Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This a circular wick, center draft, mantle lamp and is considerably different than the flat-wick lamps most people are familiar with.
I've had mine a few years and mostly use it as a 5,000 BTU space heater whenever my regular 10,000 BTU kero heaters are overkill. The mantles are expensive and even with careful use fall apart after a couple of weeks so I cut out a small disk of catalytic screen from Mannings kero heater website, pressed it in my palm until convex shaped and wired it (24ga.) into an old mantle frame and have used that for years. It glows orange and helps get all the kerosene vapor reacted with oxygen for a clean burn just like a mantle would.
Every week or two the wick gets carboned-up and burns poorly so I have to disassemble the lamp and trim it with a special tool that makes a mess of soot and ash to clean up and after 6 to 8 such trimmings the the wick gets too short and needs replaced at over $10 ea. If only they'd use fiberglass-topped wicks like kerosene heaters it would be a vast improvement. The mantles you need to remove and replace often are fragile and expensive (formerly $6.50/ea. and now in early 2010 unavailable-(ebay $20/ea.)-due to more production problems) and the thin chimney glass is fragile. Also the rolled seam near the top of the fuel tank leaked until I sealed it with leftover 'redkote' tank coating so I couldn't fill it the whole way at first. A second lamp I bought didn't have that problem.
You need to be very careful during startup, removing and replacing that fragile mantle/chimney assembly and raising the wick gradually to keep from sooting up the chimney. It is very bright though, about like a 60 watt incandescent bulb, and throws off a lot of heat with absolutely no odor (I've used it to heat my 8'x8' dome tent when winter camping 16F to 55F).
I started using old 1.75 liter plastic liquor bottles with a plug-in pour spout for refilling the lamp while it's still burning(ingenious;"pat-pat"). When the tank's full the spout's vent hole plugs and kero stops flowing so it's even better than a funnel, no chance of overfilling, but I have to shield it from the lantern's heat or the plastic melts.
Compared to kerosene pressure lanterns the aladdin is turning out to be preferable due to it's silent operation, no pumping, and in-use 'refillability'; but looses points for its expensive wicks and mantles.
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Aladdin Kerosene Mantle Lamp Aluminum Shelf Lamp
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