DIY oil lamps....

B

Buck268

Joined
Nov 5, 2006
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Anybody play around with these? I've read some mixed information online about veggie oil; some places claim it works fine some claim its too polymerized and only olive oil will work.

Been tinkering off and on this evening with making a veggie oil lamp in baby food jars. Mostly, I like the idea of veggie oil instead of olive oil or other sources as its dirt cheap. The real goal would be to find a DIY lamp that could burn the widest variety of fuels but first I gotta get past this.

The veggie oil just hasn't been working. Been trying to use the baby food jar lids as wick holders. Tried both cotton (from a cotton sock) rolled and also not rolled as well as paper towels the same way. The hole in the lid has ranged from tight to almost too loose. Wick is fully saturated before lighting. In every case, after the initial veggie oil burns off, the wick doesn't appear to be "wicking" and will burn down, char and go out.

Is it a fuel issue, design issue, wick issue or something else? I will keep tinkering with this but has anybody had success with veggie oil for lamp fuel?
 
Kept tinkering and found a solution, sort of. Looks like the veggie oil must be too thick or something; just doesn't wick up. Set up a wick holder at/below the surface of the oil and so far I have two lamps burning for almost the last hour. One with cotton wick, one with paper towel. They both burnt down to 1-2mm above the veggie oil surface before sustaining length.

Very dim, though. Not useful for working/reading/etc. Just enough to get around with indoors if placed with consideration.
 
Try a Betty lamp and animal fat. Mewolf1 has posted his here several times.
 
I've always had good results with canola oil. One time I got the idea, why am I burning up my good canola oil? I went to the supermarket and bought the cheapest "vegetable oil" they had. Burning it smelled up the place so bad I ended up throwing it out.

Take the little metal wick holder from the bottom of a tea candle or votive candle that you've burned up. Poke an awl in the hole to open it up and put a bit of string in it, just a half inch long or so. Put that in a little glass bowl or a brandy glass or whatever you like, and pour in a little canola oil. It won't wick up very far. If you pour in more oil before it all burns up you can make the wick last longer, or you can just cut a lot of string into half inch lengths.

Canola oil doesn't smell and you can add essential oils to make it smell nice. Rosemary oil smells like a Christmas tree. Eucalyptus oil clears out your sinuses. You can mix them.... Clove oil is easy to find and that smells nice too. Add just a few drops of essential oils.
 
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