My son bought me this for my birthday back in April but I've only just got it home. It was in reasonable condition but had most likely been kept in a shed as the nickel plating has suffered damage.... however, it cleaned up reasonably well. I might have another go at it later. The hood is in good condition which suggests it's had little use... along with other clues, like the freshness of the plating on the mixing tube. It had been filled with kero so it obviously wouldn't have worked and had most likely been left unused by someone who didn't know what fuel to put in it and assumed it was broken. The globe was filthy, probably on account of flare ups after attempting to light the kero! Anyway, having checked it over I fitted a cheap Butterfly mantle (for testing purposes) and had ago at lighting it. This is the result!
I've worked on the nickel plating damage with very fine wire wool and vinegar and it looks much better. The lamp pulses a little but I'll check the generator tomorrow and see what condition it's in.
Having dipped into Ron Browns excellent 'Book of Kerosene Pressure Lanterns' and made my way to the 'Conversions' chapter I thought I'd have a go at running the 635 on kero. Apparently you make yourself a bottle top pre-heater, fill it with kero and off you go! I did exactly that and... it only bloody works! 639 on the left, 635 on the right. Here's a close-up of the bottle top pre-heater with a Bialaddin wick shoved in it. It ain't pretty but it does the trick. If I'm honest, it's not the brightest lamp in history - certainly not as bright as the 639 - but it works, and without pulsing! Oh, I forgot to add photos of what it was like before I cleaned it up so here they are...
I've never heard of it... Edit: Amazon has, though:- https://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Keros...1&keywords=Book+of+Kerosene+Pressure+Lanterns Bought and paid for - should make some interesting bedtime reading...
My wife bought it for me last Christmas along with 'Coleman Lanterns' in the same series. They do make very interesting reading and they're entertaining too!
*Kero Conversion Update* First off, I made myself a pre-heating cup from 8mm copper tubing and a 22mm copper pipe end cap. Here is the result. You can still see the end cap reference numbers stamped on the side. Having completed this, I decided to go a little further! I already had the 635 working on kero and it was fine, but as Ron Brown mentions in his book, although it functioned it wasn't perfect and I noticed there was quite a bit of kero 'halo' burning outside the mantle due to the mixture being too rich. Then I remembered I had some Coleman tips/jets that I'd been given by a very generous friend and wondered if one of these might help. Having checked the embossed letters and the corresponding jet aperture sizes I found that the CF/WG tip on the 635 is an 'R' = .0095" and I had a few 'I' tips which are .0085" which quite a few kerosene models seem to use. I experimented to see if the cleaning needle would fit the smaller aperture which it did, so having replaced the 'R' tip with the 'I' tip, I fired it up and hey presto, no burning halo around the mantle and a much brighter light! The noise it makes is slightly different now - it sounds as if it's running a little ragged, but actually the operation is smooth with no pulsing and a good light output. I call that a result!
