Oil Candle-homemade

[Kathy]

I haven't tried this yet but thought it was worth passing on since we're all in stock up mode.

#238 Emergency Light
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This week's experiment is thanks to Tropical Storm Gabrielle. It came right
over our house Friday night, leaving us with LOTS of rain, LOTS of wind, and
no electricity. Luckily, the power was back on within hours, but in the mean
time it was getting very dark. Living in Florida (hurricane territory), we
always have plenty of candles, but we wanted a little extra light. While
adding a little extra illumination, I also managed to find an idea for this
week's experiment.

To try this, you will need:

vegetable oil
a paper towel
a glass or ceramic bowl (Not the good china!)
matches or a lighter

Warning! This experiment uses fire. Be sure that you have permission and
that there is an adult present to help. Most of all, be sure to be careful,
be safe and use common sense.

Pour about 1/2 an inch of vegetable oil into the bowl. You can use regular
cooking oil, canola oil, peanut oil or any other kind of vegetable cooking
oil. Tear a paper towel into four quarters. Crumple one of the quarters
into a ball and place it into the bowl with the oil. You want the oil to
soak the entire ball of paper, but you also want the paper to stick up above
the surface of the oil.

Place the bowl on a table where it will not be bumped or disturbed. Use a
match or lighter to carefully light the top edge of the paper towel. It
should easily catch fire. Now watch carefully. The fire continues to burn,
but the paper towel does not burn up. As long as there is oil in the bowl,
the flame will continue without burning up the paper.

How can that be? What you have just made is an oil lamp, very similar to the
ones that have been used for thousands of years. The flame of the match does
not have enough heat to set a pool of vegetable oil on fire. In fact, if you
stuck the match into the oil, it would go out. The paper towel serves as a
wick, to carry the oil up to the flame. Since there is only a small amount
of oil in the paper, and it is spread out very thin, it can get hot enough
for something to happen. The flame cause the oil in the paper to break down,
forming a flammable gas. This gas is what you are burning. As the oil in
the paper changes and is burned, more oil soaks up into the paper. The oil
actually keeps the paper cool enough so that it does not burn, except at the
very edge where you first lit it.

This is a good experiment to know about when the lights go out. The light
from the oil is brighter than a candle, and even if you are out of candles,
almost everyone has some cooking oil in the kitchen. The vegetable oil burns
very cleanly, and should not produce smoke or bad smells. The one draw back
is that every once in a while, you may get a whiff of something that reminds
you of cooking popcorn.

www.discoverycentermuseum.org/experiments/238.htm

[Deleted]

I made something similar to this several years ago. It's a REAL Lava Lamp! I chipped out a hollow in a lava rock (don't even ask how long THAT took!), then put bacon grease in the bowl of it, and a twist of dried mullein (anything fuzzy will work), and lit it.

Here's a picture of it. I made the goblet next to the lamp, too. Well, not the glass part, but the decorations.



I tried different kinds of fats in my lamp, and the cleanest, steadiest burning one was bacon fat. I was trying to figure out a way to have light if I ever had to live off the land, so I never used any vegetable oil. Any kind of rendered fat will work, although it might sputter a bit...

~Lannie

[angiem2]

Now I'm going to have to try this. I have those floating water candle things, and they're basically this.

Lannie I LOVE your lava fat lamp and the goblet is really nice also.

Angie

[nan]

Fascinating! I have GOT to try that Kathy! And Lannie...beautiful "lava" lamp and goblet! Thanks for sharing!

[Kathy]

I'm going to have to hunt down some lava rock. I wondered if a heavy seashell would work? I don't have any of those either but it might be fun finding an excuse to go hunting a few down.

[Deleted]

Kathy, a seashell would probably work but I'd worry about heat transfer, it being so thin (relatively speaking). If you lived in a cave, no problem, but with furniture and carpeting...

Go hunting for any kind of rock that has a small depression in it. I only used that lava rock because that's all we had there. If the rock you find isn't level enough on the bottom, set it in a dish of sand or even dirt, so it sits level enough to hold the fat or oil. ;D

~Lannie

[Deleted]

bumping up. well worth the reading ;D

[Deleted]

And now that I've re-read what I wrote before, I realize that a seashell WOULD work, if it was sitting in a bowl of dirt or sand! LOL! Kathy, did you figure that out before?

~Lannie

[bbird]

I missed this thread! I am going to try this, and it is something new that I have never heard about before which makes it super cool.

Oh gosh, I have so many ideas floating through my head. It doesn't help that today I went to two outdoor garden places looking at rocks, lol. I love your lava rock Lannie! On a side note, I was looking for those boulders that have a hole through them drilled that you put in your yard and run a pump through as a fountain. Nix that idea after I saw the price they wanted for them, but now I am thinking a big lava rock which over here is much cheaper then other rocks could be used as a fountain and I could put my own hole through it somehow since those rocks do chip easier then a boulder, lol. Then I could put smaller lava rocks around the big lava rock fountain and have fire in them. Fire and water together! Ohh I love it.

Thanks for the post Kathy, this is cool!

[Deleted]

You ARE talking about pumice rocks, right? Because that hunk I made my lamp out of was not pumice and you don't even want to know how long I whanged on that thing to get the tiniest bit of concavity into it. Rich finally took pity on me and gave me his dremel tool to finish it. I was using the claws of a claw hammer. Don't try that at home!

~Lannie

[Deleted]

Oh, and I forgot to say, I love your idea of a fire-ringed fountain! I wish I'd thought of that when we still had our lava-rock pond. I can just see how gorgeous it would have been. If you do that, post pictures!

~Lannie

[bbird]

Actually I was talking lava rock, but dh is home and when I told him he said "yeah right, I'll watch you...for years and years." So, back to square one, lol. Now I do have a regular fish pond with a fountain that sprays up, so I will try the candle route there cause I do love the water/fire thing going on. Will just have to think of something else to hold the oil. Hmmm would'nt pumice have too many holes and not hold the oil? Oh maybe I could like a hole with foil! I love ideas, lol.

[angiem2]

What about the center of a 1/2 orb geode? the crystals would be beautiful reflecting the light.

Angie

[Kathy]

Angie, I never thought about a geode. I have two split ones here-one with amethyst crystals and one with clear quartz crystals.

I'm going to try it with the clear quartz one first in case it destroys the geode.

lannie, I never thought to seat the shell in sand-Duh I'll have to try it.

Thanks guys, we're coming up with some very interesting ways of dealing with a power outtage or setting the mood for a romantic evening.

[angiem2]

I'm heading for bed now, but will be checking back tomorrow to see how the geode experiment goes. You can seat it in sand also. What a zen table topper you could make!

Oh how the minds races.

Angie
(good night Phoenix)

[Deleted]

I have thought about putting lights in my geods around my foun tain. I have tons of geods. I have decided not to sell them becasue a guy picked up numerous ones of my neighbors. He was selling them for 150.00 a piece on the internet.

[Kathy]

I haven't tried it yet. But as soon as I do or if someone else does first; be sure to post the results.

When I do mine, if it turns out~ I'll post a pic!!

[Deleted]

The only problem I can see with using a geode is that it would have to be a fairly large one. Otherwise, all the crystals would be covered up with the fat you were burning. If it burns all the fat, it goes out, so you'd have to keep feeding it (carefully) more spoonfuls of liquefied fat to keep a small one going. Now, if you have one of those big ones that has just a chunk broken out, so you have something of a base with some more coming up behind, THAT would be stunning! I've seen pieces like that at gem shows but they were hundreds of dollars. Very spendy!

Also, keep in mind that every once in a while, you'll want to clean your fat lamp, otherwise the leftover fat residue can start to smell rancid. I put mine in the sink and pour boiling water over it, then use a nylon scrub brush, then more boiling water, then a rinse under tap water and set out to dry. You don't have to do that very often, depending on how often you'll use the lamp, but whenever it starts to get stinky, it's time for a good cleaning.

So whatever you end up using, just make sure you'll be able to clean it once in a while. A shell would be the easiest - you could just wipe it out with a paper towel after you're done using it each time. Pumice would work, Deb, even though it has lots of holes (most of them don't go all the way through the rock). To clean a pumice lamp, though, I think I'd want to actually put the whole thing in a pot of water and boil it for a while, because the oil will get into all those little channels. Lining it with foil is a great idea. Then you could just toss the foil and it would be clean.

~Lannie

[bbird]

I had the boys read this thread yesterday, and afterwards armed with oil and papertowels and a couple old empty candle holders they experimented. I am so impressed! Even dh was impressed.

So, I am going to the garden landscape place this weekend to pick up barkdust and I am going to wade through their rock supplies they have and figure out how I am going to do this around the pond. I was also liking the fact that if the dogs or cats get into the oil when they are not lit it isn't going to hurt them....Plus, they would all have nice shiney coats if they did drink it, lol.

[Deleted]

OMG, I never thought of that! How to keep them OUT of the oil! Especially if you use bacon grease!

You'd better stock up on bacon, girl, and plan on having it for breakfast every day!

~Lannie