Recently I've managed to restore a old Famos lamp with a new wick installed and trimmed. The lamp has a flame spreader as it comes with it only a little brushing is required to get the lamp into correct working order. Has anyone seen a mantle that produces 120CP which works on a kerosene draft lamp? The lamp produced a scorching bunsen blue flame.
Welcome aboard! Famos mantles are very scarce because they have not been produced for several decades, they are listed on Ebay UK., sometimes, but they fetch high prices. The links below show relevant information. 3 Mantle Lamps. Veritas Famos kero/oil lamp (non-pressure) Famos mantle - Google Search
Now I probably needs to make some cone shaped mantle, Aladdin mantle is extremely pricey costing more than £25 per single mantle. The unburnt net bag mantle cost about £0.50 per mantle if you buy a few online. The difficult part is to create the evenness of the cone shape.
Famos mantles would be hard to come by and of course, pricey. Perhaps the equivalent would be the older, equally uncommon Aladdin KoneKap mantles. The other alternative would be to use the Aladdin Lox-On mantles which are still available. Unfortunately, they are also similarly pricey in most cases. It would not be that easy to get a normal pressure lamp mantle to assume that truncated-elongated dome shape, whatever that is called . You might need to pre-suspend the mantles in a suitable wire-frame as the 'formwork'. And the try to inflate the mantle in the burn-in using a flame from the mantle's internal side like a pressure lamp.
I'm on my way to figuring out the correct ways of producing the cone shape mantle, which requires some skills. The mantle bag shrinks significantly after burning the rayon net fabrics, the shrinkage is the main problem. Has anyone figures out any chemicals that may prevent too much shrinkage of the mantle fabric after combustion?
The thing to look out for is a "used" mantle - i.e the metal frame. In terms of less shrinkage I think it may be due in part to the weave of the mantle. if you look at an unburnt Alladin one it is square and has quite large gaps inbetween the threads. I think it is then "fixed" in place using something like old fashioned aircraft cellulose and nitrate dope. - hence the exciting whoosh when you flare them off first. I attach my latest proposed experiment, following other fails. (using an Aladdin frame). Just working out the best way to fix at the top, but my plan is to allow for the shrinkage by using a larger mantle. I may try using model aircraft dope as this is still avalable and cellulose based.
At the same time I’ve managed to explore a little bit more with the flame spreader and the shape profile of the blue flame. The more the flame spreader slide in, the thinner the beam of flame gets. The more the upper parts of mantle glows.
IIRC an Aladdin mantle is actually pre-burnt from the factory. The lacquer is for holding the delicate 'ash' together for transport.
If my memory still works, there are many attempts being done on mantle making DIY. None where successful. Yes you can get a mantle to blow but that is not the real thing. As said first get mantle frame it is part of the whole thing.
Well that is interesting as it does show that they are made commercially in a "soft" format. Nice to see the "spare" material and that it is tied on the bottom. Gives me hope
I've realised that you can actually use a Famos center draft lamp without any mantle by simply removing the flame spreader. The flame quickly turns into a bright tulip shaped Argand style flame. The light output is around 30W incandescent brightness, where as with mantle it should output around 110W brightness as it stated 120 candlepower.
And partially managed to create a half working mantle, the upright mantle upper opening is very important for the lamp to work correctly as the blue flame pressure from a kerosene lamp that relies on chimney draft is significantly weaker than the lamp that relies on jet nozzle with a vaporiser. Therefore choosing a correct opening is a delicate balance. The size of a weave will affect how much hot air can pass through the pores of the mantle which allows the efficient heating of the incandescent body. However I could not find any famos mantle frame at the moment. The famos 120cp mantle frame is probably larger than the aladdin 30-60cp cone cap mantle. So a simple wire is used at the moment until a more stable frame is designed and made.
This chap seems to have come up with an adaptor to allow the use of Aladdin mantles on the Famos models Oil & Kerosene Lamps Replacement Parts
Interesting stuffs. Is the bare flame without the mantle glowing with similar brightness as those in carbide lamps?
I think it is far brighter than carbide lamp since the wick in the famos120cp is 20 lign, which produces quite a significant amount of light than a single acetylene flame.
the newly created replacement mantle holder is quite expensive considering the mantle is not included.
£15 for a mantle holder is not bad at all considering this is a rare item. However I got my Famos 120CP entire lamp with chimney for £20 and the 20lign wick made by hattersley for £5.
I’ve finally managed to create a sort of a proper cone shaped mantle with some unevenness. Which you can see from the images attached below. I realised the mantle shape is incredibly important as the slight unevenness may cause the mantle gabe hot spot, if it turned up too high, it may cause the carbon to be deposited onto the fuel rich section on the mantle. This mantle I’ve made cost £0.50 which is acceptable cost. Right now the lamp shines about 50cp instead of 120cp because more experimentation is needed.
I would first focus on the blue flame, try to get it as even as possible. Every blue flame burner needs a steady even, without spikes, flame.
Mantles going well by the look - congratulations. Is that a can of fuel right alongside? Is that wise?
After I’ve drained the oil and lift the wick to 1/8th of an inch above the wick tube and let it burned down, and rub the wick in circular motion for 3 turns clock wise it definitely even out the wick for a less spiky flame. However the wick become spiky again after 30 hours of burn time and it seems that some part of the wick consumed faster than the other part of the wick.
Thanks for the congratulation, the can you saw was not fuel, it just dish soap so nothing very flammable near by, the lamp runs on kerosene/paraffin which by it self is not classed as flammable liquid in many countries since the high flash point of 60 degrees Celsius. I’m still trying to perfecting my recipe on creating the perfect cone shaped mantle and trying different chemical doping on the mantle fabric in order to achieve better strength and less shrinkage.
Right now I’m just using a metal wire as the mantle holder, maybe in the future I might considering making something better as the thin steel wire bent under the extreme heat of the glowing mantle.
