On Sunday, December 30, 2012 3:45:36 PM UTC, Jo Stein wrote:
On 25.12.2012 02:36, John Rumm wrote:

So go on then, ignore the reality, if you were choosing what DIY
related pressies were dropped down the chimney, and someone else was
picking up the bill, what would they be?

I will start us off, a nice double garage sized building stuffed
with timber, decent hard woods, and other materials to make any
project just a matter of nailing it together! ;-)

I would like to have my own Petromax lamp:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petromax
In my childhood around 1950, my community had no electricity.
We had paraffin lamps, but in order to save money we often sat in the
dark around the kitchen stove. A stream of light came from its door.
If I placed my books in that stream, I could lay on the floor reading.
An evening after Xmas we all gathered in the school to celebrate the big
Xmas feast. There was a lot of good food, walking and singing around the
Xmas three and some silly talk about Jesus.
Someone with a job and an income brought a Petromax lamp; an amazing
tool! I will never forget its massive flood of white light.
Today I can buy a new Petromax lamp from China, but I would prefer to
get a used one for free. When I tell that it is possible that its mantle
is made from thorium, someone with very strong radio phobia may be
willing to give it away for free:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_mantle
The modern gas mantle was one of the many inventions of Carl Auer von
Welsbach, a chemist who studied rare earth elements in the 1880s and
who had been Robert Bunsen's student. Ignaz Kreidl worked with him on
his early experiments to create the Welsbach mantle. His first
process used a mixture of 60% magnesium oxide, 20% lanthanum oxide
and 20% yttrium oxide, which he called Actinophor, and patented in
1885.

These original mantles gave off a green-tinted light and were not
very successful. Carl Auer von Welsbach's first company established a
factory in Atzgersdorf in 1887 but it failed in 1889. In 1890 he
discovered that thorium was superior to magnesium and in 1891 he
perfected a new mixture of 99% thorium dioxide and 1% cerium dioxide
that gave off a much whiter light and produced a stronger mantle.

Onions work pretty well too.


NT

On Sun, 30 Dec 2012 15:43:42 -0800 (PST), wrote:

that gave off a much whiter light and produced a stronger mantle.

Onions work pretty well too.

Do they get Steins out?