calcium carbide headlamps

does anyone still make the old-style brass carbide miners headlamps? looking around for one, but all i can find in current production models is the new fangled petzls and other that costs close to $100.

most of the ones on ebay are old rusted junkers, made to put on a shelf in the smithsonian, not fit for use caving or as an emergancy lamp.

how much light and for how long should i expect to get from one of te small headlamp units? am i wasting my time/money? should i just stick with electric?

Nobody makes the small cap lamps any more, and any that show up on e-bay, etc are instantly snatched by collectors for way too much money (or they don't work)

There are also good brands and bad brands and I don't know which is which. I've bought two on ebay and neither worked. (they had small cracks which leaked the flamable gas ) It's also hard to get ahold of calcium carbide (it can't be shipped)

Still, there are cavers who swear by them. They produce a wide soft yellow beam which is easy on the eyes. They also produce heat which can be valuble in emergancy situations.

But they smell bad, and you have to change carbide every 2-3 hrs, and then you have to carry spare carbide (which can be explosive)
and you have to pack out the spent carbide which is poisonous (and still flamable). And they are heavy on the helmet.

You decide!

i didn't know that they smell bad or that the waste was still combustable. and i thought they lasted more than 2-3 hours. perhaps i'll just stick with electric.

do the lamps or reflectors get hot to the touch? does the flame go out easily?

Carbide lanterns satisfied a need when batteries were less dependable and didn't pack enough amps to last. While neat, they just aren't very practical for most cavers anymore.

The lamps drip water from the top section onto carbide in the lower section and the carbide releases acetylene. Yes, those lanterns stink when you're adding the carbide and cleaning out the residue, but there's no smell when the lantern is sealed and burning.

Not to dispute cave dave's comments ... that's some great information! Perhaps my experiences with carbide lamps are just a little different?

Back in the dark ages when I used my lantern in caves, I remember the light being significantly whiter than incandescent bulbs. Doesn't acetylene burn a blueish-white when compared to, say, propane? Anyway, the light is surely less white than LEDs.

My reflector got fairly warm, but could still be handled, and the lantern body stays near ambient temp. The flame isn't in contact with the jet or reflector.

I never had a problem keeping it lit, but then I never used it in a windy place.

cave dave's absolutely right about how hard it is to get carbide! Something I learned a couple months ago when I was thinking about getting some for my lantern just for fun was that just recently one supplier has started shipping carbide direct. Carbide isn't cheap to begin with ... and to get delivery you have to order a large amount ... and then, the shipping costs are horrendous! It's a very hazardous substance and you pay dearly for transportation. I don't remember the supplier, but found it with a Google search.

No one I know uses carbide anymore. A couple places I talked to suggested I check with local caving groups as they sometimes do a group buy or have another local source. Getting carbide became more work than it was worth.

For me, batteries are easier to get, cost less and are easier/safer to carry, so my carbide lamp sits idle in a display case.

lots of carbide headlamps, one discontinued model for $85..
and other latest high tech designs: http://www.caves.org/imo/frames1.htm
(if this doesn't go to the exact page, go to 'headlamps', and scroll down..)

That's interesting about the carbide waste product. I didn't know it was still flammable.

Calcium carbide is also the powder used for those small flash cannons which have a small dispenser which drops the powder into water. Then it makes acetylene. Then there's a spark plug that ignites it and causes a pretty solid boom.

You might be able to get a few tubes of that powder instead of cans of Calcium Carbide.
The acetylene it releases is pretty interesting. Acetylene torches burn white hot compred to most other torches which are blue. Anyway I'm just rambling...

In my admittedly limited experience with acetylene, the gas burns with a yellow, sooty flame unless at least some pure oxygen (such as from a balloon or a tank) is mixed with it before it reaches the burner. Never tried a carbide lantern before, so I can't tell you how their light looks.

$85 is still pretty steep imho for a piece of turn of the century hardware. i was thinking more like $20.

anyhow, with all the minuses of carbide i think i'll stick with electric for now. it does have some interesting benefits, especially for caving where hypothermia is your main concern, but it's got too much of the pain-in-the-a$$ factor.

btw, i have seen 2 different places to get calcium carbide through the mail, one is that IMO place wich does 2 pounds for $60 and one will ship 4oz. baggies for about $10. there are a couple places fairly local to me (IMO is about 1.5 hours away) that sell it also. and i haven't been looking very much =).

wonder why the 'old-school' cavers still do carbide?

I used one once in summer camp...iirc it didn't stink or get sooty -- it's this inch and a half unprotected flame shooting out of your fore head..advantages? well, indefinate shelf life of the dry carbide, and full brightness for the duration, which is all day at least, I think,obviously depends on how much carbide you dump into it..'course there's always the possibility of igniting a pocket of gas while underground -- that's why miners carried canaries into the mines; hopefully the bird would die and thereby alert the miners before any humans got asphyxiated..
maybe IMO should sell canaries with those lamps? ..I kid..

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by The LED Museum:
In my admittedly limited experience with acetylene, the gas burns with a yellow, sooty flame unless at least some pure oxygen (such as from a balloon or a tank) is mixed with it before it reaches the burner. Never tried a carbide lantern before, so I can't tell you how their light looks.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

acetylene is used in industrial torches (cutting torches, not english flashlights), in my experience with this is burns very hot and not at all sooty. if memory serves it's also used as a flux for mig welding, and as such must be clean burning to function.

Gas pockets really only exist in coal mines, limestone caves don't have gas pockets( though there can be bad air, not enough O2).

Papasan, I sent you PM!

Used carbide shouldn't be flamable, but if it isn't completed used up it usually is still releasing a small amount of gas.

BTW the Petzl carbide lamp is simply amazing it produces 3-4 times as much light as a typical cap lamp. It like sombody turned on a 100 w bulb or something.

Back in the old days cavers would mark their initials etc on the walls with the soot from their lamps, you can still see them in almost every cave.

PS There are all sorts of funny stories about people burning themselves or their buddies with their lamps. There are also some not funny stories about burning through the ropes they are rappelling on.

I have fond memories of lots of playing with a carbide coon hunter's lamp for HOURS as a boy. They make a yellow-white flame.

If you misadjust them they can put a LOT of soot into the air. I got burned surprisingly infrequently for a dumb kid with a flame (I did not know I had a "torch"!! ha ha). You could get LOTS of minutes of cheap light our of a can of carbide. The big, belt-mounted tanks could hold around a half-cup of carbide, while the little hat/helmet-mounted tank/light jobs could hold much less.

The calcium carbide came in a can as little pea-size chunks. Had a peculiar smell, fizzes a bit with water drops, makes a messy paste in the bottom of the tank.

The 'paste' is probably quite harmless after it is spent.

Quaint lights. Electrics lamps easily killed and buried them, though.


Pat

The light from a carbide lamp is a pale yellow, very "luminous" glow that I find very pleasant. It creates less glare in humid, misty, or dusty air than electric headlamps. You can also heat food with it or use it to warm yourself near(VERY carefully). I still use one for caving about 50% of the time.
The expended carbide is calcium hydroxide, which is alkaline and somewhat caustic (it's an ingredient in drain cleaner), so it must be disposed of properly. It's only flammable if it's not completely "used".
Most of the old ones can be fixed, if you're handy with soldering and fabricating or scrounging small metal parts.
The ones with belt-mounted canisters (like the Petzl) are called "generator" lamps - cavers call them "ceiling burners" because of their vertical flame. The self-contained ones are "caplamps". New caplamps are still being made by Minex in India, but I have never actually seen one of them.

I searched Google today and found my favorite cave supplier (Inner Mountain) in southwest Virginia has found a supplier in India for a brass carbide lamp they like. I trust their judgment.

http://www.caves.org/imo/

there are a couple reviews of this lamp on alt.caving. while not glowing reviews, it sounds like a usable lamp.

Glowing in review content, or in favour of the light?

I think carbide lamps were around before batteries existed. Miners required both hands to be free for work, so the carbide headlamp was invented. It filled a need rather superbly for a long time. Now, miners use heavy duty rechargable headlamps (at least in more tech oriented countries). With the advances in LED technology, I would expect miners to move in this direction by replacing the incandescant lamp heads with LED based heads, likely Luxeon based.

Amazing that carbide is still used. Well, even your old fashioned lamp oil/kerosene lantern w/wick is a good old standby.

My dad told me stories of how he and his grandfather used to go coon hunting, using carbide headlamps. I would venture to say that modern engineering has improved the carbide lamp in reliability.

Originally posted by Charles Bradshaw:
I think carbide lamps were around before batteries existed.

Click to expand...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Not true. The carbide lamp is a more modern invention than the incandescent lamp and batteries long predated the incandescent lamp. The very first calcium carbide produced was made with an electric furnace.

The LED light is finally beginning to catch up to the benefits of the carbide lamp -- long lasting light, long term storage, works after being submerged, keeps your hands or head warm when working, and when cranked up serves as a flamethrower.

Come to think of it, I hear it's even possible to crank some LED lights up, like the carbide lamp, to where they get incredibly bright, make a whistling noise, and blow the light-emitting bits out the front with a popping noise and small fireball.

But when you do that with a carbide lamp, it keeps working, emitting a sooty big orange flame out from where the pinhole tip used to be seated --- but the LED light just dies at that point and it's a lot harder to stuff the ejected pieces back in and relight it.

Well, the LED light is _almost_ caught up (grin).

The reactant is not poisonous at all.
The result is called slaked lime. Its a close cousin to limestone if I am correct. The reaction is as follows.
Calcium Carbide + Water --> Acetylene + Calcium Hydroxide
CaC2 + 2H20 --> C2H2 + Ca(OH)2
Info on scaled lime can be found at http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/sci/A0809855.html

I was told the following. Believe it or not, calcium carbide is still the way that acetylene is manufactured for welding supply. The companies do not want to distribute acetylene in bulk because of the handling problems (must be dissolved in clay or at certain pressures its self explosive). So calcium carbide is shipped to much more local houses that react it and bottle it.

This brings us to how you can get calcium carbide cheap. I ordered some from my local welding supply store (where the above info came from). I had to buy quite a bit (~15 lbs), but it wasn't very expensive. This also cuts out any shipping cost. I was also required to give the size that I wanted, since it comes from pebbles down to powder. I packaged it in quart paint cans and I work from one can at a time.

I loved the light that came from my rig when I would go caving. Its so much of a flood light. You can see anywhere!

Edit: Formula fixed. Never was any good at chemistry. The big point was that its not poisonous.