Hello every one ,hope you are all keeping well . I received these three pl53 models today . One of the earlier ones has the early type pump with the two holes in the base and still has the cloth filter attached to the control cock . The other straight armed lamp had solder piled up high on the arms where they attach to the tank . After stripping the solder away a pin hole leak was found when I done a dunk test . The third pl model is the later type ,nothing unusual in the construction it's all brass . What is intriguing me is the colour ,it looks to be a factory finish and the base is black . Any ideas what the colour is it might have been used for ? I also have a gaurdsman tank with a very similar colour and that is dated 11/58 . Thanks marten
Fine fettling projects and the blue paint is original, that is a WW2., PL-53 and I have also seen Tilley R1 tanks and wall lamps with tanks painted that colour, they may have been for the RAF., but I do not have any paperwork which states that, because of the shortage of materials during WW2., Tilleys from that period are often made from a mixture of brass and steel.
Hi @JEFF JOHNSON I had totaly dismissed the idea of it being a ww2 era lamp as I naturally assumed them to be steel or a mix of steel and brass,I have put a magnet to it and it's all brass . The research that I have done a few months ago regarding the ww2 colours was that , blue grey was used from before the war to about 1939. 1939 to the end of the war the RAF used ral 5017 traffic blue on all gse ,after the war they went back to blue Grey with a slightly different shade . So that should place this lamp pre 1939 or post 1945 ? Marten
Some of the WW2., Tilleys are of all brass construction, they may be early examples from when Tilley still had plenty of brass in stock and that style of PL-53 was only produced during the WW2., era, as I mentioned in my previous post, it's only a possibility that those blue painted lamps were for the RAF., I do not have any documentation to prove that. This information may be of interest, I have had several Tilley TL-10 table lamps which were made during the WW2., era and the brass was of much poorer quality and far more prone to stress cracking, some of those lamps had steel parts. The first Tilley X-246 lantern was marketed in 1946 and it replaced the PL-53 etc..
