This lamp has a pilot light. Runs on alcohol. The title of the youtube (I don't know how to put this in the text or if it is allowed to link) "Englefred Type Alcohol Vapour Mantle Burner" I can't find anything out about how it works. He states (and I could see) that it has a pilot light. He turned up the heat and in text at the description, he said the chamber above the pilot light has alcohol soaked cotton balls in it. Then he lit the mantle above. It appears he was waiting for the pilot light to heat up the chamber of alcohol? I suppose that has to be the function of it. I'm trying to figure it out because mantle lanterns I've seen before had a pump to provide pressure. Is this pilot light providing the pressure to run the lamp?
Hi @Deb Olin Weclome. This long and detailed post here should help: French early incandescent wick burner lamps
Wow, this is very helpful. It looks like the youtube one is a "regina" type. Does the wick then go up the 4 columns to the chamber that's heated? Then it appears one owner of one put a sponge in the heated chamber. The youtube guy says he has alcohol soaked cotton balls in his. So does the wick (which I assume goes up the columns) feed the cotton balls/sponge with fresh alcohol through capillary action? I love stirling engine fans and wow, I fell in love with those lamps. I hope I can buy one eventually.
Yes, mostly by capillary action. There are some 'self-pressurizing' types that use preheat cups too. They look very pretty and usually fascinating to many.
In searching, I'm not finding any working models that are for sale right now. I'm finding pieces of them. But I think I want to find one that works because I THINK I know how they work, but I'm not sure I would understand whatever model I'd buy if it's not complete or nearly so. I have no machine shop to make potentially missing parts, and it seems there were many different ones produced but not many survived the advent of electricity. So finding 2 or 3 parts lamps of the same model that can be made into one is near impossible. However, I might pick up a parts lamp that is as complete as possible to study it.
For a while somebody was making band new ones in Turkey - I guess reproductions of "Tito Landi" lamps, but I think they actually had the name legally.
I'll keep an eye out for that one too. Again there are parts around... but I sure would like to find one intact, authentic or repro. The wick that went up to the heating chamber looks different than the pilot light wick on many of them. Were they made of wool yarn? Or were they cotton? They look like worsted wool, like the kind of yarn you'd knit a sweater from. Does anyone know what the wicking material was?
