firstly apologies if I haven't posted this in the correct part of the forum or if I should have continued an already active thread. I must admit I haven't actually heard of a tilley lamp up until an hour ago! I have just been working at a job and spotted this very unloved lamp in a garage and the owner said it had been there atlesst 3 years from the previous owners and was about to be thrown away!! my plan is to service it and clean it up and eventually use it. can anybody point me in the right direction as to identify what lamp this actually is and then I can go on to order the new parts for it. p.s the second lamp I picked up anyway but at this point I won't be doing anything with it. Thank you very much in advance and again apologies of I haven't posted correctly.
Hi Andrew, yes you have come to the right place, there is lots of good advice available from the members of this forum just ask and you will get answers. If you look at you tube one of our members under the name of broadlander has put some very good videos on showing how to service ,repair and operate tilley lamps. Regards Ian
Welcome! Your Tilley 246b will probably clean up pretty easily and if you need the various rubber seals and washers you'll find them at the Fettle Box at the bottom of this page. The wick lamp is not something I know much about but with a new wick and a replacement glass chimney I dare say it'll work just fine! Well done for rescuing them from the skip!
Hi there, welcome @AndrewSanderson , very cool first Tilley lantern, all the replacement seals can be bought from the fettlebox, your lantern should clean up very nice, Recommend watching the broad lander.
Welcome aboard! Your lantern will have a date code stamped on the bottom of the tank. Happy fettling.
Welcome to CPL @AndrewSanderson On the bottom of the lantern there should be a series of numbers and letters such as 1067XA these represent the manufacture date, in this example October 1967.
except for the new type pump non return valve (NRV) seal. @AndrewSanderson the seal for the NRV (and also in the control cock) on earlier lamps and lanterns is a small flat disc punched out of a sheet of rubber which sits in a brass cup and won't work in your lantern. By the time your lantern rolled off the production line, Tilley had dispensed with the disc in a brass cup and instead used individually molded pips with a nipple on one side which sat directly in the spring. Tilley NRV & Control Cock Valve seal - Pack of 4 What your lamp needs (image from eBay seller hootflipflopandfly).
thank you all so much for your kind words and welcome. tonight is the first chance I have had to spend a couple of hours on the lamp. very impressed with the condition to be honest. some rust here and there but not bad at all. It amazed me how the mantle looked nice and white and completely intact, almost new and yet I pretty much just looked at it and it turned to powder! for some reason the underneath was hand painted in very thick white paint. managed to shift it and can see June 1965. As you would expect the glass has come up like band new. the base seems to be cleaning up OK.... I'm planning on rubbing it down, using some filler on the dents and going for a bright red finish on it. I have a friend who is a paint sprayer so will let him paint it for me. the top I will keep black, a fresh coat of some high temp satin finish. the cage I will stick with a high temp silver spray I think. then all the other parts can have a decent go on a polishing wheel and it will all look like new I ordered this kit before I saw you could get parts from the fettlebox.
If you touch the top (hood) no paint can withstand the temperatures that these lamp require and will burn off unless its re-enamelled. Their is a member that does it here Enamelling
I'm fascinated at how vaporised fuel and a mantle can produce this sort of light. I'm actually a little embarrassed that I had never heard of a pressure lamp until a few weeks ago. I must have seen so many in films and old buildings etc but never lit, so I must have just assumed they were all wick lamps. This tilley lamp was extremely easy to service. looking forward to finishing the painting start looking round boot sales and old properties for the next one! thank you all once again for all your advice.
Oh dear. Oh dear o dear. Mind, if there ever will be need for therapeutic reassurance, you are surrounded here by empirical experts. Welcome! Mike
