Oh look, it’s a pinned comment! Here’s a link to the last video on the subject: ua-cam.com/video/F3rncxf4Or8/v-deo.html And in pinned comment tradition, here’s some extra info! I had noticed a hole in the base of the kerosene lantern similar to those on the other lamps which you insert the matches through. I thought this was silly and probably just the result of the same tooling being used for multiple models, but it turns out that if I had purchased the lantern new, it would have come with a special bottle with a spout designed to fit through that hole and fill the pre-heater cup. Neat! Still, though. Rough. If you’re wondering what the dual-fuel model looks like when running gasoline, well I’ll add a clip of that in the Connextras video which I still have to make. Though I will say now that it’s not particularly special or anything. I’ve got a busy day ahead of me outside of UA-cam so that’ll happen tomorrow most likely. And in that video we’ll address whatever other questions might come up today.
So you were knocking his knock-knock. [I meant that you were criticizing the "knock knock", but the phrasing after reading was unintentionally suggestive of something else.]
The hiss of Coleman lanterns and stoves is a treasured memory from childhood. The reason that it's so unique is because of the "large" hollow tubes downstream from the metering orifice. You're hearing the same effect that is used in loudspeakers, how you get a siren that can be heard miles away from a diaphragm 2 inches across.
Regarding Thorium mantles, another safety aspect is the dust generated when old mantles are removed from the lamp, you don't wanna be inhaling that stuff!
@@crackedemerald4930 Some stuff will cook you from a distance too don't forget! You're right though. With these mantels you would definitely want to avoid any sort of ingestion. The deal with alpha emitters, they don't penetrate deep at all and the dead outer layer of skin can mostly absorb them without any real issue but they are pretty nasty when they get direct access to the mushy inside parts.
@@sdhlkfhalkjgd Thought Emporium actually has videos on it and it definitely goes through the epidermis (apparently that's mostly living, see @Eebsterthegreat's comment) to living cells according to him, it goes through paper easily in a demonstration (maybe his paper is extra thin, I have seen it stopping radiation actually)
"through the magic of buying two of them" will never get old. I look forward to it. As much as l looked forward to Bob Ross cleaning off his brush and saying "beat the devil out of it". Makes me smile every time.
I know right... I remember he used to be so awkward and watching youtube poops of him in a tight shirt all sweaty and nervous, I'm glad he's settled into himself because he does an excellent job.
I have some knowledge here, and I feel qualified enough (at least somewhat,) to hopefully shed some light on why all three fuel types still exist in lanterns, and camp stoves for that matter. Propane is very convenient, and easy to use, you get close to the same light output as white gas, but is much more user friendly. Disposing of the green bottles, and carrying them out with you, can be a pain. If you camp (or live for that matter,) in cooler climates, propane begins to stop vaporizing, and freezes up around 40° F. "Enter in the white gas lanterns/stoves" They put out more light, and (once you know, and are familiar with the lighting process,) can be lit VERY easily. They are also DEAD RELIABLE (to certain temps, we'll touch on that in a bit,) my wife and I (yes, she is willing, and enjoys it almost as much as I do,) have on multiple occasions relied on these white gas tools, in situations where if they did not work, we would have been in serious danger. Without hesitation, I know I can call on my lanterns. I can plop my lanterns down, in the snow, in - 20° weather, and light it, and by that light, light my stove, get hot water/food cooking, and pitch my tent, or dig my snow cave. I have and will continue to rely on my white gas equipment to save my biscuits. So what might you ask, is the kerosene useful for then? Even colder Temps. White gas still functions at -40°, but less reliably, and not as bright/hot, we'll say less energetically. Much below that, and it gets fairly unreliable. Kerosene lanterns, and stoves function just about everywhere on earth. In the 1920's when Mallory and Irvine attempted to summit Everest, and in the 1950's when Hillary and Norgay summited, they relied on kerosene stoves. The least user friendly, but arguably the most reliable of the three. I am not scientific enough, to explain why, whether it be the process of preheating that does it, or if it's in its chemistry, kerosene, in its simplicity is just about as reliable as anything can be. I suppose it's also worth noting that white gas or kerosene lanterns/stoves (they function on the same principal, and are mechanically very similar,) can be rebuilt with spare parts, or taken apart, cleaned, reassembled, and lit, in a few minutes, because of their simplicity, adding to their reliability. Admittedly, albeit embarrassing, my lanterns all have names, and are greatly cherished. I am not a scientist, or necessarily a professional, but do have a great deal of experience in cold weather camping/fun activities, and have a great beard (so I am automatically more knowledgeable in outdoor activities.) To anyone who read my novel of a comment, I owe you, a sincere Thank You. - Scott Edit: the minus sign on -40 ended up being separated by a space, putting it on a different line. It was fixed, so as to cause less confusion.
Not sure if it was standard, but we had a plastic bottle with a long thin metal tube on it and a cranked end. The alcohol in our Coleman paraffin / kerosene lamp could be put in and lit without dismantling
@@JimboXX78 Yes. In his pinned comment he mentioned that he discovered if he had bought the lantern new, it would have come with such a bottle. That bottle makes lighting them much easier than shown in the video.
@@SBDScott Sorry I didn't notice that bit, but basically it rendered half of the video wrong, and most of the faffing about was due to his error. Which was somewhat charming. I wonder at what point the archeologists will be digging up this bottle along with all the other stuff that is missing when you buy things second hand. Getting the chronology right will be interesting
When I buy cheap (under $5 a part, sometimes $10 depending what it is) Chinese electronics, I almost always buy a spare -- even if I only need one. There are two options: it kinda sucks and I need them both just to keep one going, or it's actually pretty good and by the time it releases the magic smoke, I won't be able to find a replacement cheaply (they probably still exist, but tend not to stay cheap if they're good, like Tripath-based amps). Either way, I'll end up using both, but it'll still be cheaper by a good margin. I also only end up shipping one package, saving me a few cents and saving the world the cost of one package from China to North America. Win-win.
When I was a little kid, more than half a century ago, we had a cabin without electricity. Dad would light the kero pressure lamp with a couple of pumice stones attached with a spring to the bottom of the lamp, under the mantle. The stones used to live in a sealed jar of metho. It's the sound of the lamp that I remember the most, along with the little ritual of pumping it up and lighting the stones, then the sudden burst of bright light as the mantle took hold.☺
@@daveR0berts The stones were used to heat up the mantle until you were ready to release the pressure valve for the kero. The spring held the two halves of the stone together around the base of the mantle. After the mantle took light, you would remove the stones, and after cooling return them to soak in the jar of metho..
Watch the previous video in the series on Connextras on the Dietz lanterns, you'll see him tip over a lit kerosene lantern and have it spill kerosene all over the place. He didn't have an extinguisher around for that bit. ..Yeah ua-cam.com/video/gpDqUyXKqTA/v-deo.html
Please do a series on plasma TV's it seems like a great technology to expand on, modern enough to be relevent but old enough to be defunct, kind of analog, mostly digital. Definitely mysterious how do they work compared to CRT and LED/ OLED only you can help us understand!
I specifically sought out a plasma TV to replace my Sony XBR400 HD CRT when it popped. Ended up with a Samsung a friend gave me that needed repair. Then my son threw a remote at it so I found a Panasonic on Craigslist and still have it. I love plasma.
this may just be nostalgia from camping with my grandpa and growing up with these lanterns.. but i find the sound they make rather comforting.. and i love FIRE so uh thats a bonus to me XD
Grew up in Florida in a wood frame house . This was in the late 60's . It was cold in Florida back then . Kerosene heaters . A few white gas camp stoves . Fuel the white gas camp stove outside . Pump it up , open the valve . Stand back a few feet throwing a lit match at it . Woosh ! Life was good back then .
Definitely. I remember using Tilly and Primus lamps with no *accidental* fire involved. Pre and young teens with fire means *something* you didn't want burnt will be but it's mostly fine. Mostly.
I had my grandpas old Coleman lantern laying around mantels were busted. I bought new mantels for it because of the last video. Nice to have it working finally.
I have a collection of Dietz and Coleman lanterns. The sound of the Coleman is one of the signature attributes of tailgate camping for me. Reminds me of great times with my dad and family. Thanks for all your videos. These lantern episodes have tied alot of camp tech ends together. Keep all of them coming. Cheers!
You are missing an accessory for the Kerosene lantern. If you bought it new, it would have come with an alcohol bottle with a nozzle on it to allow you to fill the alcohol cup without disassembly. Some of the more advanced petromax lanterns, namely Britelyt, have a blowtorch preheater which allows you to preheat the generator without any additional fuel (with some limitations such as if you are running some heavy fuels). This does come at the expense of needing more pumping.
Kerosene is way cheaper than the Coleman stuff. I use a kerosene heater in the winter (there are children's tree-houses with better insulation than my house) and I can pick it up for about 3.50 a gallon. A 1/2 a gallon of this stuff at Walmart, especially this time of year, is like $10. I would never use gasoline in any of these devices. Even the ones allegedly made to burn gasoline. Basically they clog and will start spitting out fuel. Of course, refining the gasoline back into white fuel is actually pretty easy. I might do that.
Yeah except that he seems completely oblivious to the idea that parts of the world where these things are useful are not necessarily parts of the world where white gas is readily available or cost-effective. He gives a small nod to "having a huge supply of kerosene for some reason" but doesn't seem to take it seriously.
And don't put your backup generators in the basement where they can flood. Sad that we had to learn that one the hard way, but hopefully it stays learned.
Sounds like something you'd hear from a wise old hermit in the woods, and you'd struggle to understand the meaning despite knowing how profound it surely must be, until decades later when it suddenly makes perfect sense and whatever difficult task you're doing is immediately made simple by the revelation.
@@kizikucalegon8673 or it's something that you never fully figure out so you make a pilgrimage back to those woods at the end of your life, find the wise old hermit (who, miraculously, doesn't look even a day older), and beg of him to reveal the true deep meaning of his words. And he says: "Dude, like... just... don't store fuel over a fire. It could ignite really easily... it's a pretty dumb thing to do bro".
Oh, my - this brought back some memories of taking my life in my hands while trying to light Coleman lanterns on a bass boat in the dark when I was a kid. I'm surprised I didn't blow myself to Jupiter more than once. Those things put out a hell of a lot of light for a long time, but lighting them is always terrifying.
One of the enjoyable side effects of the heat output which I learned in the Army during field maneuvers was what we called "the Coleman chair". Place one of the lanterns under the seat of a metal folding chair. Place a thin piece of fabric over the seat and then sit down. In a tent at 3 AM in the late fall it gets very cold in there. This setup warms the body nicely, we always had several officers waiting their turn.
While a boy scout, I tried to roast marshmallows with them when fire restrictions were in place. It didn't really work, but did heat it up enough to sorta melt the chocolate and make the marshmallow a bit gooier.
Camping in the 70s these are what my dad used. To me they are the sound of camping. I have many of them today, and love using them every chance i get. They are nostalgic and remind me of days gone past when basics such as light and heat were not just flicking a switch but required a bit of work, planning and skill.
We used to use Thorium mantles as test sources for low-level radiation "friskers" at a nuclear plant. They could bring them on-site without any issues, however you could not leave site with one as it was now considered as a radiation source.
I absolutely could not care less about the alleged "safety" of handing these things or breathing them in, even. FFS, my basement is probably loaded with radium (I live in PA) and anyone who flies in airplane is getting way more radiation. I especially could not care less what happens to the factory workers in Vietnam or wherever the hell they happen to be. It's probably not that dangerous anyway.
As someone who typically leaves subtitles on, I appreciated the attention to detail with [stares at the camera, intensely]. Had a good chuckle there, thanks.
The thorium mantles may not be very radioactive, BUT, they are alpha emitters. So high care is advisable when dealing with a broken mantle when cleaning up. You DON'T want to ingest alpha emitters in any form. Alpha radiation is easily shielded, but the flipside of this is that they deposit their energy in a very focused area around any emitter you have incorporated. They do a LOT of damage.
9:08 That wooshing sound is the sound of my childhood and is full of nostalgia for me. I grew up using pressure and propane lamps for camping and we often turned them on at the end of a busy day to play nighttime games like "hide and seek", "kick the can", "dot-dot", and "capture the flag". That sound was great for covering the sound of whispers and footsteps while we were sneaking around.
I actually appreciate how "energy inefficient" the Coleman type lanterns are. Since l do most of my camping in mid to deep wintertime, l welcome the heat output. I usually even keep one in the tipi if it's very cold.
I feel like telling you every video: You are extremely talented as a presenter. I'm not sure if it's just me but your sense of humor is delightful and really cracks me up always. :)
I also have to say I really appreciate the good filming and editing on showcase especially when comparing the two mantle flames. It's doesn't look spectacular but getting a shot where the video concisely demonstrates a comparison is not something a lot of people can do.
“I have no idea why you would ever want one of these unless you had a supply of really cheap kerosene.” The Amish, it’s the Amish and areas that supply them with Kerosene. In Lancaster, PA, gas stations will actually have a separate pump you can get kerosene from for pretty cheap.
@@jordanpwalsh It's also called heating oil. Pretty much the same as diesel as well. I guess the video guy doesn't do much camping outside of campgrounds. Pound for pound, I'd much rather have a gas lantern than anything else. Whether it be kero, white gas, or propane. I have them all. Propane is usually my go-to since it's just convenient as heck and doesn't make a mess.
I would like to give some recognition to the subtitles, not only are they custom but they are hilarious. I don't need them and I always have them on for the extra layer of comic relief 😊
And they're not obnoxious, either! They're a bit silly sometimes but not craption level (the difference between "useful caption for deaf people" and "useless or annoyingly-difficult-to-follow caption for deaf people that hearing people think is funny").
I'm a product of the early 50s and can remember my dad using these lanterns and burners. Never remember any mishaps fortunately. I love watching your videos they are always so informative and you are such a great presenter. Keep up the good work.
I'm a Class of 69 grad...where did the time go? My dad had a 1949 Buick woody station wagon that we would take in the 1950's in the wee hours from Los Angeles and drive to Sequoia National Park, always arriving at dawn. We would camp at Lodgepole up at the top of the forest road. My dad used to modify and improve everything he touched. The white gas Coleman lantern was one of the things. He hot rodded it somehow. We could be up at the trading post looking at the camp sites at night and you could always see ours as it was the brightest. His lantern was whiter and brighter than any other one there. Sometimes he took it apart in the afternoon to clean it. I think he just liked to fiddle with things. I inherited that tendency. And I still have his Coleman lantern and stove. The number 51 is stamped on the bottom of the lantern...1951.
LOVE the energy density discussion. I knew they were inefficient but putting that in perspective by converting it to watt hours really hammers it home.
It's the fundamental problem of incandescent light. So even though there's a lot more energy in a tank of kerosene or naphtha than the same weight of lithium cells, almost all of the combustion energy is just heating the air.
Alec: Here’s a package from Amazon! Me: This is gonna be good Alec: Here’s a Geiger counter (crackling starts) Neat! Me: Alec’s become self aware and is going to blow us all up with his combined knowledge of latent heat and the refrigeration cycle!
For some reason this reminds me of a line from eragon books where Angela basically alludes to molecular energy and seems to be able to trade her latent heat for a burst of magical speed/energy. Also alludes the fact that molecular bonds have a lot of energy, and if that gets released....kaboom
Great video. Thanks for all the info and marvelous presentation. I am from Sri Lanka and we used to have these pressurized kerosene lamps about 40-45 years back as we did not have mains electricity at that time. To us, they were pretty safe for indoor use provided all the precautions are adhered to. They were noisy very hot and, sort of, smelled of kerosene though. we were accustomed to the hissing noise and it was a, sort of, lullaby for us. They were the principal source of light at village festivals, night processions and at funerals etc. The model(s) we used to have are of different construction and far simpler to operate than one demonstrated here. They didn't have to be disassembled like this one but could be started just by injecting some alcohol (wine spirit) using a small squirt can. It was pretty easy though we, being kids, were only allowed to pump air to pressurize the tank prior to lighting, which alone was a special something for us, really,. We used to call them 'Mantel Lamps', 'Petro Lamps' or simply 'Petromax', after the most popular brand. Those days, they were a luxury and only a handful of families could afford the daily use of them and we were lucky. (thanks to my dad) This video, for sure, brought back some sweet nostalgic memories and many thanks for that too.
You are intensely likeable. Also your theme music gives me nostalgia for TV music from my childhood. This puts you in a strange Venn diagram crossover with Captain Disillusion in my mind.
@@raygunsforronnie847 SNL was never really that funny. And I say that as someone who used to watch in the Ferrell/Farley/Macdonald/Shannon/Spade/etc. era. Mind you, I'm an Aussie and was pretty young at the time, so no doubt I missed a fair few references. On topic, this pretty much describes every job that I tackle. To quote a very learned man: "Expand my brain, learning juice!"
@@evanmacdougall9715 Why? No normal person would connect the title of this video with anything other than lights, maybe you should check with a therapist since there may be a reason you associate this with anything else.
@@RRW359 why? no normal person would connect @evanmacdougall9715's reply with them looking for a specific comment with a specific joke, maybe you should check with a therapist since there may be a reason you associate this with anything else.
You should do a teardown/how it works on a pinball machine electronics, similarly to your jukebox episode. Would be sick finding out how they actuated and tallied up the scores
That would be really good! I randomly stumbled into an exhibit of pinball mechanisms all separated out and diagrammed once and I still think about it like twice a day
When I was a little kid in the UK in the late 1970s we had regular power cuts due to miners strikes (power stations ran on coal back then), and I remember pumping up the Tilley lamp to have a bath.
I watched all 3 of the candle/lamp videos, and enjoyed them all. Thank you! As a 60 y/o man, I have used all of these except the Aladdin. The roar of a Coleman lantern brings me back to camping and late night fishing trips! The sound and smell evokes very fond memories. Thanks!
When I was a Boy Scout we took around 6-8 large propane tanks with us on weekend camping trips. We used the propane to power grills, stoves, and the hot water. We also used those propane lanterns because it was easier for the quartermaster to have one fuel source for all our needs than anything else. Also I’ve always found that wooshing sound very relaxing
How did you do hot water in the scouts? My troop had a thermo-siphon boiler someone made out of a stainless steel beer keg. It worked great, but it was really bulky. EDIT: apparently it's called a "donkey boiler"
@@moconnell663 We had a turkey deep-fryer! It was a big tank with a burner underneath and was designed to heat oil for a Turkey but it had a draining valve on it and was pretty much perfect for hot water (not sure if it was totally safe in terms of contaminants)
@@moconnell663 If I recall correctly it was a ~30 quart aluminum stock pot with a drain spout that looked a bit like a spigot from a hose. We had a clever troop!
"The magic of buying two of them" will NEVER get old. Thank you for continuing it - I look for it every video! Also the "knock knock" joke was pretty good
"Once it's lit, you don't have to deal with alcohol again." I don't get it. Wouldn't the dealing with alcohol increase substantially, once you have light to see where the booze and glasses are?
If you didn't already know where the Everclear was, how did you fuel and light the lantern in the first place? Using one of these indoors during a power outage seems like a drunk brain idea to me.
Hi njswimdad have you become a flat earther yet? If not I suggest watch a 13 part series called _What on earth happened_ by Ewaranon to learn that the earth is not a globe. I got it in my about tab.
I remember my Dad had one of these colman lanterns that we used when I was a boy scout. I always wondered what the mantles are for. He also had one of the stove you showed. You said it was scary but boy scouts are almost universally pyro-maniacs.
Thank you for these videos. I was raised with them on the farm in the 1950's and early '60's. At bed-time my grandparents would hand me a lit table lamp and send me upstairs to bed with an admonition to "blow it out" before going to sleep. What was normal then would get someone incinerated and/or jailed if we let today's 10 year olds try. If memory serves, we called the fuel "coal oil". The pressure lanterns were used for lighting larger rooms and for outdoor use.
@@aaronvaughan5506 because those kind of lamps don't go off after you turn them to the lowest level, they stay on till you blow them, and if by chance that lamp trips, you know, it'd burn the entire room to ashes... As for getting someone to jail, try giving a child a lit propane torch and see where that gets you 🤣
When I was a kid we went camping every year and Dad had a Colman lantern like these and when you mentioned the whooshing sound I actually had a flashback to being a kid in Yellowstone sitting outside the ring of light from the lantern watching the stars while the lantern whooshed in the background.
It's about time I added my "Paraffin Pressure Lamp" notes. I am a Scout Leader (still) in London and, because of COVID, we haven't done much camping recently, but when we did, we use 'Paraffin Pressure Lamps' - specifically 'Tilley' Lamps. We have lots of them, mostly acquired from other Scout Groups who no longer use them. I'll mention the specific idiosyncrasies of the Tilley lamp in a moment. When I rejoined the Scout movement in the late eighties with my current Troop, I found a whole bunch of Tilley lamps in (mostly) poor repair, but along with them were four lamps I had never seen before. Turns out they were Coleman Type 639's - Coleman 'Kerosene Pressure Lamps' - very, very similar to the type TC is demonstrating towards the end of the video. Turns out they were brilliant lamps - much quieter than Tilleys, more economical and much more reliable. The only thing was.....the taking apart thing. I later learned that in new 639's there was a small, polythene bottle with a copper tube spout with a hooked end. With it (I never had one) you could fill the heater cup - we use methylated spirits, the mauve stuff - without taking the whole lamps to bits. From there it was a simple matter of lighting the heater, waiting until it had almost burned away, pressurising the tank and opening the fuel valve. Voila! There was light and you could see for rudy miles! Lovely lamps, but they stopped making them years ago and spares are hard or impossible to come by. Now, Tilley lamps. Tilley's were the 'latest camping technology when I was a Scout in the fifties. Mostly we used 'Hurricane Lamps' - like TC's Deitzes - with a few Tilleys for main lighting. They were a million times brighter than the flat wick types, but they were very, very hot. I believe the burner runs at about 450 C. The current model - the X246 (sold at nearly $200 nowadays - is almost exactly the same as the models we used in 1958! It has no heater cup, instead uses a clip on wick type, stored in the provided small, glass jar full of 'Meths'. This clips round the vapouriser (the stem) and when lit, heats a rather clever dome shaped 'boiling chamber' up under the cap. To start, the fill valve (the pump body basically) is left open and the control valve fully closed. The wick is lit and allowed to burn until about to go out. Then, quickly, close the fill valve, pump about ten good strokes and carefully open the control valve. A good one will light straight away, but many more will 'pop' and sputter and misbehave. With a bit of fiddling with the control valve and a few more pumps, the lamp should light, often with an audible 'pop'. The mantle will often be orange with black spots, but given a few moments, a bit more fuel pressure and a few, very quick 'close and open' actions with the control valve, the relight will 'pop' any soot off the mantle, clear the jet and should then run cleanly. The stem has a long, thin 'pricker' inside, pushed by a cam in the control valve which cleans out the tiny jet at the top of it and completely shuts off the fuel when closed. Now for a rant about the price of paraffin (kerosene) in the UK. For many years paraffin was sold in hardware stores for all sorts of uses, mainly portable heaters and its price was never an issue. In recent years the ONLY source of paraffin was in garden centres, in four litre plastic bottles. No matter what the price of diesel fuel was (paraffin is very close to diesel but without the additives) the price of 'paraffin was £2.00 /litre! £10 a gallon almost. That means I could put almost two litres of PREMIUM diesel in my Land Rover for a litre of filthy garden centre paraffin. My Scout Troop now use 'Light Heating Oil' - basically very clean, water free paraffin by any other name (when I can get it) for less than half the price! Very interesting vlog, close to my heart! We use Tilleys to make our camp 'a blaze of light' compared to miserable, cold LED lantern lights in other camps.
Well, don't you have kerosene (Or parafine or whatever) heaters here ? If so you might be able to find fuel for them pretty much everywhere during the winter. Here in France they sell it at every supermarket in 20 litre jugs that cost about £29. Even some gas stations sell it at pumps. During the summer it obviously becomes less common at stores like Tesco (Basically everyday stores where you buy food), but most hardware stores do have it year round. They also sell the same stuff in 1-litre bottles as well. And it's indeed kerosene from a US perspective, or technically speaking pretty much the same stuff as Jet A1 jet fuel.
Have you seen the price of Coleman camping petrol? Expect to pay over £10 per litre, over 5 times as much a pump fuel which has lots of unhealthy goodies added in
The "Light Heating Oil" you can buy for cheap sounds a lot like the "lamp oil" paraffin bottles the supermarkets sell over here. To clear up confusion about naming I would make the distinction between "does it smell or does it not". If it smells I'd call it kerosene, if it doesn't paraffin oil -or "lamp oil" as it's commonly called. Since it's meant to be used for lamps, torches etc. it's very clean and water-free. As I said in a direct comment on this vid we even use it for fire-breathing. I didn't even know that there was any other composition of paraffin oil, as water will make it very hard to light and will sputter A LOT. And if it isn't very clean it'll burn (very) sooty and at a lower temperature so the flame tends to go out, plus it'll taste bad and leave residue in your mouth -other than being oily. The clean stuff only tastes kind of oily and that's more of a feeling than a taste and pretty easy to clean out of your mouth with foodstuffs that will "soak up" the oil and you oiley out to rinse; peanut butter is great for that, dry bread crust work as a "last rinse" and eating some will help absorb any oil that accidentally ended up being swallowed (your mouth isn't leak-tight no matter how you spit...). Thank you for your comment; interesting useful Information!
@@unconventionalideas5683 Are those the ones that use Coleman camping petrol priced at £10+ per litre, or pump fuel that is now less than 1/6th the price but with cancer causing additives?
About the difference in generator tubes in "dual fuel" models, the increased thickness is itself the key difference. Some gas additives can decompose when heated too much (absent oxygen; normally they just burn), then the solid decomposition bi-products products clog the generator tube. By making the generator tube thicker, that decreases the peak temperature in the tube, and spreads the heat out over a larger area.
That's true about the theory. But I think that's also an out dated theory on Colemans part. At least in Canada if you run them on our pump gas generators don't last all too long. Maybe 10 full tanks before getting noticeably less light out of them. Mind you that's like 30-50 hours of run time and a new generator coasts about 10 bucks. So more than fair trade off. You can also soak the core out of the generator in a thinner or brake clean of your choesing and they will come back around a few times. I've run some pretty manky things through them including charcoal lighting fluid and they will eat most anything with a pre heat. But of course the generator might not survive it
@@MrRecall200 Ok so if I want my lantern generator to last the longest, I should only use white gas even if it's a dual fuel model ? (I currently don't have any lantern and in fact I'm doing my research to know chat to choose between a Coleman single or dual fuel lantern, a Petromax kerosene one or a local-branded butane one). I was planning on using pump gas as it's far cheaper, at least in my country than white gas and butane canisters. Kerosene on the other hand might abe a bit cheaper in some cases but I'd like to be able to light my lantern immediately without preheating. I would also like it not to smell not too much so I could occasionnaly use it indoors even though it's not recommended. For that matter of course it shouldn't be producing too much carbon monoxide or other toxic fumes regardless of the smell. Bus as far as the fire hazard might go, I will never leave a lit lantern unattended and have both a fire extinguisher and a fire blanket ready just in case.
@@psirvent8 I'm going to say you definitely want a white gas one vs kerosene for what you plan on doing with it. Once you learn their quirks they are reasonably safe indoors. I have always run one inside my trailer all evening, of course only when I'm in eye shot of it. And you come in to a super nice dry warm place afterwords, with nearly zero smell. Now the trouble with gasoline is all the additives and weird mixtures they are actually selling as "gasoline" at the pumps today. Pure old gasoline would run just fine, but I find the stuff from local pumps just has a way of gumming up generators way to quick. It also burns with a noticeable odor where as coleman fuel has almost zero smell. You might have a very different experience depending on what part of the world your in. Canadian gas is just a bunch of corn ethonal and weird additives depending in the season were in. Coleman fuel is pretty damn economical. Many times more then propane. 1 gallon is just over 20 bucks and runs a single mantle lantern for a long time. Like 30-40 hours probably. Usualy I have about 3 running every night for about 6-8 hours a night when camping. I buy a can of fuel only twice a summer. I have colemans from 1936 all the way up to ones bought recently at Canadian tire. They all run just about the same. Super reliable so I'd say any one you get will do you just fine. The 50's through 70's ones are the best build quality and all the parts are the same as a new one when you need a repair pice. Except generators on some models. But even then you can order a nos one online for just about any lantern for 10 bucks. And the brand new line of them are great too, just a bit cheaper made and less cool looking. I'd stay away from kerosene ones. I have a few tillys and kero colemans. They work great. But the extra pre heat is kinda annoying and incontinent. They also have a smell. Not super strong. But I wouldn't want one indoors.
Hi Alec, thanks for another interesting video, where it is quite evident you do considerable homework before making each video. I wanted to add my 2 cents regarding Coleman lanterns and camp stoves since I have been using them since the mid 1960's. The gasoline powered one they make today are MUCH easier to light than they used to be. The older version used to have 2 fuel valves: A 3 turn one that controlled the flow and a half turn wire valve connected to a pushrod that passed through the orifice in the fuel vaporizer chamber. To light the lantern, you would partially pressurize the tank with about 10 pumps. Then open the fuel valve a quarter turn. Then use the wire valve as an on/off switch to turn on the fuel flow to the vaporizer. You would have to keep your hand on the wire valve, allowing short spurts of fuel to flow into the vaporizer while lighting and also, trying to get the vaporizer warmed up enough to successfully vaporize the fuel. All the while, wading through numerous flare-ups for about 60 seconds, if you were expert at lighting the lantern. After it started burning normal, you would open both wire and shutoff valves all the way, then continue pumping up the lantern. Lighting the camp stove was a similar experience. On the latest Coleman lanters and camp stoves, they incorporated the 2 fuel valves into one plus, the orifice now sprays the fuel instead of generating a solid stream, which helps atomize the fuel much better during the cold-start period. The pump handle with the finger hole, the one you have to unscrew, didn't appear until about 1969. Before that, it was just a simple pump handle. I think the version we have today was a safeguard added to eliminate any possibility of the pump leaking vapor or liquid fuel as the fuel heats up in the tank. I didn't know Coleman made a kerosene version of their lantern. This will sound hard to believe but, I can't get over how easy it is to light. I say this because, I also used the Tilley kerosene radiant heaters from 1965 to 1982, which were much more difficult to light. After optimizing the lighting process (which took years), I could get it lit with only a 2 minute pre-heat using a propane torch. These heaters used a stainless steel mantle and put out around 5,000 BTU's of heat. However, when the clean burning wick type kerosene heaters came out in the early 1980's, the pressurized Tilley heaters quickly became obsolete. As a side note (I live in Florida), kerosene is no longer available in Florida. Hardware stores still sell it in 0.5 to 2.5 gallon jugs but, it's all high sulphur (even though it is labeled K1) and not usable unless you operate the heater outdoors. The Coleman fuel is not "White Gas", we used to buy White Gas in the 1960's to use in the lanterns and camp stoves, only the Amoco gas stations sold it (all gasoline sold in those days was leaded, with a minimum octane rating of 93) . Coleman did not make fuel then. The Coleman fuel is specially formulated to prevent it from breaking down quickly like gasoline does, which would gum up the valves and orifice. The Coleman fuel also burns cleaner. You would need to drain the fuel from the lantern/camp stove immediately after your camping trip.
I live in Florida and kerosene is not impossible to find if you live in area where it gets colder in the winter. The K1 sold in hardware stores is very costly however it is indeed water clear whereas the stuff Speedway sells at the pump has a yellow tint from Sulphur, though it burns with little smell in my kerosene heater.
@@thevintagerecipeblog Hey, thanks for the comment! I haven't tried looking for kerosene in 2 years. I live in the Ocala, Florida area. 2 years ago when I did try to find kerosene, I tried all the gas stations that Google said had kerosene and found none. I next called an industrial fuel supplier, their response was "Good luck on finding any!", they knew of no one selling it locally. I tried buying from a few different hardware stores but, even though it said "K1" on the container, it was not. It was clear but, super high Sulphur. It smelled so bad when the heater was running, you couldn't even use the heater on an open air patio. I have been using and maintaining kerosene heaters since the late 1960's so, the problem is not from misuse.
"And they don't have any sort of radiation warning on the crust, I mean packaging..." Holy cow, sir. You have reached nerd levels I can only dream about.
@@owensmith7530 if you look at a cross-section of our planet (or most rocky planets, I assume) the crust surrounds the molten mantle of the planet. So it's a pun, that the thing surrounding THESE mantles was confused for the other mantle wrapper.
That whole start-up sequence starting at 8:15 is so familiar to me, at 12 years old on many family camping trips means warm food-is-a-coming, and at 75 it reminds me of warm fulfilling family memories. I haven't heard that sound for half a century. Thanks so much!!! (most of those folks have passed on)
11:43 Cody’slab ran his truck on it to get to a gas station once. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it can work in a pinch if you don’t really care about the car anymore.
Most half-modern cars have knock sensors that tell the ecu to take precautions, but it will still run like absolute ass even though the engine doesn't die
We had a white gas lantern when I was a kid. Used it for camping sometimes, or just when ever we might need some light outdoors. I do remember my dad using it a few times during power outages, and once when we moved into a house and it took a day or two to get the power company to turn on the electricity.
I lit my Coleman lantern during a power outage. I had a neighbor call to ask why I had light and they didn't. That was 30 + years ago. Now we both have generators for power outages.
On the plus side, the thorium mantles can take pride in being one of the few products on the market today for which the California Proposition 65 warning is actually justified. (As oppose to, say, the small brass-faced hammer I bought a while back. I guess brass _could_ be known to the state of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm, if you ground it up and snorted it or something?)
I thought it was well-established common knowledge that California is populated almost entirely by complete nutjobs. Plus the 4 people who love them, for some reason.
That brass hammer probably has a significant percentage of lead in it, and when hammering on stuff you could get lead containing dust into the air or at least on your fingers.
1-2% (up to 8%) metallic lead in brass makes it 'free machining' i.e. more easily cut, and helps corrosion resistance in certain conditions. Even if lead isn't explicitly added, lead is a common contaminant and was often a component of brass before extra effort was taken to exclude it. Generally the lead isn't dangerous unless there is heavy corrosion. Even in plumbing the lead remains bound to the corrosion products until the water chemistry changes. As for Prop 65 notices, they are pointless. The notices are everywhere, so they provide no useful information.
This series brought back happy memories of my mom and my dad. Thank you. My mom thought me how to use a hurricane lamp for lighting during rolling power outages in Mexico city in the early 70s and I fondly remember my dad pumping his Coleman gasoline lamp when he took us camping. What a privileged life I had!
@@volvo09 Yes, there's a much better ratio of weight and bulk to running time with liquid fuel than with butane or propane. And a lot of the extra bulk for butane/propane is just "packaging" which you end up carrying with you even when the fuel is gone.
2008 in Afghanistan we had an oil lamp with fuel above the flame for heat in one of our guard sheds. I almost started a fire on multiple occasions, but someone else beat me to it. Good thinking tossing the radios out the window before running, but he should have also thrown our missile launchers (AT4) out as well before evacuating.
A coleman lantern on a cold night with a pile of logs and a chain saw can be a pleasant experience. All the heat it can put out still won't be enough; but it's always welcomed!! Thank you for the information/ education!!
Up to the early 1970s in the UK painters used kerosine (paraffin) blowlamps to burn off old paint from wood before repainting. These had the same aggro of lighting as the kerosine lamps;. An indent in the top was filled with methylated spirits then lit, then wait before pumping the pressure up and releasing the kerosine. Camping stoves back then also worked the same - called Primus stoves.
I may have one of those paint-removers... It looks sort of like someone at "Coleman" went a little crazy and "invented" an olympic torch from the plans of a Nam-era flamethrower... Burns (on kerosene) at a pretty solid range 900 to 1000 F... reliable but "fiddly"... I DO have a working "gasoline blow-torch", and it lights with a reservoir under the "burner barrel", but I've always preferred filling that little trough with kerosene and using a piece of rag as a wick to "warm it up" with gasoline under pressure in a brass can that's around 100 years old... Still a bit "unnerving" to light it off, with spits and puffs and occasional strings of (not so) little orange fireballs out the nozzle end until it sputters and coughs a few times to approach "operating temperature"... BUT once the roar is solid (you have to yell to be heard over the thing) it kicks out a steady 1900 to 2200 F and a beautiful blue flame about 18" long that's COMPLETELY INVISIBLE in ANY form of direct sunlight, even dawn or sunset. ;o)
A skydiver's parachute failed to open. So he immediately pulled the ripcord of his reserve chute, and that failed to open as well. As he was falling to the earth, he came across a guy that was flying up from the ground. So the skydiver that was going down yelled to the guy that was going up, "Hey, do you know anything about parachutes?" The guy going up yelled back, "No, but do you happen to know anything about Coleman stoves?"
Now _this_ is the sort of gaslighting I can get on board with. I've been enjoying these presentations on non-electric lighting you've been making lately.
18:34 I grew up using a Petromax whenever we had severe power outages way back. There was definitely a feeling of completing a rite the first time my dad actually let me light it. It was more convenient lighting it up than the Coleman you used though -- it had access holes along the perimeter of the base you could insert the syringe for the alcohol and match to light it without removing any parts.
Back in the early days of engines, it wasn't that uncommon to have a second fuel for starting. Early John Deere tractors, for example, had small gasoline tanks for getting things going, then the farmer would switch over to the then-cheap kerosene for doing actual work.
That's not so bad, it just becomes another fluid you have to maintain, like oil, coolant, and urea for modern diesels. But having to hand load alcohol into a tiny cup is much more twitchy, and not something I'd look forward to. I think I'd put alcohol in an eye dropper or medicine dropper bottle to simplify things, but it would still kinda suck. Flicking a couple switches on a tractor to cut fuel costs is just smart business practice, and far less likely to annoy the owner.
@@mal2ksc Yeah I get that. I was just commenting about Alecs "shock" that you needed a second fuel to get it going. If you read the pinned comment, Alec mentions that the lamp originally came with a squeeze bottle to help fill the cup without disassembling the lamp. Still pretty finicky... would have been nice if Coleman had included a second fuel tank for the alcohol, perhaps with a bulb primer or some such to fill it.
@@supermaster2012 you do know that the gas sold in the US and other countries is basically the same for octane but because there are different names you get "different" ratings. It's like how 7.62 NATO is .308.
@@TheTortuga58 Europeans cope with being insignificant to the world by trying to bring up random shit that doesn’t matter at all and is rarely true past surface levels.
I carted a Jet Boil to a festival and back, finding it "didn't work" when I was there. When I got home my dad bent the ignitor 0.01mm closer to the nozzle and it fired up perfectly.
Man, i Love this channel. The charm of in-depth information and knowledge fused with enthusiasm and jokes is just so good. If school and universities would teach in that manner we would already sit in several other solar system and laugh about interstellar traveling. Keep it up, what you're doing is absolutely fantastic 🎉
@@asteroidrules Hi. I ask around to see if someone would be interested in a lil Project of mine. Some people try to be the 180 Degree Opposite of Cancel-Culture and try to help UA-cam become less... well, lets say 'Messy' to use nice words only... ... Interested to hear a bit more?
There was another vacationing with parent gaslighting comment, unless this was the second time view this. I'm guessing that a roadtrip (trapped in a car for hours on end) would precipitate an incident and only just minutes into the journey.
no they dont, your parents call it just gaslighting on the go, they never called them vacations, maybe you should check with your therapist to see why you think they do?
Oh look, it’s a pinned comment! Here’s a link to the last video on the subject:
ua-cam.com/video/F3rncxf4Or8/v-deo.html
And in pinned comment tradition, here’s some extra info! I had noticed a hole in the base of the kerosene lantern similar to those on the other lamps which you insert the matches through. I thought this was silly and probably just the result of the same tooling being used for multiple models, but it turns out that if I had purchased the lantern new, it would have come with a special bottle with a spout designed to fit through that hole and fill the pre-heater cup. Neat! Still, though. Rough.
If you’re wondering what the dual-fuel model looks like when running gasoline, well I’ll add a clip of that in the Connextras video which I still have to make. Though I will say now that it’s not particularly special or anything. I’ve got a busy day ahead of me outside of UA-cam so that’ll happen tomorrow most likely. And in that video we’ll address whatever other questions might come up today.
meat
I have now read the pinned comment, thought you would like to know.
@Andrew D I'm so glad. You've kept my lute unforced.
I read this. Your lute is safe.
I read the pinned comment :D
Technology Connections should sell merch printed with "Through the magic of buying two of them..." And sell items entirely in pairs.
Socks!
Lanterns...duh :p
Socks and gloves obviously!
Pants. They always come in pairs.
You should get a t-shirt and a disassembled t-shirt.
"Through the magic of buying two of them…"
Never change, Mr Brown Jacket Man
Surely you mean Mr Dark Orange Jacket Man?
@@animationcreations42 Oh, you 🙃
This is like Alec's version of Lock Picking Lawyer's "the tool Bosnianbill and I made" or Big Clive's "One moment please", and I LOVE it. :)
Orange (with Context) Man
@@animationcreations42 I'm probably missing why you call it orange.
"Unless you wanna tell a knock-knock joke"
The comedic value of this line is criminally underrated
It's reached deadly levels, I'll soon be knocking on heaven's door!
So you were knocking his knock-knock. [I meant that you were criticizing the "knock knock", but the phrasing after reading was unintentionally suggestive of something else.]
@@ZeroAnalogy Knocking someone up? 😁
@@ThePixel1983 Whoa, whoa, whoa. Unplanned pregnancy is a serious thing. That's why you have spay and neuter your pets and farm animals.
@@ThePixel1983 I guess that joke backfired.
The hiss of Coleman lanterns and stoves is a treasured memory from childhood. The reason that it's so unique is because of the "large" hollow tubes downstream from the metering orifice. You're hearing the same effect that is used in loudspeakers, how you get a siren that can be heard miles away from a diaphragm 2 inches across.
Regarding Thorium mantles, another safety aspect is the dust generated when old mantles are removed from the lamp, you don't wanna be inhaling that stuff!
It's basically the way everything radioactive becomes dangerous.
@@crackedemerald4930 not necessarily, that only applies to alpha radiation.
@@crackedemerald4930 Some stuff will cook you from a distance too don't forget! You're right though. With these mantels you would definitely want to avoid any sort of ingestion. The deal with alpha emitters, they don't penetrate deep at all and the dead outer layer of skin can mostly absorb them without any real issue but they are pretty nasty when they get direct access to the mushy inside parts.
@@sdhlkfhalkjgd Thought Emporium actually has videos on it and it definitely goes through the epidermis (apparently that's mostly living, see @Eebsterthegreat's comment) to living cells according to him, it goes through paper easily in a demonstration (maybe his paper is extra thin, I have seen it stopping radiation actually)
You're not wrong, but the body has mechanisms to deal with small amounts of radiation. It shouldnt be as scary as people make it.
"through the magic of buying two of them" will never get old. I look forward to it. As much as l looked forward to Bob Ross cleaning off his brush and saying "beat the devil out of it". Makes me smile every time.
That phrase has even entered my daily life, albeit in German: "Durch die Magie des 'Kaufe Zwei'..." ^^'
"Ask me how I know" is also one of my frequently used quotes
Corporate need you to find the difference between "through the magic of buying two of them" and "beat the devil out of it"
It's a beautiful line, perfect in its simplicity
Watching this man slowly perfect his presentation over the years, has been nothing short of exhilarating.
I know right... I remember he used to be so awkward and watching youtube poops of him in a tight shirt all sweaty and nervous, I'm glad he's settled into himself because he does an excellent job.
100%
I agree, I’ve been here from pretty much the start and he’s so good. The dry jokes and puns are amazing!
Yeah but he's gotten so surly and filled with contempt for humanity.
@@DavidGarcia-oi5nt perfect
I have some knowledge here, and I feel qualified enough (at least somewhat,) to hopefully shed some light on why all three fuel types still exist in lanterns, and camp stoves for that matter. Propane is very convenient, and easy to use, you get close to the same light output as white gas, but is much more user friendly. Disposing of the green bottles, and carrying them out with you, can be a pain. If you camp (or live for that matter,) in cooler climates, propane begins to stop vaporizing, and freezes up around 40° F. "Enter in the white gas lanterns/stoves" They put out more light, and (once you know, and are familiar with the lighting process,) can be lit VERY easily. They are also DEAD RELIABLE (to certain temps, we'll touch on that in a bit,) my wife and I (yes, she is willing, and enjoys it almost as much as I do,) have on multiple occasions relied on these white gas tools, in situations where if they did not work, we would have been in serious danger. Without hesitation, I know I can call on my lanterns. I can plop my lanterns down, in the snow, in - 20° weather, and light it, and by that light, light my stove, get hot water/food cooking, and pitch my tent, or dig my snow cave. I have and will continue to rely on my white gas equipment to save my biscuits. So what might you ask, is the kerosene useful for then? Even colder Temps. White gas still functions at -40°, but less reliably, and not as bright/hot, we'll say less energetically. Much below that, and it gets fairly unreliable. Kerosene lanterns, and stoves function just about everywhere on earth. In the 1920's when Mallory and Irvine attempted to summit Everest, and in the 1950's when Hillary and Norgay summited, they relied on kerosene stoves. The least user friendly, but arguably the most reliable of the three. I am not scientific enough, to explain why, whether it be the process of preheating that does it, or if it's in its chemistry, kerosene, in its simplicity is just about as reliable as anything can be. I suppose it's also worth noting that white gas or kerosene lanterns/stoves (they function on the same principal, and are mechanically very similar,) can be rebuilt with spare parts, or taken apart, cleaned, reassembled, and lit, in a few minutes, because of their simplicity, adding to their reliability. Admittedly, albeit embarrassing, my lanterns all have names, and are greatly cherished. I am not a scientist, or necessarily a professional, but do have a great deal of experience in cold weather camping/fun activities, and have a great beard (so I am automatically more knowledgeable in outdoor activities.) To anyone who read my novel of a comment, I owe you, a sincere Thank You. - Scott
Edit: the minus sign on -40 ended up being separated by a space, putting it on a different line. It was fixed, so as to cause less confusion.
Thanks. That helps my understanding a lot.
Not sure if it was standard, but we had a plastic bottle with a long thin metal tube on it and a cranked end. The alcohol in our Coleman paraffin / kerosene lamp could be put in and lit without dismantling
@@JimboXX78 Yes. In his pinned comment he mentioned that he discovered if he had bought the lantern new, it would have come with such a bottle. That bottle makes lighting them much easier than shown in the video.
@@SBDScott Sorry I didn't notice that bit, but basically it rendered half of the video wrong, and most of the faffing about was due to his error. Which was somewhat charming.
I wonder at what point the archeologists will be digging up this bottle along with all the other stuff that is missing when you buy things second hand.
Getting the chronology right will be interesting
Enjoyed your TLDR :)
"And through the magic of buying two of them", will never get old
I had a big, dumb grin on my face when he said that. 😅
I cheered for that. Love it.
That was the second i liked the video.
Always waiting for that joke !
Agreed. And neither will "Ask me how I know that!!!".
When I buy cheap (under $5 a part, sometimes $10 depending what it is) Chinese electronics, I almost always buy a spare -- even if I only need one. There are two options: it kinda sucks and I need them both just to keep one going, or it's actually pretty good and by the time it releases the magic smoke, I won't be able to find a replacement cheaply (they probably still exist, but tend not to stay cheap if they're good, like Tripath-based amps). Either way, I'll end up using both, but it'll still be cheaper by a good margin. I also only end up shipping one package, saving me a few cents and saving the world the cost of one package from China to North America. Win-win.
"unless you want to tell a knock-knock joke"
Knock Knock
Whos' there?
PISTON NUMBER 4
It was a conrod in my case.
Its always Rodney.
And it was a 3 cylinder!
*X-files music intensifies*
Piston Number 4 who?
@@FoxtrotYouniform
Narrator: But piston number 4 had already left.
When I was a little kid, more than half a century ago, we had a cabin without electricity.
Dad would light the kero pressure lamp with a couple of pumice stones attached with a spring to the bottom of the lamp, under the mantle. The stones used to live in a sealed jar of metho.
It's the sound of the lamp that I remember the most, along with the little ritual of pumping it up and lighting the stones, then the sudden burst of bright light as the mantle took hold.☺
Sounds so much simpler and happy
@@АлакПатрова It was. I do miss that.
Can you explain to me please what the pumice stones and spring were used for? Thanks
@@daveR0berts The stones were used to heat up the mantle until you were ready to release the pressure valve for the kero.
The spring held the two halves of the stone together around the base of the mantle.
After the mantle took light, you would remove the stones, and after cooling return them to soak in the jar of metho..
@@bossdog1480 thank you.
"...and also, I have a fire extinguisher ready over there ... this time." He set his house on fire. He definitely set his house on fire.
Watch the previous video in the series on Connextras on the Dietz lanterns, you'll see him tip over a lit kerosene lantern and have it spill kerosene all over the place. He didn't have an extinguisher around for that bit. ..Yeah
ua-cam.com/video/gpDqUyXKqTA/v-deo.html
"I have a fire extinguisher ready over there... THIS TIME."
I'm really disappointed in the lack of relevant outtakes.
ua-cam.com/video/gpDqUyXKqTA/v-deo.html I think he's talking about this video, around the 12 minute mark
Yea. that got me a little fired up too.
@@TheDuxan Jordan probably expected that part of the video edited into this one as a reminder :)
You mean the 3 months of rebuilding the set after the lamp explodes... Oh you mean the lamp exploding bit.
@@TheDuxan With close timecode: ua-cam.com/video/gpDqUyXKqTA/v-deo.html
Please do a series on plasma TV's it seems like a great technology to expand on, modern enough to be relevent but old enough to be defunct, kind of analog, mostly digital. Definitely mysterious how do they work compared to CRT and LED/ OLED only you can help us understand!
It's only a logical step after these videos on liquids and gases!
And maybe with the SED thrown in (which sadly never made it to market).
I second this request.
Big vote for this!
I specifically sought out a plasma TV to replace my Sony XBR400 HD CRT when it popped. Ended up with a Samsung a friend gave me that needed repair. Then my son threw a remote at it so I found a Panasonic on Craigslist and still have it. I love plasma.
this may just be nostalgia from camping with my grandpa and growing up with these lanterns.. but i find the sound they make rather comforting.. and i love FIRE so uh thats a bonus to me XD
"And don't forget to SMASH THAT LIKE..."
This was so beautiful and full of pure energy i rewatched it over and over
BUT _DID_ YOU SMASH LIKE?! (つ'°ᗝ°`)つ
Like a boss! And I will see you guys on the next video !
Same 🤣🤣
that part got me way more than expected
That slight hold on "shrinkage problem" cracked me up.
I much prefer "the magic of buying two of them" to "the magic of jump cuts."
People selling him stuff do, too! (Except if it's Amazon or something like that, of course. Such behemoth companies don't even notice the difference).
Grew up in Florida in a wood frame house . This was in the late 60's . It was cold in Florida back then . Kerosene heaters . A few white gas camp stoves . Fuel the white gas camp stove outside . Pump it up , open the valve . Stand back a few feet throwing a lit match at it . Woosh !
Life was good back then .
The fact that you still have eyebrows is comforting
100th like
When the glue holding them on fails next episode-
no he doesn't and he never did, why do you think he has eyebrows?
Hearing that pressurized sound instantly took me back to those days when our family went camping.
Exactly it’s almost soothing
Definitely. I remember using Tilly and Primus lamps with no *accidental* fire involved. Pre and young teens with fire means *something* you didn't want burnt will be but it's mostly fine. Mostly.
Between the lantern and the stove there was way too much nostalgic memories of backpacking with my dad coming back to me
My family used to use this for our primary light source back when i was some 4-5 years old and electricity haven't reach our village yet.
That whooshing sound you describe "fuels" my camping nostalgia.
I had my grandpas old Coleman lantern laying around mantels were busted. I bought new mantels for it because of the last video. Nice to have it working finally.
Dad? Is that you?
@@craigdavis9035 Are ya winnin', son?
I have a collection of Dietz and Coleman lanterns. The sound of the Coleman is one of the signature attributes of tailgate camping for me. Reminds me of great times with my dad and family. Thanks for all your videos. These lantern episodes have tied alot of camp tech ends together. Keep all of them coming. Cheers!
You are missing an accessory for the Kerosene lantern. If you bought it new, it would have come with an alcohol bottle with a nozzle on it to allow you to fill the alcohol cup without disassembly. Some of the more advanced petromax lanterns, namely Britelyt, have a blowtorch preheater which allows you to preheat the generator without any additional fuel (with some limitations such as if you are running some heavy fuels). This does come at the expense of needing more pumping.
I was thinking, surely a squeeze bottle with a long stem would help with filling the alcohol kerosene lamp.
I have one of these but never got the blowtorch thing to work.
Blowtorches must be the second most user-unfriendly device.
Kerosene is way cheaper than the Coleman stuff. I use a kerosene heater in the winter (there are children's tree-houses with better insulation than my house) and I can pick it up for about 3.50 a gallon. A 1/2 a gallon of this stuff at Walmart, especially this time of year, is like $10.
I would never use gasoline in any of these devices. Even the ones allegedly made to burn gasoline. Basically they clog and will start spitting out fuel. Of course, refining the gasoline back into white fuel is actually pretty easy. I might do that.
@@christo930 : thank you for the insightful comment.
That Coleman kerosene lamp rant is exactly why I love watching. Random bouts of passion make the videos interesting (:
:)
Yeah except that he seems completely oblivious to the idea that parts of the world where these things are useful are not necessarily parts of the world where white gas is readily available or cost-effective. He gives a small nod to "having a huge supply of kerosene for some reason" but doesn't seem to take it seriously.
"Don't put the fuel above the fire" Good advice, even metaphorically.
And don't put your backup generators in the basement where they can flood. Sad that we had to learn that one the hard way, but hopefully it stays learned.
Sounds like something you'd hear from a wise old hermit in the woods, and you'd struggle to understand the meaning despite knowing how profound it surely must be, until decades later when it suddenly makes perfect sense and whatever difficult task you're doing is immediately made simple by the revelation.
@@mal2ksc le tsunami has arrived
@@kizikucalegon8673 or it's something that you never fully figure out so you make a pilgrimage back to those woods at the end of your life, find the wise old hermit (who, miraculously, doesn't look even a day older), and beg of him to reveal the true deep meaning of his words. And he says:
"Dude, like... just... don't store fuel over a fire. It could ignite really easily... it's a pretty dumb thing to do bro".
@@mal2ksc Technology Connections/Kyle Hill crossover in which they build a thorium reactor?
Oh, my - this brought back some memories of taking my life in my hands while trying to light Coleman lanterns on a bass boat in the dark when I was a kid. I'm surprised I didn't blow myself to Jupiter more than once. Those things put out a hell of a lot of light for a long time, but lighting them is always terrifying.
"Unless you want to tell a Knock Knock joke."
Ouch. That joke hurt.
- Knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock
- Who's there?
- Knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock
50 knocktane fuel
@@unic0de-yvr Damn that was good
I’m guessing your engine hasn’t been your best friend lately
Don't knock it _too_ hard, or that's what you'll get.
One of the enjoyable side effects of the heat output which I learned in the Army during field maneuvers was what we called "the Coleman chair". Place one of the lanterns under the seat of a metal folding chair. Place a thin piece of fabric over the seat and then sit down. In a tent at 3 AM in the late fall it gets very cold in there. This setup warms the body nicely, we always had several officers waiting their turn.
Great idea!
While a boy scout, I tried to roast marshmallows with them when fire restrictions were in place. It didn't really work, but did heat it up enough to sorta melt the chocolate and make the marshmallow a bit gooier.
@ZaHandleyou don't even need a piece of fabric for that one.
"Forced my lute" just feels like an inside joke now lol
Hundred years in the making
Camping in the 70s these are what my dad used. To me they are the sound of camping. I have many of them today, and love using them every chance i get. They are nostalgic and remind me of days gone past when basics such as light and heat were not just flicking a switch but required a bit of work, planning and skill.
poonka-poonka-poonka-poonka Gotta pump up the stove for breakfast, heh
We used to use Thorium mantles as test sources for low-level radiation "friskers" at a nuclear plant. They could bring them on-site without any issues, however you could not leave site with one as it was now considered as a radiation source.
Bananas and Brazil nuts not active enough?
They're secretly collecting Thorium for their newfangled reactors
I somehow misstook you for one Michael Stevens there for a moment, my apologies
@@unclestarwarssatchmo9848 From Arizona, maybe?
I absolutely could not care less about the alleged "safety" of handing these things or breathing them in, even. FFS, my basement is probably loaded with radium (I live in PA) and anyone who flies in airplane is getting way more radiation.
I especially could not care less what happens to the factory workers in Vietnam or wherever the hell they happen to be. It's probably not that dangerous anyway.
I know it’s been like a month, but I still laugh at the ‘Deitz Nuts’ part of the Hurricane lantern episode
You're not the only one!
So do I!
I was waiting for another one of Deitz jokes in this episode, but was left in the dark
I think the Technology Connections fanbase should just call ourselves Dietz Nuts.
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 who says we don't?
As someone who typically leaves subtitles on, I appreciated the attention to detail with [stares at the camera, intensely]. Had a good chuckle there, thanks.
"Ask me how I know!!!!!"
I'd LOVE to see the outtakes and the mistakes on this one!
The thorium mantles may not be very radioactive, BUT, they are alpha emitters. So high care is advisable when dealing with a broken mantle when cleaning up. You DON'T want to ingest alpha emitters in any form. Alpha radiation is easily shielded, but the flipside of this is that they deposit their energy in a very focused area around any emitter you have incorporated. They do a LOT of damage.
9:08 That wooshing sound is the sound of my childhood and is full of nostalgia for me. I grew up using pressure and propane lamps for camping and we often turned them on at the end of a busy day to play nighttime games like "hide and seek", "kick the can", "dot-dot", and "capture the flag". That sound was great for covering the sound of whispers and footsteps while we were sneaking around.
Out camping it was a relaxing sound !
I actually appreciate how "energy inefficient" the Coleman type lanterns are. Since l do most of my camping in mid to deep wintertime, l welcome the heat output. I usually even keep one in the tipi if it's very cold.
I feel like telling you every video: You are extremely talented as a presenter. I'm not sure if it's just me but your sense of humor is delightful and really cracks me up always. :)
If this channel ever goes belly-up, God forbid, he has a promising future in edutainment.
I feel the same
I also have to say I really appreciate the good filming and editing on showcase especially when comparing the two mantle flames. It's doesn't look spectacular but getting a shot where the video concisely demonstrates a comparison is not something a lot of people can do.
I just love "the magic of buying two of them." Gets me every time.
“I have no idea why you would ever want one of these unless you had a supply of really cheap kerosene.”
The Amish, it’s the Amish and areas that supply them with Kerosene. In Lancaster, PA, gas stations will actually have a separate pump you can get kerosene from for pretty cheap.
Jet and rocket fuel is basically just kerosone too.
@@jordanpwalsh Yes, jets and rockets; famously cheap things...
;)
most filling stations in ireland still have a kero pump
Most every rural gas station across the US sells kerosene.
@@jordanpwalsh It's also called heating oil. Pretty much the same as diesel as well. I guess the video guy doesn't do much camping outside of campgrounds. Pound for pound, I'd much rather have a gas lantern than anything else. Whether it be kero, white gas, or propane. I have them all. Propane is usually my go-to since it's just convenient as heck and doesn't make a mess.
the joy he expresses when saying “through the magic of buying two of them” was more entertaining than the meme itself
I would like to give some recognition to the subtitles, not only are they custom but they are hilarious. I don't need them and I always have them on for the extra layer of comic relief 😊
Yeah, they are wonderful. I try to point them out every episode. Love this guy. Proof there is some good in this world :)
Thank you! I'd forgotten about them.
And they're not obnoxious, either! They're a bit silly sometimes but not craption level (the difference between "useful caption for deaf people" and "useless or annoyingly-difficult-to-follow caption for deaf people that hearing people think is funny").
Especially the blooper real!😂
I'm a product of the early 50s and can remember my dad using these lanterns and burners. Never remember any mishaps fortunately. I love watching your videos they are always so informative and you are such a great presenter. Keep up the good work.
I'm a Class of 69 grad...where did the time go?
My dad had a 1949 Buick woody station wagon that we would take in the 1950's in the wee hours from Los Angeles and drive to Sequoia National Park, always arriving at dawn. We would camp at Lodgepole up at the top of the forest road. My dad used to modify and improve everything he touched. The white gas Coleman lantern was one of the things. He hot rodded it somehow. We could be up at the trading post looking at the camp sites at night and you could always see ours as it was the brightest. His lantern was whiter and brighter than any other one there. Sometimes he took it apart in the afternoon to clean it. I think he just liked to fiddle with things. I inherited that tendency. And I still have his Coleman lantern and stove. The number 51 is stamped on the bottom of the lantern...1951.
LOVE the energy density discussion. I knew they were inefficient but putting that in perspective by converting it to watt hours really hammers it home.
Also the convinience of it also being usefull for cars
It's the fundamental problem of incandescent light. So even though there's a lot more energy in a tank of kerosene or naphtha than the same weight of lithium cells, almost all of the combustion energy is just heating the air.
Alec: Here’s a package from Amazon!
Me: This is gonna be good
Alec: Here’s a Geiger counter (crackling starts) Neat!
Me: Alec’s become self aware and is going to blow us all up with his combined knowledge of latent heat and the refrigeration cycle!
For some reason this reminds me of a line from eragon books where Angela basically alludes to molecular energy and seems to be able to trade her latent heat for a burst of magical speed/energy. Also alludes the fact that molecular bonds have a lot of energy, and if that gets released....kaboom
Why does the Amazon package set off the Geiger counter? Does that mean the packaging they use is radio active? Sorry if this is a dumb question.
@@pandap4ntz
21:05 and on is your answer.
@@DinnerForkTongue I'll have to rewatch it because I didn't catch it the first time.
Great video. Thanks for all the info and marvelous presentation.
I am from Sri Lanka and we used to have these pressurized kerosene lamps about 40-45 years back as we did not have mains electricity at that time. To us, they were pretty safe for indoor use provided all the precautions are adhered to. They were noisy very hot and, sort of, smelled of kerosene though. we were accustomed to the hissing noise and it was a, sort of, lullaby for us.
They were the principal source of light at village festivals, night processions and at funerals etc.
The model(s) we used to have are of different construction and far simpler to operate than one demonstrated here.
They didn't have to be disassembled like this one but could be started just by injecting some alcohol (wine spirit) using a small squirt can. It was pretty easy though we, being kids, were only allowed to pump air to pressurize the tank prior to lighting, which alone was a special something for us, really,.
We used to call them 'Mantel Lamps', 'Petro Lamps' or simply 'Petromax', after the most popular brand.
Those days, they were a luxury and only a handful of families could afford the daily use of them and we were lucky. (thanks to my dad)
This video, for sure, brought back some sweet nostalgic memories and many thanks for that too.
You are intensely likeable. Also your theme music gives me nostalgia for TV music from my childhood. This puts you in a strange Venn diagram crossover with Captain Disillusion in my mind.
Wish I could take a long road trip with some one like him but he is one of a kind.
They’re fans of each other and also look somewhat similar.
"You need not ONLY to take this apart.... You'll need some ALCOHOL on hand!" Pretty much describes ALL of my PC repairs. 😂
Also in both cases after I done I smell something burning :DDDDDD
@@aykutcoskun6092 LOL
Is the alcohol for cleaning parts, drinking, or both? (It's a floor wax _and_ a dessert topping!)
@@mal2ksc Up voted for the SNL reference, from back when the show was funny.
@@raygunsforronnie847 SNL was never really that funny. And I say that as someone who used to watch in the Ferrell/Farley/Macdonald/Shannon/Spade/etc. era.
Mind you, I'm an Aussie and was pretty young at the time, so no doubt I missed a fair few references.
On topic, this pretty much describes every job that I tackle. To quote a very learned man:
"Expand my brain, learning juice!"
5:00 "Magic of buying two" gets me every time AND YOU KNOW IT.
That "whooshing" sound was THE sound of camping in the 1960's when I grew up!
"This is a gaslighting video."
"no it's not"
I scrolled the comments section specifically for this comment.
@@evanmacdougall9715 Why? No normal person would connect the title of this video with anything other than lights, maybe you should check with a therapist since there may be a reason you associate this with anything else.
@@RRW359 why? no normal person would connect @evanmacdougall9715's reply with them looking for a specific comment with a specific joke, maybe you should check with a therapist since there may be a reason you associate this with anything else.
You should do a teardown/how it works on a pinball machine electronics, similarly to your jukebox episode. Would be sick finding out how they actuated and tallied up the scores
Could you please do a...*
Use your fucking manners, kid.
@@kaydog890 ...said the well mannered adult to an enthusiastic fellow fan of technology connections.
While you waite for the video to be made you can check in The Slowmo Guys video on the same subject!
ua-cam.com/video/Tmg5WOvPKpU/v-deo.html
That would be really good! I randomly stumbled into an exhibit of pinball mechanisms all separated out and diagrammed once and I still think about it like twice a day
Hey, I found it! You might think this is cool ua-cam.com/video/yZ1XmdRJcus/v-deo.html
When I was a little kid in the UK in the late 1970s we had regular power cuts due to miners strikes (power stations ran on coal back then), and I remember pumping up the Tilley lamp to have a bath.
I watched all 3 of the candle/lamp videos, and enjoyed them all. Thank you! As a 60 y/o man, I have used all of these except the Aladdin.
The roar of a Coleman lantern brings me back to camping and late night fishing trips! The sound and smell evokes very fond memories. Thanks!
When I was a Boy Scout we took around 6-8 large propane tanks with us on weekend camping trips. We used the propane to power grills, stoves, and the hot water. We also used those propane lanterns because it was easier for the quartermaster to have one fuel source for all our needs than anything else. Also I’ve always found that wooshing sound very relaxing
How did you do hot water in the scouts? My troop had a thermo-siphon boiler someone made out of a stainless steel beer keg. It worked great, but it was really bulky. EDIT: apparently it's called a "donkey boiler"
@@moconnell663 We had a turkey deep-fryer! It was a big tank with a burner underneath and was designed to heat oil for a Turkey but it had a draining valve on it and was pretty much perfect for hot water (not sure if it was totally safe in terms of contaminants)
@@ValS1312 cool! I don't think I've seen a Turkey fryer with a drain valve before. That seems like a phenomenal mod.
@@moconnell663 If I recall correctly it was a ~30 quart aluminum stock pot with a drain spout that looked a bit like a spigot from a hose. We had a clever troop!
We also had a common fuel supply. Tenderfoot-gathered wood, ignition by First Class, and put out by the Life's (sometimes with urine)
"The magic of buying two of them" will NEVER get old. Thank you for continuing it - I look for it every video!
Also the "knock knock" joke was pretty good
"Once it's lit, you don't have to deal with alcohol again." I don't get it. Wouldn't the dealing with alcohol increase substantially, once you have light to see where the booze and glasses are?
If you didn't already know where the Everclear was, how did you fuel and light the lantern in the first place? Using one of these indoors during a power outage seems like a drunk brain idea to me.
I'm 74 and have used Coleman lanterns since I was 10 or less, most recently during hurricane Sandy. I LOVE this video. Thanks!
Hi njswimdad have you become a flat earther yet? If not I suggest watch a 13 part series called _What on earth happened_ by Ewaranon to learn that the earth is not a globe. I got it in my about tab.
I remember my Dad had one of these colman lanterns that we used when I was a boy scout. I always wondered what the mantles are for.
He also had one of the stove you showed. You said it was scary but boy scouts are almost universally pyro-maniacs.
Am Eagle Scout, can confirm. My eyebrows have finally regrown.
@@tddeyoung
But for how long? lol
@@DinnerForkTongue depends on how often I do something stupid.
We were really pyromaniacs in the 50’s and 60’s.
i may or may not have accidentally made a (incredibly weak) pulse rocket engine.
“Portable Gaslight”? i didn’t expect you to make a video about my ex
came here to say the same thing about my father
Came here to say that about my dog
came to say the same thing about myself
Or the media.
Or the former US president
"Gaslighting on the Go" sounds like a slogan for the newest News App.
😆😆
Like an ad on the radio station of a GTA game
😈😈😈
Those puns are brilliant
Call it the Guilt Trip.
Thank you for these videos. I was raised with them on the farm in the 1950's and early '60's. At bed-time my grandparents would hand me a lit table lamp and send me upstairs to bed with an admonition to "blow it out" before going to sleep. What was normal then would get someone incinerated and/or jailed if we let today's 10 year olds try. If memory serves, we called the fuel "coal oil".
The pressure lanterns were used for lighting larger rooms and for outdoor use.
I don't want to know how many children died thanks to those lamps.
Your generation was not smarter, its actually the other way around.
Why would someone go to jail for that?
@@aaronvaughan5506 because those kind of lamps don't go off after you turn them to the lowest level, they stay on till you blow them, and if by chance that lamp trips, you know, it'd burn the entire room to ashes...
As for getting someone to jail, try giving a child a lit propane torch and see where that gets you 🤣
Just imagine the tiktok lantern challenges 😂😂😂
Please make an episode about the technology of matches through history, the outtakes would be hilarious.
Robert Boyle invented them while experimenting with the newly discovered element, Phosphorus. Back them, you boiled your urine to obtain it.
@@jmchez I'm gonna make urine matches
pee pee matches
@@jmchez I still boil my urine, but for different reasons 🤷♂️
@@x3rdwrightx1 The Cenobites approve. 👿👹👺👾🐙
When I was a kid we went camping every year and Dad had a Colman lantern like these and when you mentioned the whooshing sound I actually had a flashback to being a kid in Yellowstone sitting outside the ring of light from the lantern watching the stars while the lantern whooshed in the background.
"I have a fire extinguisher ready to go right over there... this time."
Ono
He really needs to have the camera running when he does stuff like that
@@ebnertra0004 Well, there was the bit where he tipped the lamp over to show what happens, that was fun.
It's about time I added my "Paraffin Pressure Lamp" notes. I am a Scout Leader (still) in London and, because of COVID, we haven't done much camping recently, but when we did, we use 'Paraffin Pressure Lamps' - specifically 'Tilley' Lamps. We have lots of them, mostly acquired from other Scout Groups who no longer use them. I'll mention the specific idiosyncrasies of the Tilley lamp in a moment.
When I rejoined the Scout movement in the late eighties with my current Troop, I found a whole bunch of Tilley lamps in (mostly) poor repair, but along with them were four lamps I had never seen before. Turns out they were Coleman Type 639's - Coleman 'Kerosene Pressure Lamps' - very, very similar to the type TC is demonstrating towards the end of the video. Turns out they were brilliant lamps - much quieter than Tilleys, more economical and much more reliable. The only thing was.....the taking apart thing. I later learned that in new 639's there was a small, polythene bottle with a copper tube spout with a hooked end. With it (I never had one) you could fill the heater cup - we use methylated spirits, the mauve stuff - without taking the whole lamps to bits. From there it was a simple matter of lighting the heater, waiting until it had almost burned away, pressurising the tank and opening the fuel valve. Voila! There was light and you could see for rudy miles! Lovely lamps, but they stopped making them years ago and spares are hard or impossible to come by.
Now, Tilley lamps. Tilley's were the 'latest camping technology when I was a Scout in the fifties. Mostly we used 'Hurricane Lamps' - like TC's Deitzes - with a few Tilleys for main lighting. They were a million times brighter than the flat wick types, but they were very, very hot. I believe the burner runs at about 450 C. The current model - the X246 (sold at nearly $200 nowadays - is almost exactly the same as the models we used in 1958! It has no heater cup, instead uses a clip on wick type, stored in the provided small, glass jar full of 'Meths'. This clips round the vapouriser (the stem) and when lit, heats a rather clever dome shaped 'boiling chamber' up under the cap.
To start, the fill valve (the pump body basically) is left open and the control valve fully closed. The wick is lit and allowed to burn until about to go out. Then, quickly, close the fill valve, pump about ten good strokes and carefully open the control valve. A good one will light straight away, but many more will 'pop' and sputter and misbehave. With a bit of fiddling with the control valve and a few more pumps, the lamp should light, often with an audible 'pop'. The mantle will often be orange with black spots, but given a few moments, a bit more fuel pressure and a few, very quick 'close and open' actions with the control valve, the relight will 'pop' any soot off the mantle, clear the jet and should then run cleanly. The stem has a long, thin 'pricker' inside, pushed by a cam in the control valve which cleans out the tiny jet at the top of it and completely shuts off the fuel when closed.
Now for a rant about the price of paraffin (kerosene) in the UK. For many years paraffin was sold in hardware stores for all sorts of uses, mainly portable heaters and its price was never an issue. In recent years the ONLY source of paraffin was in garden centres, in four litre plastic bottles. No matter what the price of diesel fuel was (paraffin is very close to diesel but without the additives) the price of 'paraffin was £2.00 /litre! £10 a gallon almost. That means I could put almost two litres of PREMIUM diesel in my Land Rover for a litre of filthy garden centre paraffin. My Scout Troop now use 'Light Heating Oil' - basically very clean, water free paraffin by any other name (when I can get it) for less than half the price!
Very interesting vlog, close to my heart! We use Tilleys to make our camp 'a blaze of light' compared to miserable, cold LED lantern lights in other camps.
Well, don't you have kerosene (Or parafine or whatever) heaters here ?
If so you might be able to find fuel for them pretty much everywhere during the winter.
Here in France they sell it at every supermarket in 20 litre jugs that cost about £29.
Even some gas stations sell it at pumps.
During the summer it obviously becomes less common at stores like Tesco (Basically everyday stores where you buy food), but most hardware stores do have it year round.
They also sell the same stuff in 1-litre bottles as well.
And it's indeed kerosene from a US perspective, or technically speaking pretty much the same stuff as Jet A1 jet fuel.
Have you seen the price of Coleman camping petrol? Expect to pay over £10 per litre, over 5 times as much a pump fuel which has lots of unhealthy goodies added in
The "Light Heating Oil" you can buy for cheap sounds a lot like the "lamp oil" paraffin bottles the supermarkets sell over here.
To clear up confusion about naming I would make the distinction between "does it smell or does it not". If it smells I'd call it kerosene, if it doesn't paraffin oil -or "lamp oil" as it's commonly called. Since it's meant to be used for lamps, torches etc. it's very clean and water-free. As I said in a direct comment on this vid we even use it for fire-breathing.
I didn't even know that there was any other composition of paraffin oil, as water will make it very hard to light and will sputter A LOT. And if it isn't very clean it'll burn (very) sooty and at a lower temperature so the flame tends to go out, plus it'll taste bad and leave residue in your mouth -other than being oily.
The clean stuff only tastes kind of oily and that's more of a feeling than a taste and pretty easy to clean out of your mouth with foodstuffs that will "soak up" the oil and you oiley out to rinse; peanut butter is great for that, dry bread crust work as a "last rinse" and eating some will help absorb any oil that accidentally ended up being swallowed (your mouth isn't leak-tight no matter how you spit...).
Thank you for your comment; interesting useful Information!
@@JimboXX78 Allow me to introduce you to the dual fuel Coleman Petrol Lamps and Stoves, which run perfectly well on car petrol.
@@unconventionalideas5683 Are those the ones that use Coleman camping petrol priced at £10+ per litre, or pump fuel that is now less than 1/6th the price but with cancer causing additives?
About the difference in generator tubes in "dual fuel" models, the increased thickness is itself the key difference. Some gas additives can decompose when heated too much (absent oxygen; normally they just burn), then the solid decomposition bi-products products clog the generator tube. By making the generator tube thicker, that decreases the peak temperature in the tube, and spreads the heat out over a larger area.
That's true about the theory. But I think that's also an out dated theory on Colemans part. At least in Canada if you run them on our pump gas generators don't last all too long. Maybe 10 full tanks before getting noticeably less light out of them. Mind you that's like 30-50 hours of run time and a new generator coasts about 10 bucks. So more than fair trade off. You can also soak the core out of the generator in a thinner or brake clean of your choesing and they will come back around a few times. I've run some pretty manky things through them including charcoal lighting fluid and they will eat most anything with a pre heat. But of course the generator might not survive it
@@MrRecall200 Ok so if I want my lantern generator to last the longest, I should only use white gas even if it's a dual fuel model ?
(I currently don't have any lantern and in fact I'm doing my research to know chat to choose between a Coleman single or dual fuel lantern, a Petromax kerosene one or a local-branded butane one).
I was planning on using pump gas as it's far cheaper, at least in my country than white gas and butane canisters.
Kerosene on the other hand might abe a bit cheaper in some cases but I'd like to be able to light my lantern immediately without preheating.
I would also like it not to smell not too much so I could occasionnaly use it indoors even though it's not recommended.
For that matter of course it shouldn't be producing too much carbon monoxide or other toxic fumes regardless of the smell.
Bus as far as the fire hazard might go, I will never leave a lit lantern unattended and have both a fire extinguisher and a fire blanket ready just in case.
@@psirvent8 I'm going to say you definitely want a white gas one vs kerosene for what you plan on doing with it. Once you learn their quirks they are reasonably safe indoors. I have always run one inside my trailer all evening, of course only when I'm in eye shot of it. And you come in to a super nice dry warm place afterwords, with nearly zero smell. Now the trouble with gasoline is all the additives and weird mixtures they are actually selling as "gasoline" at the pumps today. Pure old gasoline would run just fine, but I find the stuff from local pumps just has a way of gumming up generators way to quick. It also burns with a noticeable odor where as coleman fuel has almost zero smell. You might have a very different experience depending on what part of the world your in. Canadian gas is just a bunch of corn ethonal and weird additives depending in the season were in. Coleman fuel is pretty damn economical. Many times more then propane. 1 gallon is just over 20 bucks and runs a single mantle lantern for a long time. Like 30-40 hours probably. Usualy I have about 3 running every night for about 6-8 hours a night when camping. I buy a can of fuel only twice a summer. I have colemans from 1936 all the way up to ones bought recently at Canadian tire. They all run just about the same. Super reliable so I'd say any one you get will do you just fine. The 50's through 70's ones are the best build quality and all the parts are the same as a new one when you need a repair pice. Except generators on some models. But even then you can order a nos one online for just about any lantern for 10 bucks. And the brand new line of them are great too, just a bit cheaper made and less cool looking. I'd stay away from kerosene ones. I have a few tillys and kero colemans. They work great. But the extra pre heat is kinda annoying and incontinent. They also have a smell. Not super strong. But I wouldn't want one indoors.
I think "Through the magic of buying two of them!" has to be my favorite running joke on this channel.
Y'know, it occurs to me that it'd be really neat to see one of these videos going over Geiger counters, now that I've seen one being used in-video.
Honestly I wanna know more about the Amazon packages and a Geiger counter. What was in that package?
@@engineerbot the package had the radioactive thorium mantles he had bought for the video, I'd presume
@@Randomlollis thank you i was wondering what was going on
Such nostalgia. The light and sound of these lanterns in white gas or propane is the sound of my childhood summer vacations.
"Don't put the fuel above the fire"
Motorcyclists: Ohh... 🙆🏻♂️
Hi Alec, thanks for another interesting video, where it is quite evident you do considerable homework before making each video.
I wanted to add my 2 cents regarding Coleman lanterns and camp stoves since I have been using them since the mid 1960's. The gasoline powered one they make today are MUCH easier to light than they used to be. The older version used to have 2 fuel valves: A 3 turn one that controlled the flow and a half turn wire valve connected to a pushrod that passed through the orifice in the fuel vaporizer chamber. To light the lantern, you would partially pressurize the tank with about 10 pumps. Then open the fuel valve a quarter turn. Then use the wire valve as an on/off switch to turn on the fuel flow to the vaporizer. You would have to keep your hand on the wire valve, allowing short spurts of fuel to flow into the vaporizer while lighting and also, trying to get the vaporizer warmed up enough to successfully vaporize the fuel. All the while, wading through numerous flare-ups for about 60 seconds, if you were expert at lighting the lantern. After it started burning normal, you would open both wire and shutoff valves all the way, then continue pumping up the lantern. Lighting the camp stove was a similar experience. On the latest Coleman lanters and camp stoves, they incorporated the 2 fuel valves into one plus, the orifice now sprays the fuel instead of generating a solid stream, which helps atomize the fuel much better during the cold-start period.
The pump handle with the finger hole, the one you have to unscrew, didn't appear until about 1969. Before that, it was just a simple pump handle. I think the version we have today was a safeguard added to eliminate any possibility of the pump leaking vapor or liquid fuel as the fuel heats up in the tank.
I didn't know Coleman made a kerosene version of their lantern. This will sound hard to believe but, I can't get over how easy it is to light. I say this because, I also used the Tilley kerosene radiant heaters from 1965 to 1982, which were much more difficult to light. After optimizing the lighting process (which took years), I could get it lit with only a 2 minute pre-heat using a propane torch. These heaters used a stainless steel mantle and put out around 5,000 BTU's of heat. However, when the clean burning wick type kerosene heaters came out in the early 1980's, the pressurized Tilley heaters quickly became obsolete.
As a side note (I live in Florida), kerosene is no longer available in Florida. Hardware stores still sell it in 0.5 to 2.5 gallon jugs but, it's all high sulphur (even though it is labeled K1) and not usable unless you operate the heater outdoors.
The Coleman fuel is not "White Gas", we used to buy White Gas in the 1960's to use in the lanterns and camp stoves, only the Amoco gas stations sold it (all gasoline sold in those days was leaded, with a minimum octane rating of 93) . Coleman did not make fuel then. The Coleman fuel is specially formulated to prevent it from breaking down quickly like gasoline does, which would gum up the valves and orifice. The Coleman fuel also burns cleaner. You would need to drain the fuel from the lantern/camp stove immediately after your camping trip.
This is a wonderful post. Thank you.
I live in Florida and kerosene is not impossible to find if you live in area where it gets colder in the winter. The K1 sold in hardware stores is very costly however it is indeed water clear whereas the stuff Speedway sells at the pump has a yellow tint from Sulphur, though it burns with little smell in my kerosene heater.
@@thevintagerecipeblog Hey, thanks for the comment! I haven't tried looking for kerosene in 2 years. I live in the Ocala, Florida area. 2 years ago when I did try to find kerosene, I tried all the gas stations that Google said had kerosene and found none. I next called an industrial fuel supplier, their response was "Good luck on finding any!", they knew of no one selling it locally. I tried buying from a few different hardware stores but, even though it said "K1" on the container, it was not. It was clear but, super high Sulphur. It smelled so bad when the heater was running, you couldn't even use the heater on an open air patio. I have been using and maintaining kerosene heaters since the late 1960's so, the problem is not from misuse.
"And they don't have any sort of radiation warning on the crust, I mean packaging..."
Holy cow, sir. You have reached nerd levels I can only dream about.
Can you explain this joke to me please, I'd really like to know what it is about.
@@owensmith7530 if you look at a cross-section of our planet (or most rocky planets, I assume) the crust surrounds the molten mantle of the planet. So it's a pun, that the thing surrounding THESE mantles was confused for the other mantle wrapper.
@@joshhakey7705 Thanks for the explanation. That's a pretty lame pun if you ask me though.
@@owensmith7530 And that's what we come here for! If Alec stopped with the horrible puns would this even be Tech Connections?
@@joshhakey7705 That's incredible. I can't believe I didn't catch that
That whole start-up sequence starting at 8:15 is so familiar to me, at 12 years old on many family camping trips means warm food-is-a-coming, and at 75 it reminds me of warm fulfilling family memories. I haven't heard that sound for half a century. Thanks so much!!!
(most of those folks have passed on)
What a wholesome comment😊
11:43 Cody’slab ran his truck on it to get to a gas station once. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it can work in a pinch if you don’t really care about the car anymore.
Most half-modern cars have knock sensors that tell the ecu to take precautions, but it will still run like absolute ass even though the engine doesn't die
Yea the knock sensor will start to back off timing to prevent engine damage
We had a white gas lantern when I was a kid. Used it for camping sometimes, or just when ever we might need some light outdoors. I do remember my dad using it a few times during power outages, and once when we moved into a house and it took a day or two to get the power company to turn on the electricity.
i used to use white gas lanterns all the time camping - they're actually pretty cool
I lit my Coleman lantern during a power outage. I had a neighbor call to ask why I had light and they didn't. That was 30 + years ago. Now we both have generators for power outages.
I still have an old Coleman white gas camp stove and lantern, they’re hand-me-downs. Love them.
On the plus side, the thorium mantles can take pride in being one of the few products on the market today for which the California Proposition 65 warning is actually justified. (As oppose to, say, the small brass-faced hammer I bought a while back. I guess brass _could_ be known to the state of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm, if you ground it up and snorted it or something?)
I thought it was well-established common knowledge that California is populated almost entirely by complete nutjobs. Plus the 4 people who love them, for some reason.
That brass hammer probably has a significant percentage of lead in it, and when hammering on stuff you could get lead containing dust into the air or at least on your fingers.
@@angelbear_og found the muppet.
1-2% (up to 8%) metallic lead in brass makes it 'free machining' i.e. more easily cut, and helps corrosion resistance in certain conditions. Even if lead isn't explicitly added, lead is a common contaminant and was often a component of brass before extra effort was taken to exclude it.
Generally the lead isn't dangerous unless there is heavy corrosion. Even in plumbing the lead remains bound to the corrosion products until the water chemistry changes.
As for Prop 65 notices, they are pointless. The notices are everywhere, so they provide no useful information.
CBT with a hammer may cause reproductive issues
This series brought back happy memories of my mom and my dad. Thank you. My mom thought me how to use a hurricane lamp for lighting during rolling power outages in Mexico city in the early 70s and I fondly remember my dad pumping his Coleman gasoline lamp when he took us camping. What a privileged life I had!
Oh the memories of my childhood. We used both the lanterns and stoves. Even the Coleman 2 and 4 burner stove units.
I still love them... Not a fan of little propane bottles, even when i refill them.
@@volvo09 Yes, there's a much better ratio of weight and bulk to running time with liquid fuel than with butane or propane. And a lot of the extra bulk for butane/propane is just "packaging" which you end up carrying with you even when the fuel is gone.
2008 in Afghanistan we had an oil lamp with fuel above the flame for heat in one of our guard sheds. I almost started a fire on multiple occasions, but someone else beat me to it.
Good thinking tossing the radios out the window before running, but he should have also thrown our missile launchers (AT4) out as well before evacuating.
So i take it, that shed is no more ?
what happened to the missile launchers? did they detonate?
So I'm guessing someone got written up for unsafe handling of high explosives?
@@kcrtxbw.4349 even if it survived, the Taliban probably owns it now.
@@jonesnorgay8508 I dunno, I slept through the explosions
I don't know if I can trust this channel anymore.
There's just so much gaslighting....
You're lying. You love this channel and are just pining for attention. (kidding. Running with the pun ;P)
A coleman lantern on a cold night with a pile of logs and a chain saw can be a pleasant experience. All the heat it can put out still won't be enough; but it's always welcomed!!
Thank you for the information/ education!!
Up to the early 1970s in the UK painters used kerosine (paraffin) blowlamps to burn off old paint from wood before repainting. These had the same aggro of lighting as the kerosine lamps;. An indent in the top was filled with methylated spirits then lit, then wait before pumping the pressure up and releasing the kerosine. Camping stoves back then also worked the same - called Primus stoves.
Primus stoves are pretty neat, I want to make one someday.
I may have one of those paint-removers... It looks sort of like someone at "Coleman" went a little crazy and "invented" an olympic torch from the plans of a Nam-era flamethrower...
Burns (on kerosene) at a pretty solid range 900 to 1000 F... reliable but "fiddly"...
I DO have a working "gasoline blow-torch", and it lights with a reservoir under the "burner barrel", but I've always preferred filling that little trough with kerosene and using a piece of rag as a wick to "warm it up" with gasoline under pressure in a brass can that's around 100 years old... Still a bit "unnerving" to light it off, with spits and puffs and occasional strings of (not so) little orange fireballs out the nozzle end until it sputters and coughs a few times to approach "operating temperature"... BUT once the roar is solid (you have to yell to be heard over the thing) it kicks out a steady 1900 to 2200 F and a beautiful blue flame about 18" long that's COMPLETELY INVISIBLE in ANY form of direct sunlight, even dawn or sunset. ;o)
A skydiver's parachute failed to open.
So he immediately pulled the ripcord of his reserve chute, and that failed to open as well.
As he was falling to the earth, he came across a guy that was flying up from the ground. So the skydiver that was going down yelled to the guy that was going up, "Hey, do you know anything about parachutes?"
The guy going up yelled back, "No, but do you happen to know anything about Coleman stoves?"
Underrated comment (and this time it really is)
Absolutely going to be stealing this one so I can beat it into different shapes and use it in any appropriate context.
0:30 half a minute in and we already see some Technology Connestion's Lore
I love it
The memories the sound of a Coleman lantern brings back...
Camping and ice fishing when I was little, outdoor parties when I got older...
Now _this_ is the sort of gaslighting I can get on board with. I've been enjoying these presentations on non-electric lighting you've been making lately.
18:34 I grew up using a Petromax whenever we had severe power outages way back. There was definitely a feeling of completing a rite the first time my dad actually let me light it. It was more convenient lighting it up than the Coleman you used though -- it had access holes along the perimeter of the base you could insert the syringe for the alcohol and match to light it without removing any parts.
Back in the early days of engines, it wasn't that uncommon to have a second fuel for starting. Early John Deere tractors, for example, had small gasoline tanks for getting things going, then the farmer would switch over to the then-cheap kerosene for doing actual work.
Yes. And pony engines!
Also very common for rocket engines. A set of hypergolic fuels to ignite the kerosene and oxygen main fuel.
That's not so bad, it just becomes another fluid you have to maintain, like oil, coolant, and urea for modern diesels. But having to hand load alcohol into a tiny cup is much more twitchy, and not something I'd look forward to. I think I'd put alcohol in an eye dropper or medicine dropper bottle to simplify things, but it would still kinda suck. Flicking a couple switches on a tractor to cut fuel costs is just smart business practice, and far less likely to annoy the owner.
@@mal2ksc Yeah I get that. I was just commenting about Alecs "shock" that you needed a second fuel to get it going.
If you read the pinned comment, Alec mentions that the lamp originally came with a squeeze bottle to help fill the cup without disassembling the lamp.
Still pretty finicky... would have been nice if Coleman had included a second fuel tank for the alcohol, perhaps with a bulb primer or some such to fill it.
Like propane driven cars now, they start by using regular gas then switch to propane when the engine is at working temperature
Can we take a minute to appreciate the mantle/crust joke? Love the sense of humor and it makes me wonder how many jokes I miss every video...
Thank you for explaining in detail the technology in our lives. This new understanding makes me appreciate it more.
"Octane rating of 50" sounds great for an internal to external combustion engine swap
Sounds about the octane rating America runs on. It's not an American car if you don't need a 20L V8 that redlines at 2000RPM to move a lawnmower.
@@supermaster2012 what? The myth of American octane being lower is so easily dispelled by a Google search.
@@supermaster2012 you do know that the gas sold in the US and other countries is basically the same for octane but because there are different names you get "different" ratings. It's like how 7.62 NATO is .308.
@@TheTortuga58 Europeans cope with being insignificant to the world by trying to bring up random shit that doesn’t matter at all and is rarely true past surface levels.
@@ABC-vv4cm I wasn't looking that deep into it, just annoying sometimes how "cool" it is to hate anything American, regardless of veracity.
I'd love an episode about isobutane and high efficiency jetboil.
The things that make jetboils efficient is just better thermal coupling from the burner to the water. The burning itself is just another gas burner.
I carted a Jet Boil to a festival and back, finding it "didn't work" when I was there. When I got home my dad bent the ignitor 0.01mm closer to the nozzle and it fired up perfectly.
Coleman fuel lanterns bring back memories of camping as a kid and salmon fishing late into the night with my dad and grandpa
Man, i Love this channel.
The charm of in-depth information and knowledge fused with enthusiasm and jokes is just so good.
If school and universities would teach in that manner we would already sit in several other solar system and laugh about interstellar traveling.
Keep it up, what you're doing is absolutely fantastic 🎉
I've never seen Alec scared of something on his desk.
And of course it's not the radiation hazard that's scaring him.
@@asteroidrules Hi.
I ask around to see if someone would
be interested in a lil Project of mine.
Some people try to be the 180 Degree Opposite
of Cancel-Culture and try to help UA-cam
become less... well, lets say 'Messy' to use nice words only...
...
Interested to hear a bit more?
@@loturzelrestaurant I’m interested
@@asteroidrules radiation isn't exactly dangerous, too much of the wrong kind is. The longer the half-life, the safer it is.
"Gaslighting on the go"
My parents just called them vacations
There was another vacationing with parent gaslighting comment, unless this was the second time view this. I'm guessing that a roadtrip (trapped in a car for hours on end) would precipitate an incident and only just minutes into the journey.
no they dont, your parents call it just gaslighting on the go, they never called them vacations, maybe you should check with your therapist to see why you think they do?
I have used these lanterns for years and never understood how they worked ,now I do . Really enjoyed the video. thanks