Featured Old School Lift-Arm Lighter!

What we have here is an old school lift-arm lighter.

Not an oldschool lift-arm lighter.

An old school lift-arm lighter.

Literally!

It was pissing with rain today so instead of going to the flea-market, I went to what was advertised at a local town hall as a 'retro and collectibles fair'.

It turned out to be nothing more than a bunch of middle-aged fogeys flogging Matchbox toy cars and countless folders packed full of old-fashioned football trading cards, boxes of costume jewelry and cheap bric-a-brac junk.

I began to seriously think that I'd done nothing but waste the $5 admission fee, and was heading out, when I found this:



For those who don't recognise the shape, it's an old-fashioned lift-arm cigarette lighter, of the kind used around 1890-1920. It's nickel-plated brass and it was pretty grubby when I got it.

Admittedly, it's nothing fancy. It's an antique cigarette lighter. There's billions of them in the world.

What made me buy it was the crest on the front, which is the coat of arms of my old highschool: Scotch College, in Melbourne.

Not to blow my own horn, but I went to Scotch for over ten years, and when I graduated (again, over ten years ago!), I remember there being all kinds of school-emblazoned memorabilia to buy. T-shirts, caps, cufflinks, mugs, glasses, books, ties, pens, ash-trays and God knows what else!

But I've NEVER seen a cigarette lighter, especially one this old, with my school crest on it! I was dumbfounded, and I absolutely had to have it!

The base is marked with the name of tobacconist's shop, which traded in Melbourne from 1854 until probably 1960 or 1965. So the lighter has got to be pretty bloody old!



When I got it home, I pulled the lighter apart, gave it a bath in the ultrasonic cleaner, reassembled it, rubbed off the grime, and then I put in a new flint, juiced it up and after waiting for the fuel to soak through, two or three flicks of the flint-wheel got it sparking and lighting! I'm so excited!

I removed the old cotton wadding inside the lighter and replaced it with fresh wadding, and I also used a pair of pliers to straighten out the extinguisher-arm (it was bent slightly and kept catching on the flint-wheel). It now opens and snaps shut cleanly.

I have no clear idea of how old this lighter is, apart from the fact that lift-arm lighters are pretty damn old. I have sent an email and photographs of the lighter to the school archivist, and await his reply.

Here it is, all juiced up and blazing away:

 

The lighter is somewhat reluctant to operate. The flint-wheel sparks, there's a fresh flint inside it, and there's juice in the tank. That said and done, it doesn't light on the first strike. It usually takes 2-4 flicks to get it going. I suspect that it's the (rather short) wick that is the problem. It is the original wick, and it either has a lot of trouble soaking up the fuel, or it's too short to work properly. I'm contemplating replacing it.

 

I suspect the lighter is 1930s. I found the link before I read enough of the post to see you knew already.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch_College,_Melbourne

I have no idea if this works in Australia, but the easy way not to pay any admission fees at antiques fairs, etc, is to have a few business cards printed as Shangas Antiques or whatever.
Show the card and say "Trade" to doorkeeper. Trade buyers are usually admitted free, they may or may not keep the card, if they do, expect notifications of other fairs, but it is cheaper than paying AU$5 a time to admire middle aged fogeys in their natural habitat.

Do remember that people who choose flea markets on a sunny day day are well on the way to fogeydom themselves and may in time become an old fogey like me, and also require more than one flick to get started.

 

Hahahaha!!

But yes, AF. That's the school I was talking about.

The lighter is an oddity, to be sure. Up top, it's got the usual lift-arm mechanism. Then downstairs, it's got a removable 'fuel-tank' with a threaded cap. You pull it out (it takes up about half the space of the lighter) and then there's a small cotton ball and a wick. You soak the wick and ball with fluid, then you fill the tank with fluid, screw the lid on, and then shove the whole thing back inside.

I have to admit that this is probably the most ineffective lighter I've ever seen. The 'fuel-tank' serves no real purpose except to keep a tank of fuel around, and that's really about it. The actual amount of fuel you can stuff into the cotton ball is bloody nothing at all.

I mean the lighter DOES work. If you lift the arm and flick it a few times it lights up, but I can't imagine this being a very effective lighter.

 

Is the fuel tank supposed to bleed slowly into the cotton? From your description it is not clear if the tank is totally sealed or part of a fuel supply. It may have been made thus to avoid
infringing some other lighter's patent.

 

The tank has a threaded screw-cap (which you can tighten up with a small coin). It's a conundrum. I suspect it's to jump over a patent or skirt around one, like you suggested.

 

Done some poking around, and I've found out more information about the lighter.

Manufactured in Germany by Karl Wieden. Model 620. Ca. 1932.

Still have no idea why it's got the school crest on it.

 

I suspect if you ordered a large enough number they'd put any design you supplied on it. Nowadays it is called 'personalised giftware'

 

Yes I suspect that's what's happened here, AF. I'm just wondering WHY and WHEN this happened. What event or reason would've caused the school to do this? That is what intrigues me.

 

Just a thought but . . . I wonder if the lighter(s) were given by the school to alumni who entered the armed forces during WWII or shortly before. Perhaps there was neither time nor resources to engrave the name of the recipient(s) on the lighters.

 

A lot of Scotch Collegians went to war (both WWI & WWII). But I've never heard of the school doling out parting-gifts like this.

My gut-feeling is that lighters like these were probably gifted to schoolmasters upon their retirement or resignation. Or possibly upon arrival.

This is a larger image of the school CoA:



Deo. Patriae. Litteris.

For the Glory of God.
For the Love of one's Country.
For the Advancement of Learning.

Quartered by St. Andrew's Cross. At the top is the Burning Bush. Below that is the Crown symbolising links with the British Empire. To the left is the Southern Cross, representing Australia, to the right is the torch of learning, at the bottom is the galley with furled sails, indicating persistence and hard work.

It was made the official school coat of arms in the 1920s, when the school made its move to its current site (in 1924). The 'Patriae' was added in 1914, at the outbreak of WWI.

 

After a lot of cleaning, I finally got the lighter working. I was able to completely disassemble the lighter (including taking out the flint-wheel) and going over it with cotton-buds and lighter-fluid to clean everything out.

Previously the lighter wasn't sparking at all. I originally thought this was because the flint was dead, or because the wheel had worn down, but closer examination told me that it was probably because the wheel was clogged with gunk. Removing it from the lighter proved this to be the case!

Picking out the grit between the corrugations on the wheel is proving tricky, but the lighter is now sparking much better, and I'm getting ignition much more readily than I was previously.

Once I've successfully cleaned out all the grit, I'm pretty sure this will work like new! It's my belief, founded on my experience that most things that don't work aren't actually broken. They're just really, really dirty...