Hi all
I have noticed there has been some interest about manufacturing masthead oil lamps. For one of the models I made, a good while ago, I had to make two or three of these and the way I overcame the problem of not having wires running up the side of the mast/through the centre of the mast - I used the cable that hoists the lamp up and down on the mast to power the light.
First of all I turned the casing of the lamp out of brass milling out the area for the lamp lens then drilling the 4mm hole in the centre to take the grain of wheat bulb (which was of 6 volt). Then I went on to modify the grain of wheat bulb by stripping off the existing wires to the bulb leads and soldering on 1mm copper wire, which is represented at B in the drawing. You will notice I left one of the copper wires longer than the other and after I had done this I placed a short piece of insulation over the copper wire to prevent them from shorting out. The next stage idea I did, was, I bent the longer piece of copper wire into a circle, and placed the grain of wheat bulb into the lamp, soldered the short leg to the casing.
I manufactured a loop to be soldered on top of the lamp which forms, shall we say, the positive side of the feed and the bottom loop forms the negative side of the feed to the bulb.
I then used the wire from an 'old' stripped down transformer to form the mast ropes which hold the lamp in place. The mast rope that is connected to the top of the lamp becomes the positive feed and the mast rope that is connected to the bottom of the lamp becomes the negative feed.
Ive attached a sketch (scribble) to try and explain these plust a bit of a blurred picture.
Hope this is of some help.
Also, there is a certain Company if you are quick and spring into ACTion
who produce a unit to make these lamps actually flicker.
aye
john e
bluebird
Author
Topic: Masthead Oil Lamps (Read 5308 times)