Cycling UK Forum

ANTONISH wrote:I can remember my father using a device called a "pricker" basically a thin wire held in a piece of metal plate. You poke it into the nozzle to clear it.
Haven't seen one for decades.

I wonder why?

thirdcrank wrote:

ANTONISH wrote:I can remember my father using a device called a "pricker" basically a thin wire held in a piece of metal plate. You poke it into the nozzle to clear it.
Haven't seen one for decades.

When you mention it, I'm pretty sure I have some in the back of my garage, stored with the spare Tilley lamp mantles. In fact I have more old stuff of this kind than you see adorning some olde worlde innes. One Tilley lamp, one blowlamp, two pressure stoves and even an acetylene bike lamp. That's in addition to two cobblers' lasts. Oh, and a five gallon drum half full of paraffin. No partridges, in or out of pear trees, though.

(My bold)
Gotcha,I just knew there was something you didn't have!

reohn2 wrote: ... Gotcha,I just knew there was something you didn't have!

There's not much I haven't got. A lot of space in there is now taken up by my younger son's tools. He's a mechanical fitter, from the last EITB intake in Leeds of engineering apprentices in 1990. Over the years he's had loads of jobs on short-term contracts, with fewer requiring the employee to provide their own tools, but some still stipulate that. Earlier this year he landed a permanent job - as permanent as anything is these days - within a short walk of his flat. Tools provided so everything is in several tool cabinets here.

The blowlamp was my dear old dad's. I don't know why he had one because he wasn't a plumber. Thinking back, I think he probably bought it for paint stripping for decorating.

I've just got my faithful paraffin pressure stove out because of some reminiscing. I always liked it. Never that much trouble to light, and produced a really good heat. More and more difficult to get fuel without advance planning though.

I use white spirit, as sold for cleaning paint brushes and readily available in supermarkets at c.£1.50 a litre. Yes, it's more expensive than a 5L container of paraffin but is less smelly and burns very cleanly.

My father had an ancient petrol fuelled pressure stove.
He wasn't amused when I mistakenly tried to run it on paraffin.

ANTONISH wrote:My father had an ancient petrol fuelled pressure stove.
He wasn't amused when I mistakenly tried to run it on paraffin.

I used a petrol pressure stove for years, but it is in poor repair now.
Fuel available at many roadside shops, though you do have to mix with motors,

Well success (of sorts), I improvised a pricker (using a bit of old gear cable) and managed to get a jet spraying out of the nozzle. Unfortunately as part of the strip down and refit process I obviously didn't tighten the nut holding the burner tubing to the reservoir so paraffin leaked out here, into the nice hot meths well and then got ignited by the blow torch.
I did get a jet flame going, but considering the whole thing was flaming it wasn't really usable. Still I was outside and I could get to the pressure release so I'm going to count this as a (qualified) success. And I still have my eyebrows!
Interestingly, despite filling the well to the top with meths, the first jet was still liquid rather than gaseous paraffin. The 'chimney' didn't seem to draw the meths flame so I suspect there wasn't sufficient heat getting to the tubing.
This is turning into a challenge now, I'm going to get this going or die in the attempt (and judging by todays antics that's always possible)

if you are in (South?) Cambridge and get really stuck, you are welcome to borrow my Iroda 120W butane soldering iron with heat gun attachment. It is depressingly safe to use, and I have no idea how big an area of bee-hive sterilizing you need to do. It works for burning the food / fat residue off the BBQ but it my not be dangerous / big enough for a whole beehive!

Obviously not anywhere near as exciting as a blow-lamp with leaking meths / paraffin, but it would be a shame for you to die, thereby leaving the bees without a safe and sterile home .

Although heating with meths is the way it's intended to work, if you pump too soon and get a squirt of unvaporised paraffin, that should heat it up too. Obviously, you have to be aware of the unintended flare-up and also release the pressure as you don't want a continuous jet of liquid fuel squiring out. Put another way, if you had no meths you could pre-heat the blowlamp with paraffin. Heat is heat.

It's probably stating the obvious to say that it all has to be leakproof, except for the burner jet and pressure release when open.

CliveyT wrote:Unfortunately as part of the strip down and refit process I obviously didn't tighten the nut holding the burner tubing to the reservoir so paraffin leaked out here, into the nice hot meths well and then got ignited by the blow torch.

You may need new seals - lead washers get squashed and old asbestos or fibre ones dry out and crumble. The Fettlebox might help - some of them may be interchangeable with stove or lamp ones, or they can make to order. You can get a new pump leather there too if you need one.

That's a really good site! Thanks.