Random Cool Tricks

It's spring. It's windy and folks like to park at the curb in the shade under the trees to eat their lunch.

What a perfect time to buy a bag of popcorn. Feed a few kernels to the gulls then drive by and dump the rest of the bag out the window. The wind will blow the popcorn under the parked cars and up to the curb and the gulls will go nuts trying to eat it all.

Finally, a form of entertainment that's cheaper than a night out in Detroit. Popcorn is under $2 and a gallon of gas is over $3.

 

I have a lamp problem. I can't find enough places to hang them.

One quick solution was to use the bracket for my shoulder stretching wheel as a lamp hanger. Just high enough to clear my head and very solid.

 

Nice set-up with elevated fire bed.

 

It works surprisingly well!

 

So you have to clean or change the burner screens in your old Coleman lantern or lamp. Grab a pliers and unscrew them, right? Not unless you want to mar the caps up or crush the tubes.

There is an easier way. A T55 Torx bit fits most of the older two burner lantern caps.



You can push the burner screens back inside the tube to get a good grip with the tool. Especially on the odd recessed burner cap on the far burner above.


If you grind the end of the bit flat you can install burner caps and tubes with the screens in the seated position. Works great and leaves no scars.

 

How do you replace a wick in a 1912 Plume & Atwood Beacon lamp? For $28.00 you could modify an Aladdin 23 wick to work, or you could look at how the original wick was made and for eighty cents sew two flat wicks together to make a new round one just like the original.



The two 1.5" wicks are sewn together with cotton thread around a metal or wood mandrel the same diameter as the inner wick tube. Sewing only 1.5" together forms a round portion that is the maximum length to fit in the burner and leaves enough to level and clean the wick once installed.

The easiest way to do the sewing is with o-rings instead of a rubber band. They will roll up and down to move out of the way while holding things firmly in place.

 

thrifty like me

 

It's a little thing that saves me lots of drama and wasted time. By marking the old component that was removed "OLD" before I unwrap the replacement part I remove the stress of finding both of them mixed up on the floor.

 

That may not seem important ,, or even a thought to some . But having been in that exact predicament ,,, not usually having a marker ,,, I'll smear my greasy hands all over the old part ,, or take my knife and scratch a mark on the new part . Good advice to those that will listen .

 

I write my tech # on the new part #### and then the hrs installed