CF3, meaning a 700 CP paraffin indoor lamp with unusually many details nickel plated for a large Lux lamp. It's probably from the years just before 1910. I wager it hasn't been used more than a decade after that, or so, before electricity won the game here, because everything is in remarkably good condition. I also got the tank it was ordered with, as you can see in the third picture. And luckily I also got the old hollow wire and the original winch with its wire and pulleys. The tank is pretty large. The volume was of course not far from the worst from Lux - just 15 litres - but that's big enough for me! It was pressurised with CO2 indstead of manual air pumping, and the cartridge is a monster for those who are used to the regular Soda Stream machines at home.
Congrats Christer, impressiv indeed and a great find . I believe you have the stuff for starting a LUX museum now. /Conny
Yes, I really like this lamp. It will be nice to see how it will perform. I'll settle for the bare, blue flame. It's practically impossible to find a suitable mantle for these large burners. The lamp itself isn't that big, but the tank is. The rated volume of paraffin is 15 litres, but considering that the CO2 bottle takes a lot of space inside the tube, the entire volume is much bigger. I could pour 30 litres of water in it as I was cleaning it, but you're not supposed to fill it more than up to the regulator body. The CO2 bottle itself is OK to have in the paraffin though.
Yes Jeff, it uses a preformed, upright mantle. Unfortunately no one this big is made nowadays. Stephan, I'm well aware of the soft mantles which are available today. I have tried the 2000CP on other Lux burners for years now, but unfortunately they shrink too much. Apparently a rigid, upright 700CP is physically larger than a 2000CP soft mantle once it has shrinked. I even contacted some of your countrymen who makes their own mantles, in order to ask if they were willing to have a couple of extra large chrocheted for me. I still have some 2000CP left from Jürgen that I intend to experiment with, but I don't have too much hope considering my earlier experiences with those.
Wow wow Great brillant hanging lux lamp. just like similar primus 1005 lamp ball warm system. :o many thanks sharing for us Christer. Gunsoo
Christer, that's sad news to hear even the 2000cp mantle won't work for the lamp. I see the difficulties to substitute an upright mantle with a soft mantle. At least you are in need of the ring where the mantle can be tied on but bringing it to the right shape and size seems to be nearly impossible. I have no experiences in this so I am unfortunately not a big help.
I haven't given up completely. The experiments with the 2000CP was made with the Autolux (the lamp in my avatar), which has a larger burner. Perhaps I will manage to make it work on this CF after all. Fingers crossed! Gunsoo, you are correct. This burner is of the same type as on the first Primus lamps. Or rather the other way around, because this kind with the vapourizer ball was firstly used by Lux, and also many years before Primus. Aladdin copied the Lux burner too.
Christer, Can you take a closer photo of the burner and vapouriser mechanism, it hasn't revealed all it's secrets to me on the given pics. Thanks!
Hello there Christer, A very elegant and stylefull lamp indeed, I especially like the fact you cleaned up the nickel plated parts! And the fact you got the tank with it and an in-tact hollow wire and the glass is the icing on the cake! I'll be looking forward to seeing it perform! Best regards, Frank
Thanks Frank! I will soon give it a test. Stephan and Dowdy, here's some images of the burner. First image show you what it looks like where you attach the hollow wire. The lid covers the funnel where you pour the preheating alcohol, and the larger fitting is of course where the fuel tubing is mounted. The word you see says "Afsyn", and is an oldfashioned word for "controlled": Then you have the whole assembly with fuel feed tubing entering the bottom of the larger tube that goes up to the ball. Then from the ball you see the thinner tube that goes back down and enters the jet. Above the jet is the flamespreader, and around it all you can see the spirit cups in two levels connected with some asbestos string. The funnel outside the lamp enters here via the thin tube you can see running just right of the thicker fuel tube which goes to the ball. In the second picture I removed the jet shield and the flamespreader to show the jet and cleaning needle mechanism. And here's the essential part, stripped from all other accessories. This is how the actual vapouriser assy. looks like. Fluid fuel enters at the fitting in the upper right and comes out as a gas stream through the jet at the bottom left. And a comparision of the flamespreader to one from the above mentioned Primus 1005.
Wow, thanks a lot Christer, the photos are great and clarify the whole mechanism. I guess the large tube acts as a »reservoir« that »feeds« the ball in which the fuel turns into gas that exits downwards to the jet hence of taking the »easier« way instead of getting back through the large tube filled with paraffin. Thanks again for showing this great piece, never seen something like that!
You got it right. Actually the inside of the large tube might be a bit more complex with some arrangements to prevent pulsation. Here's a cutaway drawing of a Lux burner from a patent, but I'm not sure it really was implemented exactly like that. And I won't cut it open to check! The trapped air inside the smaller, closed, tube acts as a dampener for variations in the pressure.
Great! Really more complex as you would expect. You could use an endoscope to inspect if everything is there...
I made the first test run with an open flame tonight. It performs well, so I really need to fix the mantle somehow. I misjudged the time it takes to fill this large burner with parafin. It took atleast a minute after I turned the regulator key to "open" before the gas came out through the jet. I guess it's because I use my home made hollow wire, and that one is much thinner than the original one. It works good with my smaller lamps, though. I didn't use the 15-litres tank this lamp came with, but a smaller Aladdin tank since it's so convenient. I pressurised it to 7 Bar with my regular air tool compressor. You can see my home made hollow wire with its fitting behind the regulator: And after a looong preheating and a looong wait for the paraffin to find its way, I was rewarded with a neat and stable blue cone. No doubt that this one will be able to make a good light if I can fix a mantle:
Thanks guys! I'm really satisfied how this first test went. Actually the 2000CP mantles might work. I now see that this flame is smaller, but above all: much shorter than the one of my Autolux which "blew" the 2000-mantles.
Christer, An impressive”blue flame”, I hope you can make a mantle fix and get a light from it. Stephan, if you look at Christer´s avatar you can see the “Autolux” lamp made by the Swedish LUX company around 1910. I’ve said it before, but this lamp has really a futuristic lamp design, a lamp you would expect to find in the Star Trek Enterprise star ship. /Conny
Thanks Pete. Yes, I was really pleased to find this one. It's quite some difference in condition compared to my other CF, . That one looked the same once... Yes Conny, the Autolux surely has a design of it's own. I think I have to post it here one of these days.
I didn't have any 2000CP left after all, as it turned out. So I did the second best. I tried the 1000CP's instead, even if I knew they would fail. I fitted one, burned it off, and then lowered the mantle support further more to give it even some additional space to shrink. It didn't help. As you can see, it shrinked even much more once really exposed to the hot flame. Just look at all the space between the Luxburner ball and the top of the mantle, and still it was ripped from the lower part... The second picture is very stepped down to just show the mantle. The third is closer to normal exposure, just to show how much gasses that actually was passing by there. And finally, in the fourth image, you will see that, even if the mantle was broke and way too small, it was able to illuminate the room decent enough. No 700CP, but I'd say close enough to a regular 300 lamp. I will order a new batch of 2000CP. Perhaps they will give us a glimpse of how it looked in the old days.
