My Great-Grandfather's Lighter

prplhz

Denmark8045 Posts

August 30 2012 15:19 GMT

I just bought a Zippo lighter because I always feel like a need a light and those single-use plastic lighters are dumb. When I got it I remembered that when my grandparents died my mother got an old lighter that used to belong her mother's father, my mother's mother's father. He had gotten it from his son Vilfred (my mother's mother's brother). They lived on a farm and they were quite poor so he must have saved for his entire life (literally) to give this lighter to his father as it is hand made and silver coated. On this farm the parents had their own room, the girls had their own room and the boys (once they were of a certain age) slept in the barn. If it was cold they got a warm stone but other than that they just had hay and a blanket. One cold morning they found Vilfred dead in the barn. He was 19 years old. He must have had a weak heart or something. I imagine that every time my great-grandfather used the lighter to light the stove or the fireplace or just his pipe for a smoke, he must have thought about his son.

Anyway, now I feel like a moron for buying a Zippo lighter. Screw that. This hand made family heirloom is infinitely cooler. Here are some pictures:

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The inscription on the lighter on the second image says "Til Far fra Vilfred" (To Father from Vilfred).

Now I just filled some naphta on the lighter and pulled the wick a little more out because it was burnt down and this lighter can actually sustain a flame. Fantastic. It's a little dirty but that's easily remedied. More serious, it's quite dented, the inscription had faded a lot and the silver coating is pretty much gone. I don't know if I should even fix this. Last but not least is that the flint is missing (though I can easily buy new flint, I temporarily used my Zippo flint to test the steel and it worked alright), the spring that holds the flint in place is missing and the object that hold the spring in place is also missing. I also don't actually know what this object is.

For people who don't know how this works, the flint is pitched against the steel at the end of a tube, there's a spring in the tube that firmly holds the flint in place, and then there's an object at the other end of the tube that holds the spring in place so it doesn't pop out of the tube. On this lighter that object is missing and I don't even know what it is though I suspect that it's some sort of wedge. The tube is clearly visible on top of the lighter in the first picture and you can see a cut at the left end of the tube where I think that something is supposed to be wedged into to hold the spring and flint. If you look real closely you can see that this cut is actually wider at the end of the tube and narrower nearer the middle, supporting the hypothesis that something is supposed to be wedged in there (or at least indicating that something might have been wedged in there earlier). The object, spring, and flint are all supposed to be removable (to that you can replace the flint).

The 80 year old rayon swabs inside the lighter looks like they're brand new and they appear to hold the naphta just alright.

Now I don't really know what I should fix without ruining the lighter or the "spirit of the lighter". I'm probably a moron for thinking like that but this is my blog so get the fuck out. I don't know if I'd ruin this lighter if I fixed the dents and highlighted the inscription and got a new silver coating for it or if that would be a good thing. I don't know if I should try and find a metalsmith to make a new spring and object-wedge-thingy for the lighter. For now I'll just clean it with water and a cloth.

Anyway, it would be really cool if someone on teamliquid.net incidentally was a lighter-guru and could confirm that the missing object is some sort of wedge or what else it might be.

-e Just noticed on the picture (it's hard to see IRL) that there is an internal screw thread in the little tube! I guess that I need a special screw for it. Gonna be looking for that now