Hi folks, Ive been reading through the forum for a while now and thus have rebuilt my Guardsman and I'm very happy with it. Now I know this is a pressure lamp forum but I have a bit of an issue with setting up a Duplex wick lamp, the burner is the most recent Duplex and probably the poorest quality amongst the bunch, even so, I seem to be getting flame spikes and not a lot of light from it. Can anybody please guide me through setting up a Duplex twin wick burner? This is my old Guardsman. And this is the Duplex that needs setting up properly. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Rob!.......Welcome to CPL, and yes you've done it!!!... ...Very shiny and happy Tilley there.... :-) I am only new here myself so can't really give you the tips for tuning your fine Duplex that you need.....but there are folks on here that do also have wick lamps and I'm sure they will be along to give what help they are able?.....Probably tomorrow now tho! Well done for persevering with the photos! Best wishes, PB p.s. it looks fine to me!
Hello Robgil. No expert on wick lamps here but I have had a duplex in my hands recently. Compared to a pressure lamp these don't give out much light and they tend to smell too. A lamp with a centre draught circular burner (Argand) is much superior. But anyway for the duplex the flame is all about the cut of the wick, assuming burner is clean and the fuel is good. Some say trim the wick squarely & straight across. I tried that and it gave ears to the flame at the edges of the wick, these smoked and caused more smell. Others say trim off the corners, this made the flame too peaky at the centre. I have finally ended up trimming the wick to closely approximate the curve of the burner top. This has worked the best so far. Fine tuning is possible by inspection, after waiting for the burner to reach temperature,any flame peaks can usually be attributed to a wick tuft or a high spot. Remove that before lighting next time. Repeat until the Zen of it is to your liking. I'll post a pic when I have a camera handy. They are tweaky, adjusting one wick affects the flame of the other one to some extent, so you end up going back and forth.
Thanks guys, I trimmed the wick straight across then nipped the corners off, this gave me an ear on one side of both flames but on opposite sides, a bit like this, 1460711876-Untitled.png It seems to work well , just enough light to make a cosy atmosphere and read a book, certainly not the intense light from the Tilley. I use lamp oil in it so no soot or smell from it.
Between the duplex and pressure lamps are the wick + mantle class e.g. Aladdin. One of my favourites, I think they combine the best properties of both. Silent and a good light.
