Ethyl Neon

As I mentioned in my last post, we are presently in Minnesota and our stuff (or most of it anyway) is still in Anchorage….I will be needing to make a trip to move as much of that as possible but at the bare minimum, I will be moving some items necessary for a presentation I’ve been asked to do in LA in September as part of the Neon Speaks conference. In spite of not having access to my studio or most of my electrical and mechanical tools, I have still been able to undertake a couple of projects here…one of which was a vintage burner.

This was the restoration of an old ribbon burner made by Ethyl. Ethyl was one of the smaller manufacturers and while they don’t turn up as often as some others, there are still some out there to be found, particularly in the midwest, it seems. (I recently had someone also in the region message me with some photos of their old Ethyl burners….thereby demonstrating that fire begat more fires.)

This example has the adjustment valves in the base, operated by long rods, and it has a foot lever operated economizer. When I started the project, it was pretty rusty and all of these valves were seized. A liberal use of penetrating oil and ample patience, followed by a few taps of encouragement got the parts freed up so I could begin working on them.

Upon inspection I found that this burner’s valves and economizer did not operate in the expected or conventional way. It was also evident that it would be questionable whether or not I could clean up these rusted parts enough to work properly. Nevertheless, due to the uniqueness of the arrangement and my desire to restore it as closely to proper function as possible, I opted to press forward with repairs rather than try to adapt to a more conventional form.

They are not common needle style valves and the specific operation of the valves is interesting to say the least. The air valve is rather straight forward– it is a butterfly arrangement in the air inlet fitting. The appearance is similar to what one would find as the throttle plate in the carburetor of an old car. This is operated via a long rod leading up to a knob just below the head.

The gas valve and economizer depart from common practice even further. The foot lever is held in place by a torsion spring, this causes the end of the lever to push a plunger valve inward. This plunger has a machined seat at the end which becomes held against a mating surface on the gas inlet fitting. In this position the valve is closed and no gas can flow through. To maintain a flame for ignition, a small bypass tube is connected to a tap on the fitting, just upstream of the valve. In a rather elegant looking fashion, this tube is fed up through the INSIDE of the standpipe where it then exits just before the head and leads to a pilot light jet. This pilot flame lights the burner when you nudge the lever with your foot. Moving the lever removes the spring force that holds the plunger shut, allowing a coil spring to open this port. The shape of the backside of the plunger is tapered. The gas “adjusting valve” –also driven by a long rod and knob just below the head, is actually a threaded rod with a mating taper at the end. This tapered rod feeds into the body perpendicular to the plunger and depending upon how far in or out it is screwed into the body, restricts the plunger’s travel in the open position and thereby controls how far open the plunger valve can move and this is what regulates the gas flow.

This all seems a bit cumbersome and as if it would not want to stay in proper adjustment but once I got all the parts cleaned, sealing surfaces dressed, and reassembled it I found in my initial testing that it actually held flow settings just fine.

I believe that tools should not only function well but that they should be pretty. While I tend to go for an authentic or at least sympathetic restoration, this burner was quite rusty so I felt there was no harm in refinishing it and no harm in a slight deviation from the original paint scheme. I used something very close to original for the head and base (and I left original paint on the bottom underside for the next restorer or museum tech’s reference down the road) but I did take some liberty by painting all the controls with a nice contrasting color.

This was a fun project that afforded me some needed sanity while awaiting getting my studio equipment here and also had the added benefit of finding the unexpected in terms of design features and those learning opportunities are always fun.