Need a wee bit of advise here: Have a small bunch of Tilleys, mostly ex-Danish army, that I would like to get up and running. At the same time, I'm operating a couple of FL6. I don't have any excess mantles for any of them, so Im looking for an outlet of some kind. I've been roaming around the mantle threads, and taken David's advice with 191's for the FL6 and the 164 for the ordinary lamps. Have also been around the recommended retailers. So far so good - BUT: Looking at flee-bay, a lot of sellers of Tilley mantles are recomending themselves, with lower prices than the retailers mentioned above. I'm not in good standing with the ordinary lamps (recon they are X246A's), so I'm probably gonna need a few before I'm fully Tilley-qualified I'm quite familiar with counterfeit safety equipment marketed on this site, but how is it with these mantles (And those for the Px as well)? The lamp burning is unfortunately not a T, but a very faithful Optimus 930 coming-home lamp for my wife. Cheers Bent
Hi Bent. When working on a lamp I typically use a cheap 300/400 mantle from China. These are single tie but when you open the bottom part you can use them on a tilley burner. You just have to improvise a little bit and use a string or steel wire to tie it to the spigot. These mantles are low quality but for testing a lamp they work good enough (at least for me they are). When a lamp is fully fettled I'll use the 164x mantles.
The subject on mantles, in my opinion, would be 'timeless', so long as we're still at these pressure lamps. Afterall, what would a lamp be without the light source? Gas mantles are not really as widely available as they used to be. Although the Chinese ones are still available in bulk, in some places, they're not available at all. I'd say, just buy any mantles you happen to come across:- any brand or make and try them out.
Thanks for the answers. I can see an advantage in getting the cheeper mantles for test-runs and the like. My question is as well, if it says "Tilley" on the package, IS it then a tilley mantle, or is "Counterfeitism" also widespread when it comes to these products? Cheers
@Bent Jensen The Tilley Lamp Company still exists, as a shadow of its former self. Nonetheless, it sells Tilley mantles: Tilley Lamp Anything that is not one of theirs is therefore a reproduction or copy. But, for quality, I buy either Tilley mantles or Base Camp mantles suitable for Tilley. I don’t bother buying cheap mantles anymore - I’ve got stacks of them I’ll never use because they are annoying and fragile. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. Tony
Recent purchases Ive been very happy with are from Julian Shaw, https://www.tilleylampsandstoves.com/ and Justmantles, https://www.just mantles.co.nz/
I obtain any mantles which I can because I also have a collection of mantles, but for use on Tilleys I prefer their older mantles.
