Hi Jeff, some of the Hinks lamps fetch quite significant prices on that auction site... Sadly I missed out the other day on a real treasure myself because the seller was sticking to collection only and it was too far to go for a lamp! On the restoration front, will you be able to straighten the burners? I did a pretty good job on an Aladdin type 12 burner the other week and I've become quite adept at straightening flame spreaders, but your job there looks far more delicate...
I've started the initial cleanup on my latest font... As you can see some of the plating is worn through on the foot, and a few patches elsewhere but I guess that's to be expected on a lamp that is at least 84 years old... You may also notice it currently has a type 12 burner with the wrong gallery fitted, but to be honest I don't think it looks out of place. My true type 12 to the right is the North American version, the English version had a different style foot...
Jeff, unless Hinks is stamped on the burner cone, i think you'll find that Excelsior is a German brand....
The tank has some dents in the base, but they are not that difficult to push out and it's not imperative to do so. The top of the tank has a large dent, which makes the collar slope, so it's necessary to fix that and the clips which hold the burner to the bayonet fitting on the collar are broken. There is also some general wear on the rest of the container, but that is to be expected, I'm not sure how old this lamp is, but it must have many years behind it. Any ideas as to it's age anyone? You may be correct about the burner Paul, but I reckon that it's as old as the lamp and it may well be the original burner, but it may not be, the burner works very smoothly, Jeff.
If you find that the collar on the font is not stamped Hinks too, it may well have been made up from bits of other lamps..A complete Hinks lamp will have the base,collar and burner all stamped up...i have a few here...
Hello Paul, the collar is stamped Hinks patent, so that means that the burner is a replacement. It's a very well made burner though. How old could this lamp be? Jeff.
Jeff possibly more significant, even though the burner may have been changed is that the Duplex burner wasn't patented until 1865...
I reckon that it's a late Victorian lamp and I shall be contacting collectors who may be able to date it more precisely. I have sorted out the dents in the tank, it's not perfect, but it's close and it's as good as I can make it. The entire snuffer mechanism is missing from the burner, but the burner will still work once the bayonet fitting clips are renewed. It's an ongoing project! Jeff.
Hi Jeff - did they say if the burners and the lamps were from the same period or was one or other earlier.
The burner is also early, but he has to search his paperwork for more information on it, but he also reckons that it's a British burner. He also mentioned that there was a German burner with the same name, but that was a round wick burner not a duplex. The design of this duplex burner is interesting and helps to date it, I shall add more information when I can, Jeff.
I just won a selection of oil lamp bits on eBay some of them are from what appears to be a Hinks burner... some of the bits look in a terrible state but hopefully salvageable.. I was only really interested in a could of bits which look in good condition so anything else will be a bonus.
Well the aforementioned collection of oil lamp parts arrived today... Aside from a collection of six various Aladdin wick carriers all in perfect condition (the reason I bid in the first place) I also appear to have an almost complete lamp with an almost complete Hinks No.1 burner Trust me when I say I have photographed it's best side!! The lamp really is in a very sorry state.. The bottom half of the font has some serious stress fractures and certainly won't hold fuel at the moment and the burner unfortunately has the gallery lifting mechanism missing, but the snuffer and winder is fully functional. The gallery is also missing some fingers but there are enough intact to hold a chimney securely.
Another restored wick lamp, this time a duplex... The font and the burner aren't a pair, the font predating the burner by a considerable time but in my opinion they go well together. A little annoying that I had forgotten to pick the mushroom up and put the lid back on the silver plated tealight holder before taking the picture!
Gneiss, I havn't mentioned it before for fear of exorcism but i do have a few wickies,,,,all ship lamps,the galvanised one is a dutch ankerlicht ,made in rotterdam and is a masthead lamp, the green one is a stern lamp by meteorite made in the uk,
I haven't got any myself but I do like the ship lamps... I've seen some nice port and starboard lamps recently but they've all sold for more than I was willing to pay and were missing the original burners.
Old bygone fairs or boat sales are good places,,, the bygones events rather than 'antique' fairs, and ebay local sellers with poor descriptions unwilling to post. prices vary amazingly and its just a question of waiting for the right one to come up,a bit like buying pressure lamps,,,you'll miss a lot but will drop onto one of them.base camp have little oil lamps that will do the same job as the original burners.
Hinks lamp - progress. This has proven far more work than I ever imagined just to get it to this state but I'm pleased with it so far. I still need a gallery lifter and the little teardrop that goes on the snuffer leaver.
I think theres a member in the club that has reproduced those droppers for the Hinks safety burner....the snuffer arm can be robbed of any cheap duplex burner as they are the same...Paul
That's a lovely looking lamp. I have a hinks centre draft lamp copper fount, gallery lifter and a very nice iris filler cap, It opens like the shutter on a camera. I'll take some photos sometime.
High Paul, the snuffer and arm are all there and fully functional it's just the teardrop missing as they often are unfortunately. If you remember who produced them that would be great... I did think I might find a earring or something that would look the part. I think finding a replacement gallery lifter may be a little trickier... Hi Mathew92 - Yes I was really pleased with it, especially as I bought it as part of a job lot and it was actually the other parts that I was after.
Well I got around to photographing it today. I thought the wick could do with trimming so while I'd got in my hand I filled her up and lit it. It is fairly unusual to find a centre draft Hinks anyway but with the Morton's Patent filler as well I think this is a pretty rare lamp. All I need to do to this lamp now is find a shade that looks right on the lamp and that I like.
Well, considering BBL is 'sleeping', and there is such an interest in 'wickies', I don't think we should hide our lights under the proverbial bushel. They have lots of variety and clearly interest. I don't 'collect' as such, but do have some. The two on the left are from my wife's former family home in France and were in a loft where they lay for over fifty years untouched. They have brass shades with a few coloured pieces of 'plastic', and what should be a curtain of green glass beads hanging from the edge. We found the beads and their wire hanging 'rail', and all that is needed is to assemble the whole. A 'hole' of a different kind was in one of the fonts - it had been electrocuted! The burner had been so disfigured as to be almost scrap. But I had a spare Kosmos which took its place. The other burner is a Matador. Both need chimneys. One of the shades is on the 'servants' lamp to their right. 'It' has a white glass shade and Kosmos burner. To the right of that is a fairly average duplex with amber glass font. The other two are not lamps, but cartridge cases from WW1. A before and after. The hole has since been plugged. Next is a little Pigeon lamp, designed to run on essence. Today a purist might wish to use white gas or Coleman fuel, but I fancy the French would have used ordinary gas/petrol. Pretty little thing, and with green glass beads awaiting re-threading. My wife picked this up from a Brocante (flea market) for €5. I think they saw her coming, but it cleaned up. A copy of the Pigeon. I pinched the Pigeon glass and gallery here: I'll dig a few more out later. Norf, that Ankerlight is precisely that, not a masthead light. It would certainly have been hoist up the mast, but only when the vessel was at anchor. A Masthead light does not have 360° of emitted light, but 225° facing forward. The Anchorlight with its full circle of light would be seen from all directions. The other navigational light you show is a Stern light. This has 135° of emitted light, less than the Masthead. Nice lights by the way - and with wick assemblies in place and working Edited for typo error.
Glass beads and shades: This one did not come from France, though it has been there! Very nice Cranberry frilled tulip shade, it needs wicks only. The one on the left is fairly basic; a steel font duplex with interesting cast base depicting a wader of some sort. Something a little different, a Welch patent lamp from the railways, at least I believe the burner is the Welch patent bit. This was sold at a car boot as a Linesman's lamp. It could well have been, though similar were (I am told) used to illuminate the coloured semaphore signals. The chain attached to the handle would give the opportunity to use the heat from the flame to heat a brew when flipped over one way. The burner has two wicks, though I have learnt from one source that the thicker of the two which surrounds the smaller is to keep the burner cool. The central wick is the one that is lit, and the sliding device on the control shaft is to lock the wick, presumably against the effects of vibration from passing trains when in use to illuminate semaphore signals.
Hi Derek, I have one of those Welch patent lamps, I believe that they were placed inside a larger lamp and these were effectively the burner part of the lamp. A common thing to find on these lamps, is two lines scored on the glass so that the lamp attendant could easily get the correct height on the flame. I believe also that the flap on top would have been open when inside the outer lamp case and an electrical connection was above and using bi-metalic strips (I think that's right) if the lamp goes out, a bulb would be lit up in the signal box so the lamp could be refuelled and lit. Always seems strange to me that they had an electric light bulb to tell if the paraffin lamp goes out. Why didn't they just use an electric bulb in the first place?
