Make a nice swimming oil lamp out of (nearly) nothing

Hello there, I love this page and so I write my first small instructible now.

As I'm a student and planning a big winterbarbecue party with lots of candles and stormlamps and fire, I was looking for a cheap and easy way to have small lights for all the lamps without buying any tealights.

I also wanted something thet would burn all night and tealights are normally done after a few hours.

I can imagine many uses of this nice small lights - swimming in a glass bowl, as lights in a normal small windlight - painted in any colour you like...

So, I hope you will be patient with me.

I could'nt figure out how to get things marked on the pictures with those nice popping extra information. The "Adding Image Notes: Click and Drag your mouse on the image to create a note(s)." just did'nt work.

Please let me know how to do it for my next instructable.

Step 1 All you need

vegetable oil ( olive oil works great)
one alu screw cap (or more if you like) as e.g from waterbottles (no plastic! )
a sheet of kitchenroll
a glass or bowl or whatever you like to put this lamp in.
a sharp thing to prick a hole in the screw cap
a scissor

eventually a bit of water.

Thats it

Comments

[crapflinger]

great concept!...pretty well written too... i would imagine that having a base of water with a little oil floating on top...would be a very good way of making sure that all the "lamps" are extinguished after everyone passes out drunk in the yard....once the oil or the wick runs out...it puts itself out...yay! safety for the drunkards! i've found that it's easier to add the little image comments after you post the instructable...just go back to it in your control panel and edit it...then do the click and drag deal to put the comments in

[blodefood]

The water is also useful that if, for any reason, the bowl gets upset, the water will help extinguish the flame. For the size of bowl in the picture, you should not need much more than 1.5 cm of oil floating on the top for hours of light. You can add a bit of food colouring to the water or put colourful objects in the water like stones, marbles, and depending on depth, flower heads.

[Bosun Rick]

Ummmm, not so much with the idea of the water putting out the fire if it spills. As a former firefighter, one of our first lessons was that most liquid flammables (such as oil, gasoline, etc) are lighter than water (the instructable mentions this) and thus they float on top of it. Consider a spill, if the spill is catastrophic, and the oil catches fire, the water will allow the oil to spread over a wider area, increasing the damage.
The only normal means of extinguishing this kind of fire is to smother it with something that won't burn of ignite easily. A pan lid or metal cookie sheet come to mind for a flat surface, a tightly woven cloth, if proerly used, should put it out.
Just don't rely on the water as a fire fighting tool!

[shascho]

Bosun Rick
As a former firefighter OR bosun you would know that olive oil will not burn without a wick of some sort. Won't burn on water, won't burn on the concrete, just won't burn at all without either a hot fire combusting it (like a blow torch or red-hot stove top) or being wicked up in someone's DRY cutoffs.

Safety is a good thing, but like anything else it needs to be based on accurate information.

The water ALSO helps to prevent secondary fires and burns by ensuring that the container never exceeds 212 Fahrenheit/100 Celcius.

[aphilo]

The water wouldn't really be necessary for putting out the lamp if it got nocked over. Vegetable oil won't burn without a wick, so if you nock over the lamp the vegetable oil will put out the wick. I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. Regular candles work the same way. The heat from the flame as you light the candle/ oil lamp melts the wax or heats the oil that's on the wick, which vaporizes it, and then the vapor is burned. Without the wick the oil or wax doesn't have enough exposed surface area to vaporize. You can even test this. Put a flame to a pool of vegetable oil (never ever ever try this with lamp oil or kerosine, it doesn't function on the same principle and will very defiantly go up in flames). Nothing really happens. Similarly, if you try and light a block of beeswax on fire without a wick, it just melts.

[dannydraait]

Works perfect!
I even had the exact same brand of olive oil in the kitchen, haha!
I was looking at the countertop just now and I was looking at your photo 'step 1'... hahahaha!
Thanks for the tip though, just can't wait for those loooong summer nights!

[Freke81]

cool idea! I'm going to give it a try at the weekend... what would adding some essential oils to the main reservoir do, do you think?! act like a giant oil burner?!?!

[RaNDoMLeiGH]

Back in the 60's and 70's hostesses used to have floating candles at their cocktail parties. I remember my mom fooling around with something like this but it was made from a thin, thin glass plate about 2" across with a teeny hole for the wick. The oil made a right mess but it was very pretty.

[asianwizard]

i like this i would have never thought of this

[zachninme]

I love this idea :-) Cool idea- if you saw that thing on make where they made the tea-candle spinning thing. Well, set up something like that with your bottlecap, and place it in a bowl that is mostly filled with water, but has a layer of oil. This way, the water will be used to drive the engine, while the oil is burned. I would like to see that in motion!

[blodefood]

We used to have one of those spinning things. It had four candle holders (small candles so they didn't burn very long) and a turbine-like merry-go-round with angel ornaments that struck a small bell as they spun around.

[RaNDoMLeiGH]

it's called a chime candle, or angel chimes... The little candles they use for them are made by Eye of the Day and make great spell candles, ha ha. I had one when I was a little girl back in the '70s. one of those things you just don't really see any more.

[Kostas K]

You can also use thin rolls of cork (from wine bottles) wrapped in tinfoil, with a hole in the middle. The cork part helps with the floating and the tinfoil prevents the cork from burning. I do it all the time. But be careful! If the tinfoil doesn't cover the cork properly, the cork may catch fire and imagine a burning piece of cork in a glass full of oil. A really big cork/wick.

[harman0]

Hehe, floating by burning. What a strange concept

[Ko-nee-chee-wah]

Hello everybody, thanks for the nice comments. I'm glad you like it. I saw the tealight instructible before and was surprised bevcause I had nearly identical tryout first- only that i just used a tealight where the wick was'nt burned off totally and stuck in a little rest of wax. I just filled it with oil and tryed it- it worked well. I think the screw cap version has the advantage that you don't need an extra wick or rhe copper wire for the wickholder. And of course it can swim and I likethe Idea from the RIAA with the slim vase.

[verity33]

That is a GREAT idea, putting oil in a tealight when there's still some wick! I'll try that with my next one :o)

[Marble of Doom]

really clever

[theosullis]

oh my gosh that is so smart i would never have thougt of floating the candle in a bowl of oil!

[egreen767]

pretty kool

[Drackar]

How hot does that glass bowl get after a few hours of burning?

[northernmenace]

I like it, Ive seen something similar to this before, a small flat circle of cork with a wick pushed up through it, the wick then soaks up the oil and burns like a candle and the cork floats it on top. This was in a glass bowl on a kitchen window sill, looked really nice.

[theRIAA]

this would be awesome in a really skinny vase!

[Project_Nightmare]

It's a spin off http://www.instructables.com/id/E0XRQQMUNCEV2Z71FK/ but I still like it;)