This model and colour combo makes me weak at the knees and starts me dribbling, actually drooling. It really floats my boat .... sad isn’t it! Enjoy Cheers Pete
I agree, I really like the asthetics of the vapalux 300 and the 300x. I'll probably fettle this 300 into a RAF blue. Watch this space!
@swiss-paul ... it's your lamp and you're free to do with it as you please but the paint job looks pretty good for a lamp of that age, very good condition I'd say. I've got a number of similar straight sided Veritas 300's and the paint has been bad on them all - wish I had one as tidy as yours actually. You might find that car polish would really bring the paint back to life again and the brass hood can be easily cleaned - even the grey enamel top hat is in great shape! Just a thought.
Agreed! My maroon 300x has far worse paint and I’m feeling slightly unhappy that it will have to be repainted (but I really think it has gone beyond the "nicely used" look)! I cleaned up the fount of my PL53 (the one if you recall my thread from a while back is inscribed "Matron" on the rim) and I was pleasantly surprised! The gold is more reddish than I was expecting and looks nice and characterful - there's a few spots gone through to the brass but hopefully they will dull in time. Not sure what, if anything, to do with gunky stain around the filler.
I might have a suggestion to cope with the gunky stain. If you go as far as you can with kero and then try some alkaline detergent on what's left. It goes by loads of different names but if you look on eBay you'll find it. Sometimes it's used in Traffic Film Remover... but whatever it's called it's good stuff!
Its fortunate to have a working lantern of that age which still has most of its original coating on, @swiss-paul . I'd rather leave its coating alone if its mine. Just a clean-up and some waxing would bring bring back a lot of shine.
I think there will always be a raging debate between keeping a lamp original, stripping and polishing and respraying them. Id like to think any action that is employed by a lamps owner that helps to keep lamps up and running or make them decorative instead of being discarded is a good thing because then other people will eventually get some practical use out of them in a utilitarian way or least appreciate their asthetics from a design point of view. I also think older lanterns were overengineered i.e . Made a lot stronger than needed to be compared to newer, lighter lanterns that are not as robust. These designs are probably what endears us to these beasts and invokes a latent passion for them.
Thanks malcolm. I did try and get it close to the original blue colour of the 1940s. Im pleased with the result and the light from it is very good.
