Blowlamp

An old-fashioned kerosene blowlamp

A blowlamp is a simple heating torch, which burns fuel with ambient atmospheric air. It will typically run on propane or butane cartridges, or be fed from a liquid petroleum gas cylinder via a hose. They produce a much larger, softer flame than an oxyacetylene torch and are used for low temperature applications - soldering, brazing, melting roof tar, or pre-heating large castings before welding, such as for repairing cast-iron cylinder heads. They cannot be used for welding, but find many other uses, not least because in their simplest form of a disposable canister feeding a hand-held torch they are very cheap and highly portable, and because the LPG fuel is very cheap in comparison to acetylene and oxygen.

Older blowlamps used liquid fuel such as kerosene in the form of paraffin oil, or gasoline. These are largely redundant, and may be difficult to start, requiring pre-heating with methylated spirit. If any doubts exist as to the integrity of the pressurized fuel tank or any of the seals in the torch, it should be treated strictly as an antique - if the tank bursts there is a very real risk of explosion or fire.

I never heard of this being called a "blow lamp" my father had what he referred to as a 'blow torch", this was similar to the one shown in the photo. I would like to describe how this thing worked; the tank was brass and was filled with gasoline, once pressurized gasoline was forced out into a small reservoir under a tube like affair which had holes in the sides, this was accomplished by opening a valve. Once the reservoir was full of gasoline the valve was closed and the gasoline in the reservoir was lit, this heated the tube. Once the tube was hot the valve was reopened and gasoline then sprayed into the tube creating a very hot flame, as oxygen was drawn through the holes in the tube. This was used to heat items like soldering irons and to melt lead for fishing sinkers and it was considered a very damgerous tool.

Blowlamp

See also