Powering up an OLD lantern

Hello all,
Its been awhile since Ive been on! I just got a Christmas gift! A vintage American LaFrance Electric Lantern. I am putting it back together. Looks as if it was powered by telephone batteries? The bulb I found to fit the odd socket is a 6v or 12v tail light bulb. The pins on the side don't match, the socket is for equal spaced pins, the bulbs have staggered pins. I filed a pin off, and she plugs right in. The light I am guessing is designed for a dual filiment bulb ( Us firefighters must have redundent stuff as we break it often) it has two contacts at the bottom of the socket. my question is,

How to power it? I m using 6v tail light bulbs at the moment. I need 6v.

Where can I find a dual filiment bulb with equally spaced pins on the side?

The 6v taillight bulbs seem to fit the bill, after I file a pin off,

Unfortunatly 6v lantern batteries are too big (thick)

ANy help would be appreciated!!

Thanks,
Andrew

Try HERE to get an idea of what bulb suits you by entering the following:
BA15D DOUBLE CONTACT BAYONET 15MM DIAMETER
6v

there are many bulb sizes/types and current/watts in this range and I don't know which one is right.
you could also consider if 8C cells would fit then you could use 12v bulbs.

Thanks for the link! That is what I am looking for! Now I just have to figure a battery set up!

That dual contact bulb makes more sense now, as the socket isn't grounded!

Thanks again!

Andrew

Hotroddn19 said:

Thanks for the link! That is what I am looking for! Now I just have to figure a battery set up!

That dual contact bulb makes more sense now, as the socket isn't grounded!

Thanks again!

Andrew

Click to expand...

I would say I don't put a recommendation on that site as a supplier it was just one I found that had a search function that helped find bulbs close to what you want. The sockets on dual filament bulbs can be grounded or not as the ground usually is used for an electrical path. I would probably recommend you pay attention to the amperage of the filaments as too high an amperage would mean perhaps less desirable light color/output. If you are running it off of C/D cells it is possible it won't be a bright white you would expcet as many of those bulbs were designed for a 6v auto and they were to take the charging voltage of the system which is higher than the battery voltage.