"Frank Gilliland" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 5 Jan 2007 04:16:38 -0500, "Jimmie D"
wrote in IHonh.19219$_X.15045@bigfe9:


Ive been told that alcohol is good fuel for Coleman lanterns. Is this
true.
I tried it once in a camp stove and it seemed to work OK.


NO! Not unless it was made for alcohol. The main reason is that
alcohol (ethanol) will always have some water. It absorbs water right
from the air, whether in storage or from the air that you pump into
the fount. The ethanol/water solution is corrosive to the parts and
you get all kinds of nasty white/green deposits inside the fount. For
the same reason you should never use oxygenated gasoline in dual-fuel
lanterns and stoves. When they were designed it was never expected
that gasoline would ever contain ethanol. Coleman made a short run of
lanterns and stoves that could run on oxygenated gasoline but no
longer (and they are now prized collector items).

You -can-, however, run the lantern on kerosene! You have to pre-heat
the generator to get it started, and it will clog up more often, but
it will run just fine. I wouldn't use it indoors or in a tent because
kerosene will run rich in a gas lantern and you could die from carbon
monoxide poisoning. But outside it should be fine. You can even run a
gas/kerosene mix for easier starting. I haven't tried diesel or
heating oil yet but I suspect they would work like kerosene.




Speaking of kerosene I have a lantern you would love. It a railroad lantern
with mirror for signaling. It was my grandfathers when he used to work for
the RR. He ran a depot for the GA&FL. or G&F as it was called then.. ITs
brass with two big concave mirrors one red and the other not tinted..Only
used one mirror at a time, actually Im not sure if you were suppose to swap
the mirrors but grandpa did. When I was a teenager we actually used it for
camping. Soon it will be in a RR museum in South GA. The mirror is really
the interesting part to me as I have never seen one like it before. IT looks
like it was made by blowing a sphere then silvering the inside and
flattening it. Only half of the sphere was silvered, the part next to the
blowing stem the rest is clear and form the front of the mirror.When the
depot was shut down there were several old mirros around that the stem had
broken on, as you can imagine the silver probably didnt last long after
this. Are you familar with this type of lantern.