I have managed to snag a Bialaddin 310 from the arms of the local charity shop which is in need of a little fettling. This is it before. It's currently in pieces, brass and aluminium polished, and awaiting the arrival of the paint for the tank. There is a little damage to the top as evidenced in the photo top left and, as that is the only damage, I'm tempted to leave it as original but I don't want it to degrade any further. Is there anything I can do to halt the loss of paint without stripping it all back and starting again? Answers on a postcard please for those old enough old remember the phrase. The lamp will be pressed into service when I take out my caravan. It'll be used as my outside evening light so it will be fulfilling its purpose and saving me from having to illuminate my evenings with soulless electricity. I'm sure it will also start many a conversation.
Unless there have been recent developments in technology, there's nothing you can do to improve the hood. It's vitreous enamelled rather than painted so you'd have to find a company that could sandblast it and then re-enamel it using vitreous enamel which is, essentially, molten glass. Otherwise find a better hood. Personally I'd just live with it - it looks fine to me. I agree about the tank, though, except if you've polished it, the paint won't adhere as well. That was why the manufacturers made them with a slightly rough surface. I'm baffled by this fairly recent mania to polish lamps and lanterns to within an inch of their life, especially if they're intended to be used. It just seems as if you're making a rod for your own back - once you polish them then you've got to keep on doing it. Just my two penn'orth...
@David Lawlor That’s a good find and from here it looks like the original type of glass? i usually fettle a lamp before any refinishing as i dont have to worry about paraffin drips on paint etc but thats just me :-) pb
God yeah, totally agreed. If you ask me it's eBay that is largely responsible for it. I think there's a generation now that wants all the leg work done by others, but just become serial polishers for shelf queens (so to speak). There's no doubt the polished to near ruin lamps seem to sell. Certainly not my thing, but if I'm tempted in future to sell anything, I fear the worst in that i might have to capitulate...
@David Shouksmith i couldn’t agree more about the polishing,to me it’s all about them being working, the old brass tanks look better with patina anyway , I know this is probably common knowledge but if the tanks are rusted on the inside ( steel obviously )there are some superb de rusting solutions on the market nowadays, not just dilute sulphuric acid like before, the best I have had was called rust-fixx by a company called Q-fixx , it’s a p.h neutral solution which I used over and over and over, when I went to buy more I couldn’t find it anywhere. I think it has been discontinued
Rest assured the tank is in an unpolished state. In fact it's currently wearing a few layers of etch coat in anticipation of a metallic silver top coat which I thought would reflect back some of the light from above giving me a few extra lumens for my buck.
Well, I can see the logic there. All I'll say is that I have many chrome / nickel / speculum-plated lanterns and I've not noticed any useful increase in illumination from any of 'em - not even SDRs...
I feel an experiment coming on. Light hitting a polished surface would be, if I remember from that far back correctly, specular reflection. Mine will technically be a rough surface which I think will qualify it as diffuse reflection and therefore not as bright but nevertheless should still give off reflected light. What I’ll need to do is try it with the tank completely covered with something mat black and then without the covering and see if the amount of illumination is different. This seems simple and crude but will be interesting to see if there's any difference. Science is definitely not my subject so it will be interesting to hear from someone out there who understands all this sort of stuff.
