Oil lamps (Leeds and others)

[bott]

I’m looking into oil lamps for my boat, right now I’m looking at anchor lamps (mostly for irrational reasons, that I know)

But…

I have a good deal possibly on Leeds lamps. Are these built to actually be used at sea or are they of the nautical themed office/house variety? The anchor lamp I’m looking at has a copper body with brass trim/fittings (which seems to be a good first sign).

If not, what other brands are available for such ‘real world’ duty?

[Bob Cleek]

From the looks of them on e-bay, they are "decorator items," NOT suitable for navigational use. You could use them as decorations on a boat, I suppose, but there isn't much point in it. I base my conclusion on two facts. First, they are selling for fifty bucks on e-bay, which means they aren't a quality product of this type. Second, they have copper bodies and brass fittings. A marine quality lamp will be all brass.

If used for navigational purposes, they must produce a visible light at two miles, IIRC. This is what you paid for with the old lamps. (If you could get that out of a flame to begin with!) The originals had glass fresnel lenses. They later came out with plastic lenses, which aren't quite the same, to my taste.

Perko was the "gold standard" of yacht sized lamps. It seems they no longer manufacture these, although they do make large sized traditional styled lamps for ship sized vessels. They have, like everybody else, it seems, gone into the streamlined designs.

Your best bet for real marine quality lamps, which will have the proper lenses, metals used in construction, and will hold up in the marine environment will come from Davey and Co., London, and/or Toplicht in Germany. Toplicht's catalog carries the Davey line, I believe. There is an outfit in the Pacific Northwest that is selling Davey and Toplicht products, I believe. Google them and drool!

Your best bet if you want to go cheap is to prowl the marine flea markets or e-bay and hope to snag a set of original brass Perko lamps. Good hunting!

[Wooden Boat Fittings]

.
Den Haan lamps from Holland are reliable too.

Some of these are oil, some electrified --

http://www.woodenboatfittings.com.au/public/nav-lamps.jpg


All these have dioptric lenses, which are okay for riding lights. But I think plain lenses are better bets for sidelights as the dioptrics focus the light in a narrow beam, and if the viewer on another vessel isn't in the beam he's less likely to see it than if the lamp has a plain lens.

You can also see some oil-burning Den Haan cabin lamps here --

http://www.woodenboatfittings.com.au/boats/sanderling/intl-fwd-1.jpg

http://www.woodenboatfittings.com.au/boats/sanderling/galley-s.jpg