A recent pickup from the Joe Pagan collection. Joe originally found this lantern in Bolivia, so I'm assuming it had been exported by Sunflame appliances originally. While it was there it had a pump swap from I don't know what. No doubt probably from a stress cracked original pump as these are notorious for cracks. Luckily the fount on this has not suffered yet. I'm assuming this was built by AGM but there's some evidence that it could be an Akron design as well.
@Toby Garner Nice lantern. Can you elaborate on the operation of the "Gasoline <-> Kerosene" lever? Does it regulate the amount of air? Tony
Thank you for the kind words folks. @Tony Press you are correct. I have it photoed with the lever open or for "kero" use. When it's closed or in the "gas" selection the lever restricts the air tube. I've only run it on white gas/Coleman fuel, but it's a strong runner that way.
This is part of the very complex saga of AGM, Akron, Queen Stove, Seeley, SunFlame and Thermos which I still don’t fully understand. This lantern is based on the design of the Akron Diamond model 400 which they introduced in 1942. SF Appliances bought out Akron in 1949 and then moved everything to Ridgefield to produce the SunFlame range of lanterns. At some point in the 1950s SFA was merged with or bought out by Queen Stove so became part of the AGM game. BUT the Sunflame brand was registered to AGM from 1936 to 1946 which happens also to be more or less when SFA were a registered company exporting Akron product so I assume some sort of tie in between AGM and SFA long before any merger in the 1950s. Another puzzle is the Akron 400 and SunFlame lanterns have a very AGM look about them so quite who designed what and when is a mystery. ::Neil::
