My olive oil lamp article is finally up on Mother Earth News if you want to check out how to make your own lamp using ordinary household materials and olive oil.Let me know if you've made one before!
My olive oil lamp article is finally up on Mother Earth News if you want to check out how to make your own lamp using ordinary household materials and olive oil.
We make similiar ones each year, but on a smaller scale; for Hanukkah, instead of those little wax candles that come in a box, we have 9 tiny cups for the menorah. Those, some olive oil, and some floating wicks are all we need for a couple of hours of burning. I never thought about cooking oil acting as a fuel before we switched to those; I've thought about making other lamps with olive oil, but never get around to it. We do have a hurricane lamp sitting unused that might work....
ReplyDeleteI used to make them all the time when in college, using the bottom of empty wine bottles. Made floating wicks out of the corks. Don't recall what oil I used back in the day, tho.
ReplyDeleteI make em out of bottles!
ReplyDeleteI've made these. I do medievel reenactment and these are so useful at the campsites and in tents. (I don't worry about the kids knocking them over). I use glass from the thrift store and sometimes fill them with water first so the oil floats on top. Also I will use 100% cotton mop heads for the wicks.
ReplyDeleteI got the article in today's Mother Earth e-mail and recognized your name in the byline -- congrats. What fantastic timing, too, since we had a total grid outage for a couple of hours last night (about half the county!). We have a couple of oil lamps, but I'd been thinking about non-petroleum alternatives. You can bet I'm trying these out before the next blackout. Thanks
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