for years i have been looking for a way to make lamp oil, all the oils i have made have a very limited shelf life. they work great as mason jar lamps but i dare not leave the mixture in a oil lamp very long, for fear of the great cleaning it would require.
has anyone out there found the holy grail of home made oil, that has similar property of paraffin based oils??
You could make alchohol I don't know what the chemical differences needed though. I wonder if you could fuel a vehicle with very high percentage alchohol.
for years i have been looking for a way to make lamp oil, all the oils i have made have a very limited shelf life.
Hi Colt45...What method have you used to make lamp oil? What ingredients do you use? With this kind of information, someone might be able to help you.
Someone will pop up making lamp oil. Many people are already building small personal refinerys. Most intend to create both gasoline, and various oils from wood gassification and extraction. During the process they run generators or stationary motors off of the gas that no longer bears oils.
I have heard that you can use regular vegetable oil. You will need a "wick". I have and keep cotton string on hand. I am going to try this in a small veggie can. I'll let you know if it works. I figure it will probably smoke, so I will do this outside.
What works for me (experimentally);
Grow oily crop; olives, castor beans, sunflower seeds etc (watch out for the fumes from burning castor oil it is a powerful laxative).
Press out the oil (I use a 10 ton (overkill, but its primary function is for bearings) hydraulic press in the shop)... or grind/crush the beans/seeds and boil them then decant off the oil.
It should be noted that it takes an awful lot of seeds to get much oil... and. as mentioned it goes rancid relatively quickly.
Far better, IMO, is to store, and regularly cycle through/refresh, ample petroleum based oil supplies as a secondary/backup and have a renewable source of lighting (solar & lead acid batteries (rebuildable) + LED bulbs) as the primary lighting.
That's what I think when people keep saying saying 'olive oil'. Most of us in the US can't grow olive trees and the work to get the oil must be tremendous. You could buy olive oil, but it would cost more than lamp oil.
We (occasionally) press seeds in a Piteba oil press. It's a lot of work for a little oil, but the oil is delicious! We've tried sunflower, grape seed, safflower, and other seeds.
During homeschool science experiments, we extracted oils by grinding seeds, boiling the paste in water, skimming oil-rich scum off the top of the water, and filtering through coffee filters.
It burns well in clay oil lamps, the type with a spout and wick, but does tend to smoke and soot. It also burns well in a kudlik, an Inuit oil lamp with a broad wick used for light, heat, and cooking. Both lamps need to be tended every couple of minutes.
It's not the holy grail, but as long as you can boil water, you can extract oil from seeds to burn in a clay oil lamp.
That's kinda like the way salting a kerosene lamp wick makes it burn better, longer, and with less smoke today. Amazing how far back some knowledge goes.
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