. The square of can should be on the same side as the concave (underside ) of the can.
Make a slit with your knife into the top of the first can just behind the drinking hole and insert the reflector.
From the waste alu from the second can, cut a strip of can for the wick. Roll the strip into a tube small enough to be able to fit through the hole in the ring pull of the first can. The tube should be around 50mm long.
Loosely stuff some tissue paper down the tube and wait about 5 minutes for the oil to soak up the tissue paper in the tube........................and light it.
You can either push the old paper down the tube when the flame starts to get weak or take the tube out and replace the old tissue with new tissue paper, refold the tube and re-insert.

It's a lot easier than it sounds and quite hard to write about how to make.
I'll post some piccies when I get a spare moment of how to do it. I've made about 20 and have them dotted around............................Not that I drink a lot of beer or anything

 

[Doc]

Excellent link. Thanks.

 

[geo_chris]

I would advise caution in using glass jars! A few years ago my wife went through a phase of using jars with water and floating candals in them. She had numerous of these around our garden. One night whilst we were having a drink in the garden one of the jars exploded sparying shards of broken glass over us. We thought the water in the jar would stop the jar heating up too much, but I think what happen was that the bottom remained cool whilst the top overheated.

 

[David Moulds]

Nice one mate i think ill give it a go this weekend. :You_Rock_

 

[Toadflax]

I've been trying this, and one or two other ideas, as I have lots of old cooking oil from our deep fat fryer. Seems a shame to waste it.

The jam-jar lamp has had the best results so far, though I have one or two tips for someone starting from scratch.

• Make sure that the slot cut in the middle of the piece of wood is deep enough so that it sits under the surface of the oil. It took a few days for my bit of wood to become saturated with oil by which time the wood surrounding the wick had become scorched.
• Make sure that the 'wings' of the wooden float are not too close to the wick - again, one of mine became scorched until it was saturated with oil.
• I made the wick out of an old cotton pillowcase that I tore up into narrow strips - a good exercise in making twisted cordage.

I have also tried a bottle lamp - cut a hole in the metal screw cap of a bottle (Jagermeister in this case - too bad I had to finish the bottle before I could use it!!!) and push a wick through this into the oil filled bottle. Despite increasing the size of the hole in the bottle cap, and making a thicker wick I can't get this to sustain itself - the wick just burns away and the flame goes out.

I'm wondering next about an idea I think I saw on these forums of a so-called metal candle. Take a metal tube, fill it with a wick and stand it in a shallow bowl of oil. I have quite a few scrap bits of 15mm copper pipe - though I wonder if at 15mm pipe is too big a diameter. Time to do some experimentation.

And then onto more uses for old cooking oil. I tried someone's suggestion for a little candle wax cooker - take an old boot polish tin, make up a spiral of (corrugated) carboard to fit in the tin and melt a candle into it. Having burned up all the wax I tried filling the tin with old cooking oil - it burned well but I haven't yet tried boiling water yet - maybe something to do over the Easter weekend. Obviously this won't be portable like the candlewax one, but something to play with down the bottom of the garden.

So I suppose this leads onto the question - what other ideas do people have for 'bushcrafty' uses of old cooking oil?


Geoff

 

[Pignut]

That is a cracking Idea!

Nice one!

 

[Toadflax]

And here it is. 22mm copper is better than 15mm (more stable), drill a couple of holes near the base, fill it with a suitable wick (old cotton pillowcase here) stand it in a shallow bowl (this one had pate or something like that from the local supermarket), fill with used cooking oil, let it soak and there you have a nice little lamp for the bottom of the garden.

 

[Hunter_zero]

And here it is. 22mm copper is better than 15mm (more stable), drill a couple of holes near the base, fill it with a suitable wick (old cotton pillowcase here) stand it in a shallow bowl (this one had pate or something like that from the local supermarket), fill with used cooking oil, let it soak and there you have a nice little lamp for the bottom of the garden.

]

You could use citronella oil to keep the flies away!

John