New Member here! Hi ! So the addiction is real and after getting a 246b, a R1 I managed to get hold of a FL6 for what I think was ok money. Was hoping to put it on an original style stand .... Which turns out are rare as rocking horse excrement Does any one have one, or know of a pattern to get one made. Cheers Nick
Hi Nick, 1702 is the tall tripod stand and 1701 is the short one. I don't know what 1703 is. There is an early short stand and a later one, just as there is an early tall stand and a later one. Either way you will need to have the bracket to hold the lamp to the stand. (Blue) Left is earlier, right is the later. The earlier tall stand had pins to hold the legs out, The late one has wing nuts. Early (couldn't get a better pic than these) Late I believe the later style tall stands were made by Bullfinch and imported by Tilley. So Nick, I guess what is best for you depends on your skills. Let us know where you went with it.
@Anthony the good news is the bracket and wing nuts to attach the stand are there The bad news is no skills as yet but will see where we get to.
I made a couple one years ago by copying the a Fire museum stand onto a piece of board. I did get a blacksmith to make the front (double leg) pieces; each was constructed in two halves and then welded together to ensure the correct width; it would be more difficult to form the bends in the correct place to keep the width right.
A mate of mine made me one, very similar to yours, Ian. His business is to make metal gates, fences, banisters etc. and the idea was that when he was quiet, he'd make a few FL6 tripod stands which I'd advertise here. He made the prototype (which was excellent) but it was pretty obvious that the stands could not be, effectively, hand-made at an economically viable cost - there was just too much work involved without some degree of automisation of the process, involving tooling, jigs and what-have-you. As I recall, there were three types of stand available for the FL series. These were the short stand(s) as seen above, the tripod stands (S.2.) which are less common and the spike stand (S.S.1.) which I've never seen. This was a single spike with the standard bracketry at the top to hold the lamp via its yoke. It was intended to be pushed into soft earth or whatever which seems to me, hugely unstable and a thoroughly bad idea given the weight of an FL 6 full of fuel - perhaps that's why they're not often, or ever, seen...
Yes, I've got at least two types of tripod stand. The main difference is the way the length of the extending legs is varied... Part page from 'The Railway Gazette' September 16th, 1938 (page 8) and courtesy of Mick Emm (where is he?)...
Here's a stand I fabricated out of EMT (thin wall electrical conduit) for my FL6. It isn't beautiful but it gets the job done, was inexpensive to build and will pack flat for travel. I usually leave the two short pieces attached to the FL6. Also the elegant carrying case I found, a 20 gallon plastic garbage can. Contrary to appearances in the photo, the lid fits and closes on the can, some internal foam padding and it's good to go.
@Reese Williams don't need the bin as a frame of reference, the wife doesn't know how big it is yet ....shhh Stand looks good might have to look into that design
As an alternative, Trevor and I found that an FL6 fits nicely into an Ikea yellow carrier bag thingie and the handles make it easy to carry. The lamp lies on its back so I wouldn't be trying it with fuel in the tank, obviously...
