@Toby Garner I've had pretty fair luck rehabbing the baseball bat generators by unsoldering the tip, pulling out the mesh and cleaning it, rerolling and soldering the tip back on. That funky pricker rod is a remake I haven't tackled yet, although I think with a small lathe and silver solder it's doable. Nice save.
The shape of the holes is because Akron marketed their lamps under the Diamond Lamps brand. The square knob came about because one of the advertising campaigns used a phrase along the lines of "You get a square deal with Akron Lamps" and one of the presidents of the company thought the square knob would go along with the ads.
Thanks for the kind words folks. I've had several of these instant lighting Akron's, and surprisingly this is the first of these instaglow gens I've had to modify. The missing pricker was an easy swap, but the oversized orfice needed replaced and I usually just install a Coleman orfice for future ease of replacement. Works great for the early and hard to find torch lighting gen tips also.
