In all honesty this had been sitting in my garage/workshop for over a year now. It wasn't working due to a number of innate problems that I couldn't muster up the enthusiasm to fix but now Christmas is over I decided to give it a go. Firstly, the central boss where the control assembly screws into the fount was incorrectly manufactured and span around freely. I think it had been fitted with a fibre washer (or maybe rubber) to create a seal but it did nothing. I had to burn that away and clean up the mating surfaces (a royal pain!) before applying plenty of flux prior to soldering with a blow torch and electrical solder. Having fixed that and tested the fount to make sure it held pressure, I assembled the rest of the lantern and added a 350cp P'max cleaning needle as the original was missing. The pre-heater cup... what can I say! 10/10 for ingenuity, 2/20 for functionality! While it technically worked, it leaked, didn't hold enough fuel and therefore didn't provide enough heat to do its job properly. After trying to fiddle with it for a while I gave up in the end. I stripped it down again and added a new Anchor pre-heater cup which meant drilling an additional hole in the base plate/frame securing plate to accommodate the fuel reservoir... Having reassembled it again I filled the fount with fuel and used a blow torch to heat up the vaporiser and Preston loop to perform a Bunsen test (forgot to take a photo). That worked so I fitted an Anchor sock style mantle and having burnt it in I managed to get it to light. The lantern had never been lot before as was evident because the paper sticker on the hood was still ok and the burner showed no sign of heat damage. As that went well I fitted the globe, hood and bail and lit it again using the pre-heater cup. This is the first multi pane globe I've seen. When I got it a couple of glass strips were missing and needed replacing. Some details of the instruction... The cap is rivetted to the hood. The manufacturing quality is not good... notice the spacing of the hood air vents! You can't really tell but the aluminum pump handle has been cross threaded and the workmanship is pretty poor. I'm glad I got it up and running but this is by far the worst made lantern I've ever seen. The fount is brass but made of very thin material. The frame and hood are chrome plated and amazingly the pressure gauge actually works!
Hi Colin, thanks for showing your original Prabhat lantern... Really interesting to see the details there... thank you for persevering with it ! I must admit that when I saw the spirit cup I thought the original had been lost and that someone had made their own? Then I had a proper look in the gallery and there is another lantern with the same type of 'handmade' cup! There does seem to be a difference in quality between some of the lanterns...perhaps earlier and later? Thanks for sharing
@ColinG Congratulations on a fettle well done. Q. How many panes of glass is in the globe and how wide is a pane?
There are 17 glass strips and some are as narrow as 10mm while others are 15mm wide with the average being roughly 12mm. I heard that the faceted globes are common in India and are made as replacements when the Pyrex originals break. If you look closely, the two circular 'U' channels are held together with two fine wires which stops the whole assembly from falling apart. When I replaced the 3 broken panes it took a lot of fiddling around to get everything back into position!
After successfully working with this one, I'd reckon that you'd be able to make just any lantern functional again, Colin.
Hi Colin @ColinG , I always thought Prabhat was one of the "better" Indian makes! I have a Philips that took some fettling before it wanted to perform reasonably well. It too originally came with the 'glass strip globe' but that was already missing when I got the lantern so it is replaced with a decent one piece globe. The quality is not very high, materials used are very thin: completely filled with fuel it still weights a lot less than an empty (German made) Pmax. But it (kinda) works! It can be found in the Ref. Gallery, since posting it all these years ago it gave some trouble but I sorted this out. It is not the kind of lantern I want to use regularly!
The metal used for the glass holder top and bottom is very thin and probably from a food tin of some kind. It's ingenious and works well but the diameter of mine is a little too small so it tends to rock from side to side. If you want any more detailed photos, let me know.
Not so much labour of love, more bloody minded determination combined with a bit of post Christmas free time! Frankly I'm amazed that my soldering went as well as it did. I was seriously worried that the blow torch would burn through the wafer thin brass tank!
*** Update 6/7/21 *** The day after finally getting this mechanical disaster fixed it stopped working! I tried to see what the problem was but after putting in so much time I lost all motivation. Having been drained of fuel, in put it on the shelf determined to forget if ever crossed my path... until 2 days ago! I stripped it downto have a proper look and found a leak in my soldering! Dammit! So having cleaned the joint up again I set about trying again. This time I used plumbers solder and made sure I created a neat but thick fillet of solder that ran cleanly around the boss. I let it cool thoroughly and after assembling the lantern again for the 20th time I pre-heated it and pumped away. It worked! I've been here before mind you so I've been lighting it at regular intervals to see what happens and so far it's holding up well. I'm not going to get my hopes up but I might have actually done it this time. I know Anchor lanterns and Sea Anchor lanterns have a bad rep for quality but seriously, you haven't seen poor design and shoddy workmanship until you've experienced a Prabhat!
Well done mate ...... and you have the patience of a Saint ..... or you curse a lot....... it was a enjoyable detailed read. Thank you for sharing. Cheers Pete
Kinda! It is a while ago since I last used it. The thing is a bit temperamental, sometimes it would function fine, other times it didn't want to work properly at all. A bit like me I guess...
