Having aquired two or three replicas of Classical world unglazed oil lamps I someties like to use them, usually with the cheapest olive oil we have and linen wicks. in short order they leak as the oil soaks through so in the past I have kept them on top of ashtrays.
Back in the day lead (or brass, if I remember right) holders were used so having aquired a bit of roofing lead to provide nose weights for my silly stick and tissue planes I decided to knock one up.
It was simplicity itself, I cut a piece of one inch floor boarding just larger than the lamp and used a hide hammer to beat a piece of lead around it, making a tuck at the pointy end and beating it flat.
once it was to shape I gave it a quick rub all over with a tommy bar (anything smooth and hard would do and used a carpenters guage to mark a line to trim to to get a even top edge. The handle is simply folded back and at some point I will solder it in place. Very easy to do and it would be possible to do in recycled tin (big oil cans from behind Indian restaurants would be ideal) but you would need to make more tucks. The lead was easily trimmed with heavy duty scissors.
The maker of the lamp on the right mentioned to me that if I coated the inside with beeswax the oil would not soak through so quickly so I tried that, I melted about a tablespoon of raw beeswax pellets on my shed single ring hob and plonked the lamp on it as well to heat up so the wax wouldn't set as soon as it hit it. The inside of the lamp absorbed it all and 3 days later no oil has leaked through. It burned for 3 hours one night and the heat didnt cause any leakage. However since its olive oil the nurse has in the past told me to use to remove ear wax and I have melted beeswax in various fats to make dressings and what not I think the beeswax will eventaully fail on me.
Since at that point I hadn't seen images of real ones (which are quite chunky and tall like the larger sort of fishing weight or small bobbins of cotton but made of lead. I made the wick holders from the same lead sheet, chopped out with wad cutters then plenished (?) over the ball pein part of a hammer held up right between the soles of my feet as I sat on the floor like i'd seen on TV. Dspite not being authenic its worked well with a wick made from linen string.
Perhaps because of the purity of modern olive oil they burn a lot cleaner than the books say until you blow them out and if left unsnuffed smoke and stink the place out.
The open topped sort of lamp would be very easy to make in the field from clay and would work fine with any slushy cooking fat so long as you warmd it up on the fire to make it liquid and then didnt put it anywhere where it was cold enough to overcome the heat it generates itself while burning that will keep the fat liquid enough to pass up the wick.
ATb
Tom
PS wick holders have also been made from chalk and ceramics, If I had any lumps of real chalk I'd have a go. I'll see if theres any big lumps of broken plant pot out back to file and drill to shape, not having any broken Samian or a amphora to hand...
Back in the day lead (or brass, if I remember right) holders were used so having aquired a bit of roofing lead to provide nose weights for my silly stick and tissue planes I decided to knock one up.
It was simplicity itself, I cut a piece of one inch floor boarding just larger than the lamp and used a hide hammer to beat a piece of lead around it, making a tuck at the pointy end and beating it flat.
once it was to shape I gave it a quick rub all over with a tommy bar (anything smooth and hard would do and used a carpenters guage to mark a line to trim to to get a even top edge. The handle is simply folded back and at some point I will solder it in place. Very easy to do and it would be possible to do in recycled tin (big oil cans from behind Indian restaurants would be ideal) but you would need to make more tucks. The lead was easily trimmed with heavy duty scissors.
The maker of the lamp on the right mentioned to me that if I coated the inside with beeswax the oil would not soak through so quickly so I tried that, I melted about a tablespoon of raw beeswax pellets on my shed single ring hob and plonked the lamp on it as well to heat up so the wax wouldn't set as soon as it hit it. The inside of the lamp absorbed it all and 3 days later no oil has leaked through. It burned for 3 hours one night and the heat didnt cause any leakage. However since its olive oil the nurse has in the past told me to use to remove ear wax and I have melted beeswax in various fats to make dressings and what not I think the beeswax will eventaully fail on me.
Since at that point I hadn't seen images of real ones (which are quite chunky and tall like the larger sort of fishing weight or small bobbins of cotton but made of lead. I made the wick holders from the same lead sheet, chopped out with wad cutters then plenished (?) over the ball pein part of a hammer held up right between the soles of my feet as I sat on the floor like i'd seen on TV. Dspite not being authenic its worked well with a wick made from linen string.
Perhaps because of the purity of modern olive oil they burn a lot cleaner than the books say until you blow them out and if left unsnuffed smoke and stink the place out.
The open topped sort of lamp would be very easy to make in the field from clay and would work fine with any slushy cooking fat so long as you warmd it up on the fire to make it liquid and then didnt put it anywhere where it was cold enough to overcome the heat it generates itself while burning that will keep the fat liquid enough to pass up the wick.
ATb
Tom
PS wick holders have also been made from chalk and ceramics, If I had any lumps of real chalk I'd have a go. I'll see if theres any big lumps of broken plant pot out back to file and drill to shape, not having any broken Samian or a amphora to hand...
Last edited:
) and getting some down to you, and I'll find a bit for you too John 
