PETROMAX or BUTTERFLY PRESSURE LANTERNS

The photo above shows a Butterfly 828R hanging from a swag hook in the ceiling of our front room, just behind our recliners, for easy reading at night.  Another swag hook is in the center of the kitchen ceiling, and a hook is in the center of the covered patio for outside use.

 

I've been playing with the Butterfly Petromax clone for some time, and also searched the web for more instructions on the Petromax...ALL of the instructions and manuals for the Petromax lantern are available on the web! And they are far more complete than the instructions that came with the Butterfly lantern - yet they are the same thing.

 

I switched back to the Butterfly mantle, and it works better than the Coleman mantle. And you CAN regulate the light output of the Butterfly by simply raising or lowering the pressure in the tank! There is a bleed valve to drop the pressure. Set to a low pressure, the Butterfly is almost silent and will put out enough light on the dining room table to easily read with - no problem at all. And it will maintain that pressure by itself for hours, and the burn time should be well over 18 hours.

Pumped up enough to reach the red line on the pressure gauge, the lantern is about as noisy as a Coleman, BUT it puts out an extremely bright light that lights up the entire patio very easily. As the lamp is hanging high, with the reflector in place, the light is radiated down over the entire area, and one could cook or work with that light easily. Fuel consumption at this rate is about 8 to 12 hours.

Pumped up only 2 marks, or halfway to the red line on the gauge, the light is still very bright, easily enough to work in, read over a wide area, yet the noise level is about half that of a Coleman. That is where it is set right now, burning out on the patio, suspended by a 14 inch wire from a rafter, and it's own foot long handle. It has maintained that intensity for hours, and the pressure gauge has not moved, so what you set it to in the first place is maintained. I have bled it down to a lower light output, and it stayed there, and pumped it back up and it stayed there too.

 

These are fantastic lanterns!!! They are built like a tank and make a Coleman lantern look like a mere toy by comparison -- and I have had both single mantle and double mantle Coleman lanterns for years. These almost bullet proof lanterns are the ultimate. They will even burn diesel! I would recommend you get one, as the versatility of fuel and extremely strong design means they will work for years even with old fuel.

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