The day after I returned from SteamCon in Seattle I got into the car to go to the day job and discovered that my battery light was on in my 2007 Toyota Yaris.  Being an old Volkswagen man I resisted the urge to get out and hammer on the the alternator with a monkey wrench.  Instead I turned everything off and then listened carefully to the engine RPM as I turned on the rear window defroster.  When I pressed the defrost button the engines revs did indeed drop about 100 and the engine lugged for a moment until the ECU gave it a bit more gas to smooth out the idle.  Good. This exercise told me that the alternator was charging the battery and that the problem was with the warning light itself. I could safely drive the car for the rest of the week and figure things out at my leisure.

This morning I started working the problem . . .

If you follow me on Twitter you know that I had a near death encounter with a flying chunk of steel last week .

This is how I spent my Saturday.

. . .

The ink cartridge retaining clip on my Epson Stylus Photo 820 broke when I went to change the ink cartridge.  I repaired it with a bit of copper wire and a brass wood screw with the head cut off.

One of the tragic realities of Angle Lamps is that many have been electrified in a crude and destructive manner. Below is such a lamp. I bought this lamp on eBay thinking that it was solid brass. I intended to move the burners from a tin plate Angle Lamp over to this body. However, when it arrived I discovered that it was tin plate also and, in fact, had only a brass wash that had been destroyed inan attempt to polish the lamp. All in all a pretty sad case.

The Angle Company of New York manufactured these unique lamps from the early 1890's until 1929. In my opinion the Angle Lamp is the pinnacle of kerosene wick lamp design. This is a two burner version. They also commonly came in 3, 4 and (much rarer) 6 and 8 burner versions as well. Single and two burner wall mount lamps and a single burner student lamp were also made. They came in a variety of paterns and materials. This is the simplest, a tin plated steel can with nickle plated burners.

This kerosene lamp will hang over the dinette in my school bus camper conversion project and as such will need to be a functional decor piece so this is more of a repair then a restoration or conservation project.