I have had the Standard 102 running on the same Butterfly mantle for probaply a total of 10 hours. Brougt the lamp With me in the car the other day (will get back to that). Inspected the mantle tonight and seemed perfectly OK. Lit the lamp and hung it out on the terasse. Shortly after I noticed something was wrong. Shure enough, the mantle had dissolved into shreads. Glass was still OK, but splintered when it cooled off. That was the original glass With Standard logo. To make Things even better, that cartrip - included a stop to purchase a glass that was supposed to replace and the original glass excactly from the incident tonight. I damn myself once again. WTF! So what happened? Easy when I look back into it. Well used mantle, vibrations, loss of mass and there you go.
Lesson learned. No relight of a used mantle after transportation. So how long do you allow yourselves to use the same mantle under normal conditions?
There's nothing wrong with with lighting lamps which have been transported with used mantles; just a good visual check, then light, then monitor for the first five minutes. Some of my lamps have been to Newark three or four times and still run happily on the same mantles. However, most of those are Vapalux/Bialaddin/Tilley with tube mantles. Sock mantles are much more prone to damage. Terry
Well the only "stupid" thing you did was using an original marked globe. Which are rare. I always relight mantles after traveling around. No problems with that. If you want more security: use some hair spray, carefully.
My sympathy. I have also had bad incidents with breaking mantles. But I have had good experiences too: Some time ago I was asked to provide 11 lanterns for a wedding reception. They travelled 450 km in crates in my car's boot, the last 10km was very bumpy farm dirt/gravel road. The lamps were a mix of Coleman 237's Primus 1020's, Bialaddins and Tilleys. Not one mantle broke going there or back! I did break one mantle on a Tilley X246 by picking it up out of the crate by the hood. The lamps all burned for a bit more than 6 hours at the reception. For what it's worth, they were Peerless mantles. And disclaimer: I am a distributor for Peerless.
