Pictures of your oil lamps please.

[stumpoak]

I am interested in the wide variety of oil lamps that are in use out there and which ones you find are particularly functional. If it burns with a flame, I am interested in your pictures and opinions.

Things of particular interst are:

Burn rate of fuel and what kind of fuel used
Wick type
Light production
Soot production
Availability of spare parts/cost of operation
Oil burning Nav/Running lights
Cabin Lamps
Anchor Lamps

You can't take too many pictures! The more detailed the photo, the better!
Thanks so much for your help in this project.

[SVDistantStar]

Ive only got a cheap oil lamp from Wal-Mart. I use it on Lola to save power. It works out pretty good. I can get a week if it only burns for an hour or 2 a night. I want to get the Trawler Jr lamp from West Marine, but the price jumped like mad. In the 2007 book it lists for $144, in the store its $279...

I've got one pic of the lamp and where its at.

[Giulietta]

Where is the lamp??? hehehehehe

[SVDistantStar]

Yea yea i knew that was coming.

[erps]

Two of 'em. One in the salon, one in the galley. Big round wick, easy to service, burns kerosene or lamp oil. Produces some soot and a little heat. I've often thought of getting an aladin mantle light as they are a lot brighter.

[poopdeckpappy]

I have 3 Gimbaled oil lamps (DEN HAAN)



Light production is really good and the soot and stink production is zero due to the use of liquid paraffin lamp fuel

[jwms]

WM puts the Trawler Jr. lamps on eBay once in a while. I don't know if it's overstock or not but I was able to pick up my second one last fall for about $100.

I can get 4 to 8 hours from a filling and use "lamp oil". Two of them in the main saloon on my C&C 34 provide just the right amount of light for dining and even cooking but not quite enough to read by. Never noticed any soot but the small amount of heat is pretty pleasant in the evenings.

I have several hooks around the cabin so I can hang one directly over the galley, over the saloon table, over the nav station, etc.

I used to have a W&P anchor lamp that worked quite well. It was really appropriate in the cockpit of my Marshall 22 catboat but not so much on my early 80s IOR-influenced boat. The lamp would soot up a bit in higher winds but it never blew out even in 30 knot rain squalls.

[tdw]

Ms Wombat gave me this for my birthday last year, splendid woman that she is.





Don't really use it regularly enough to know how much oil it burns.

We also keep a couple of El Cheapo hurricane lamps which we fill with Citronella oil to fend off the mosquitos. Doesn't work against sand flies unfortunately, indeed they seem to love the stuff. Can also double as a anchor light.

[Giulietta]

You guys actually fire those lamps inside the boat?

Do they release smoke?? Never thought of that....are they heavy?

I might buy one for the cruising times...

My wife when are at crusing and at anchor "decorates" my boom with candles and candle lamps to give some "charm" at night... I hate that!!!!!

My boat looks like a Lolipop store or something waiting for the smurfs or the Leperchauns to arrive...besides I keep banging my head on them, and burn my fingers because these things stop with the wind, and she keeps asking me to light the candles, that keep blowing out agrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[tdw]

Alex,
We don't use ours very often in summer cos it does give off a bit of heat but any other time of year it's fine. Not good enough to read by but gives off enough light if we are just slouching about or , say, playing scrabble or the like. To my mind candles are a pain although on our PB I had a small candle lamp with glass sides (no blow out) that used altar candles which are dripless. (edit - they only smoke after sex or if the wick needs trimming/adjusting.)

As an aside, when we were down in Tasmania a couple of years back I noticed that a lot of boats with spirit stoves put an upturned flower pot on their stove as a heater. The pottery (ceramic ? clay ?) absorbs the heat and radiates warmth for a goodly time even after being removed from the heat source. They swear by them. Come winter I'm going to try it with one of the hurricane lamps. (Not good to leave a gas stove burning for hours at a time). OK so we get pretty mild winters down here so it doesn't take a lot to heat the cabin.

Obvious warning to anyone who has never used an oil lamp , make sure the cabin is well ventilated.