History

The History of the Brass Blowlamp

The early blowlamps The first known blowlamp patent is from France, dated January 7, 1791. Another early blowlamp patent comes from USA and is dated May 13, 1856. In 1882, a new vaporising technique was developed by C. R. Nyberg in Sweden and the year after, the production of the Nyberg blowlamp started. The new blowlamp technique and design developed by Nyberg was quickly adopted by a lot of other manufacturers both in Sweden and rest of Europe and later on also in other parts of the world. At the turn of the century, a number of new blowlamp manufacturers emerged and new designs and developments were quickly copied by other manufacturers.
	Use It is a simple heating torch, which burns liquid fuel. They take time to start, needing pre-heating with burning methylated spirit. Basically you pump the plunger up and down; this produces a very high-pressured jet of paraffin, which due to the pressure is vaporized. You then light this jet and hey presto you have a blowtorch, or if the nozzle is not cleaned a small flamethrower. The blowlamp was basically designed to produce a concentrated flame of heat to be used for soldering and brazing. However, people soon found this tool also suitable for a lot of different applications. This also led to the development of different designs of blowlamps of which some are specially designed for a specific application such as burning off old paint from window frames or pre-heating engine cylinders.
Dating To determine the exact year of manufacture of a blowlamp is nearly impossible without studying the catalogues of that particular make. The exception is the Swedish manufacturer, Primus which started in 1911 to use a date code (normally stamped at the bottom of the tank but sometimes on the side) which makes dating very simple. Patent dates can also give you an idea of the age, but many manufacturers continued to stamp the original patent date long after the patent expired.
1890 – 1920 Adjusting knobs and pump knobs made of wood. Steel handles with cane insulation. Pump handles with string insulation. 1920 – 1940 Adjusting knobs and pump knobs made of Bakelite. Wooden handles or steel handles with perforation. Pump handles with corrugated brass insulation. 1940 – 1960 Adjusting knobs of steel and pump knobs made of brass. Steel handles with perforation. Pump handles with corrugated brass insulation. 1960 – 1980 Adjusting knobs and pump knobs made of plastic. Stickers and decals. No engravings on the Brass parts Pump handles with plastic insulation.

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