Carbide Lamps

JAA

JAA

Well-known member
Musing whilst watching one on eBay, who still uses a carbide lamp?
And if not, why not?
I haven’t had one for a while as I lost my old one, and I get that LED’s are easier to use, but I must admit to being very nostalgic for one, was a lovely lamp to use!
Not once did I have to dump any carbide etc so I don’t really buy into the conservation arguement.
Curious if they’ve now totally gone out of favour?
 
They occasionally get used during Gaping Gill winch meets; the small ones for nostalgia trips, the big hand held miner's type for wandering round the Main Chamber.

Mine gets sparked up occasionally but not for regular caving.

Carbide's a lot more hassle to get these days.

There's a very good short video which Pete Roe made, explaining how to drive a proper Premier carbide lamp. I think someone flagged it up elsewhere on this forum a while ago.
 
Yes, that was me who posted the Youtube video with Pete:


There's a Texolex helmet with stinky attached on eBay at the moment if anyone wants it for £99.95!!

www.ebay.co.uk

VintageTexolex Malcolm Campbell Caving Helmet with carbide Lamp | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for VintageTexolex Malcolm Campbell Caving Helmet with carbide Lamp at the best online prices at eBay! Free delivery for many products.
www.ebay.co.uk
 
JAA said:
Musing whilst watching one on eBay, who still uses a carbide lamp?
And if not, why not?
I haven’t had one for a while as I lost my old one, and I get that LED’s are easier to use, but I must admit to being very nostalgic for one, was a lovely lamp to use!
Not once did I have to dump any carbide etc so I don’t really buy into the conservation arguement.
Curious if they’ve now totally gone out of favour?
Click to expand...
If not, why not?
1) Because they're banned from pretty nearly everywhere worth visiting and anyone who owns one ought to ban themselves from everywhere else.
2) Because they're shit and always were.
3) Because the technology is prehistoric (flint ignition, anyone?)
4) Because carbide is bad every single way you can imagine.
5) Because this thread is anachronistic and/or trolling.
6) Am I right?
7) Yes.
8) Use LEDs/Lithium like everyone else now we're a quarter way through the C21st. Just a suggestion. Unless you use a horse and cart to travel and whittle sticks to make hot food, in which case forgive me while I step away.
 
They were a necessary evil in the deep cave explorations in the Picos and elsewhere in the 70's and 80's. Several days underground and technology as it was, there was no alternative. You could always take enough carbide in pigs (car tyre inner tubes) and you could always find water resorting to bodily fluids if need be. Lovely warm glow and great for warming your hands up (expedition steel Prisma). Terrible beam but for people like me who get vertigo very handy for the large pitches that predominate - normally rigged off hand drilled spits in dodgy rock. How we have moved on in 40 years!
 
Not a trolling attempt ;-)
I caved for years with a petzl headset and malham and then fisma generator and always found it a pleasant light to cave by! (Although the little petzl electric backup thing was rubbish) LED much more convenient I agree, but there’s something very satisfying about that “click… whoomp” noise of igniting a carbide lamp, and the warmer diffuse light is nice especially in tighter caves I think.
Good lord I’m a prehistoric dinosaur at 44.
I’ve you need me I’ll be whittling a new descender and knitting myself a harness on my steam powered loom
 
I too have great memories of caving on carbide however I lost no time in buying a Duo when they came out. Carbide was essential for expeds. All we need is an LED light that only lasts 6 hours, goes out at random, goes out when the power source knocks on the wall, requires banging on the wall before it will turn back on, stinks, requires a kilo of spare batteries for an overnight trip, fresh batteries blow up if you drop them in water.
Did the two freshers who witnessed my friends chest erupt into a ball of fire when she emerged from the Giants windpipe after submerging her carbide pig stored in her oversuit ever go caving again?!
 
Carbide Lamps, wonderful things. I own two stinkies and an Expedition steel model. Yes, these days they are stuck in the caving archive and not used, but I do have fond memories of the warm glow as you made your way along a passage and of warming your hands whilst waiting to ascend a pitch.
I also have memories of an individual who succumbed to hypothermia whilst on a trip and was kept warm with a stinkie as they huddled under a space blanket – I like to see an LED do that!
 
Ah yes add Turns off anywhere near splashing water and when the battery box goes under the water it turns the brightness up to max lumens and starts welding itself together to the new led light functions.
 
The thing about the Premier acetylene cap lamp was that there was pretty much nothing that would stop them working terminally, with a bit of skilled fettling. As long as you had a supply of carbide they could be made to work indefintitely.

Perhaps some contributors above have conveniently forgotten all the things that could go wrong with the alternative in those days; a miner's electric lamp. Anyone remember the cables that used to break where they got most abuse, just above the battery top? Or the failures when you hadn't charged it properly or forgotten to top up the electrolyte, so you ended up carrying a heavy but useless lump around for most of the trip? Or the worn out Oldham battery corners which then jettisoned their contents, reducing the light output to a dull orange glow? Or the corroded headset terminals as they tended to leak during freqent wet caving? Or the extreme berating meted out by parents when acid had leaked all over the carpet and burned holes in it. Or the painful skin lesions from alkaline burns.

Of course I'm an LED man myself these days (they're great!) - but I wouldn't have missed my long apprenticeship with the Premier carbide lamp, or the ultra long trips when they were still working perfectly when others' batteries were well flat.
 
Is it time to wheel this out again?

241228_10150266747626757_6267061_o.jpg
 
Ah.....the Oldham glow worm......happy days. Craigwen & I had a collegue who got burns on his bum from a NIFE cell (from GW George of Essex iirc). The GP summoned his teenage daughter to witness the effect of KOH burns - our mate was starkers at the time.
 
Mrs Trellis said:
It made a man of you - no need to complain.
Click to expand...
You had two great triumphs from that trip.

I have no idea why I and at least two other novices on that trip kept caving afterwards. The weight of water coming down on the ladder at the 25' was huge, and somehow the three novices and two others at the end of the party found ourselves at the bottom of the pitch without any idea how to tie ourselves onto the rope. A couple went up tied on with something like double granny knots. Dave Horseley looked at the water and said "F*** this", then free climbed to the right of the waterfall. Myself and another (probably Mick Cross) went up the ladder without a lifeline.

I don't know how you induced a lad with claustrophobia to provide the A35 van and drive us to the Peak District on the promise of a caving trip. He held everything together when underground, despite looking terrified (and having no functioning light of course). He moment we surfaced he went to pieces and began shaking uncontrollably, he actually seemed to turn a strange green colour. Needless to say he never caved again.

Other aspects of that weekend seem surreal 57 years later.
 
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