This is the light attachment Radius offered to their No. 42 stove. It used an old reliable method to produce a good blue flame hot enough to make a mantle incandescent. Unfortunately I don't have a Radius No.42, so here it is mounted on an equivalent Primus stove. The attachment is NOS, and has never been used. I will of course test it one of these days, and will add pictures of it running as soon as this event take place.
Thanks John! Yes this is really an interesting piece. I think I will test it tonight. It's really small, so I think my favourite mantles for applications like this will be to large. I like those narrow, standard 3" gaslight mantles, but in this case, only the top 2/3 will be used.
Whoa! If it works, that's the coolest stove accessory. Does the mantle suspend from that wire? Would love to see pictures of it in action.
That is really interesting Christer! I don't understand how it works, but very cool! found this in catalogs second row from bottom https://classiccampstoves.com/threads/202
Of course it works. ...sad I, who hasn't run it yet. But the technology of it is well known, so I have no doubts about it. And you are correct in your assumption that the mantle is suspended by that little loop in the end of the wire. As it looks from the catalogues, it used the kind of mantle that was open at the top, so my old Aladdin gaslight mantles will probably work well, even if a big part of them will hang below the flame spreader, and not take part of the incandescent magic. Cool indeed. I have been experimenting quite alot with this kind of old style lamp burners, so they aren't new to me. It's just a matter of getting the correct fuel to air mixture up under a suitable grid that don't allow back fire, and you're all done. And in these cases when you use a stove burner to vapourise the fuel, you also must use some parts of the fuel 'downwards' in order to maintain the heat and vapourisation, hence the rows of holes at the concave lower part of the burner. These holes provide flames which only purpose is to heat the regular stove burner basket to maintain the vaporisation. There will still be enough fuel for the actual light.
OK. I just did the test. I used one of the old Primus No. 71 that works absolutely flawless so that no malfunctioning could be blamed upon the stove. I misjudged how tiny this lamp burner is. Even this small Aladdin gaslight mantle was twice the size in height of what the original mantle must have been, so I had to trim a good part of it with a pair of scissors. But with all that done , it worked just as expected. On the second thumbnail you can get a hint of how much of the fuel was used only for the purpose to heat the basket in order to maintain the vaporisation. (It is from the standard test to see how the bunsen flame looks just before sacrificing a mantle...) It's actually stunning how close this is to my own emperical attempts when I made my own version of a light attachment for the Radius 20. . I'm not very impressed by its performance, but than again; what could you expect when the area you use of an incandescent mantle is this small? I guess the main purpose was to light up the interior of a tent, or such, and for that purpose I can assure you that the light produced is quite sufficient, and well above that.
Well, I've seen one earlier at an obscure British stove site, and then this one in Sweden, so I guess you could start in either of those two countries. Seriously though. This gismo is not really much to have from a practical point of view. But If you're a collector of Radius or stove paraffinalia in general it's another case. ...and who isn't any of those?
Thanks for posting the very detailed pictures Christer! I can see what you mean about it not being meant to take apart, but the pictures show enough to give a good glimpse of the inner workings I think. I've been after one of those ever since I got a radius 42, and will keep looking. I was stunned when I saw this on tradera, but it came at a low point in my economy, so couldn't bid. Nice to see it went to a good home!
Nice pictures! I get it now. couldn't get how it stayed hot enough for vaporizing. thought the lower holes were air tubes.
Thanks Christer for showing us that. Marvellous! Seeing that 'Aladdin Upright Gas Mantle' makes me think it might be an ideal type to get a Tito Landi Lamp working again, something I featured a while ago on Bart Meijer's 'Be Back Later' website Tito Landi restoration Can you help me identify a source for one, Christer? John
Sorry for the late reply. I missed the last inputs on this topic. Oh, yes. The upright mantles does the trick pretty well on Tito-Landis. That's one of the reasons I bought my first box of Aladdin upright mantles: to use on some Tito-Landi lamps. I never been pleased to use soft hanging mantles on upright lamp burners since they get all shapeless and creased. The 3" gaslight mantle is a bit larger in diameter than the Tito burner, but not much. It will dangle a bit at the base, though, but that will scarcely be any problems in your case since you have an indoor lamp. They usually don't move much... A source, you say? I have always bought NOS-mantles on eBay, but they are available in many places as newly made. You can check hytta.de for instance. But they are very expensive, as I just learned myself Better to go for the NOS. Just search for upright gaslight mantle and some other spelling variations of that. (Don't focus on Aladdin since other companies also made them, such as Veritas or Sunbelt.)
I am really impressed. Of course, the tech is no different than our favorite stoves, save the feature of both having to direct some fire down to keep the fuel vaporized at the same time that more is let up into the mantle. More impressive is that this has not been simplified and widely produced for our favorite Optimii (Latin plural?). I WANT ONE!
