Phosware P109 Restoration

Restoration of the lantern began on Sunday, 11th March 2007. I started by taking the lantern to pieces, which eventually left me with this:

Yep, that's a lot of dead wasps! In fact, let's have a close-up of the base casting...

It almost looks like a bowl of Rice Krispies, doesn't it? I resisted the temptation to pour milk over the wasps though - I didn't really want to hear them going Snap, Crackle and Pop!

The copper finial was cleaned up on Monday, 19th March 2007 - interestingly, it appears to have been painted black before the gold was added. In its unpainted state, the finial looks very much like the kind of ornaments seen in many traditional pubs! A new coat of gold paint was applied a couple of days later.

Meanwhile, the base casting was then sent away to have new grub screws fitted - I had managed to get a slight turn on the existing ones but the edges were rounding as I turned the key in them so I decided to go for new ones. This work was completed on Friday, 16th March 2007 - the casting and other aluminium parts of the lantern were then all taken to be sandblasted and be (in the cases of the casting and reflector) repainted. I then picked up the freshly cleaned-up components on Monday, 26th March 2007.

Later the same day, I set to work putting the lantern back together - without a 'Rice Krispie' in sight! I had already wired up the time switch and gear to speed up proceedings. The Abacus AM301 can be seen behind - I doubt that it would have lasted even half as long as the P109 if it still remained in-situ!

The insides of the lantern are a little cleaner now! It can just be seen that the lampholder has been rewired - the insulation on the original wires was starting to 'green' - this is where a green substance is emitted from the old PVC and can lead to low insulation resistance readings.

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