Homemade Lamps from Everyday Objects
Having the ability to create light without needing electricity should be part of everyone’s emergency essentials. While flashlights are certainly helpful, batteries quickly die out so having a store of candles on hand can provide the light and morale boost that one needs to make it through a dark night or two. But what if you didn’t have any candles available?
Fortunately there are very simple ways to make homemade lamps from everyday objects found around the house. In this article I’ll be teaching you the principles of how a simple lamp works and showing you a few examples so that if needed you can make your own.
How a Lamp Works
Both oil lamps and candles are able to continually burn their fuel (wax or oil) through a process called capillary action. You can easily see this process by dipping the corner of a paper towel in liquid. The liquid gets drawn up into the paper towel which is called capillary action.
Understanding this is the key to creating many different types of wicks for your homemade lamps. As long as the material is absorbent, it will be able to draw the fuel up into itself to be burned by the flame.
Making a Tuna Fish Can Oil Lamp
Here’s a simple example of how to make your own oil lamp using a tuna fish can. What you’ll need is the following:
- Tuna Can
- Vegetable Oil, Olive Oil or any other cooking oil
- Old Cotton T-Shirt, Rag, or Sock
- Nail (or something sharp to poke a hole through the top of the tuna can)
What you’ll need to do is:
- Poke a nail-sized hole through the center of the can with a nail or other sharp object.
- Using a can opener, partially open the tuna can so that you can empty the ingredients.
Cut a 2 inch by 8 inch strip of material from an old cotton t-shirt, rag, or sock.
Roll the cotton strip into a long wick (you can optionally twist it as well).- Feed a half-inch length of the wick through the poked hole in the top of the tuna can with the remainder of the wick coiled in the bottom of the can.
- Fill the can up 3/4 of the way with oil and let the wick soak up the oil. You can also pre-soak the top of the wick.
Light the wick.
As the oil soaked up in the wick burns off, it will continually draw up new oil from the bottom of the can and provide hours of light.
The great benefit of using cooking oil is that similar to a candle if the lit lamp were to fall it will not ignite (kerosine lamps are dangerous in this way). It’s a very safe form of light.
Also if you’re worried about the smell, it’s actually quite minimal (with Olive Oil being practically scentless).
Making a Bacon Grease Candle
Here’s another example of a homemade lamp/candle. In this example I’ll be demonstrating how to make a homemade candle using saved bacon grease.
Bacon grease when solidified is nothing other than rendered tallow (lard). When fat from an animal is heated it melts into a liquid and when filtered through a mesh and cooled until it solidifies you get tallow.
Tallow, similar to wax, provides a great source of fuel for a homemade candle. Again, any type of cooking grease (such as Crisco) can be used.
To make one, what you’ll need is the following:
- A glass container containing tallow (in this case bacon lard)
- A cotton swab (Q-tips)
- Old Cotton T-Shirt, Rag, or Sock
What you’ll need to do is:
Cut a 2 inch by 6 inch strip of material from an old cotton t-shirt, rag, or sock.
Wrap the cotton strip around the Q-tip, covering it completely.- Stick the wrapped Q-tip in the bacon lard until only a half an inch is exposed.
Smear a little bacon lard on the exposed cotton wrapping.
Light the wick.
As you can imagine, burning bacon grease can give off a slight bacon smell. It’s not entirely bad and plus if it were the end of the world you could light it outside to attract the neighborhood dogs — providing a good source of meat for the family 
.
Resources
With these two examples I hope you get a better idea of how to make your own homemade lamp and candle using common every-day household items. Remember, all you need is a container, a wick, and some fuel. The rest is up to your imagination.
Here are some other resources I’ve found online to making your own oil lamps:
Judy of the Woods’ homemade oil lamp
Mother Earth News: Make Your Own Olive Oil Lamp
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Erich,
I just made a bacon grease lamp, and it worked perfectly. I used the fat from 1 package of Oscar Meyer Thick Cut, and followed your simple instructions. The lamp burned for approximately 40 minutes, until it burned dry and cracked the glass jar (no I wasn’t watching until the end, my bad- but the lamp was in the sink.) All in all, I’d say it was a great success for my first time trying anything like this.
A thought on increasing the amount of fuel. I didn’t do it this time, but usually I cut any excess fat off the bacon, so as to get more meat. This would double, perhaps even triple the amount of grease. I also think I may need to get a bigger jar. There was no discernable bacon smell, and it did smoke just a little more than I thought it would.
Tomorrow I’ll try the olive oil in a tuna can lamp. Thanks for the info!
Trog
Trog,
That’s great! Thanks for letting us know the results. Keep us posted with the olive oil lamp (especially amount used and time of burn).
- Erich
I started with 3 table spoons of bacon grease and cooked a 12oz. pack. With the remaining grease I did as suggested and placed in a container, happening to be a metal can. I used the fabric and cotton swab as the wick. It has now been burning for 4 hours and has atleast half of the original amount remaining. I would not at all be surprised if I saw a flicker in the morning 10 hours from now.
Wuzzup Dawg (sorry couldn’t resist).
That’s great! You said you started with 3 tablespoons and then cooked some more bacon. So how much did you begin with. I’m curious (down to the numbers) how long 3-4 tablespoons of grease will burn for. Thanks for experimenting, it helps us all out.
- Erich
I am a ceramic artist by trade. If you know someone who is or can fire ceramics yourself, another thing you can do is make clay balls and poke holes through the center, to feed a wick through, and fire them. You can set those on top of any glass wine or soda bottle.
Now that I think about it, they probably don’t even need to be fired. Just Let them dry.
Hahacroz,
Just to clarify, the bottle I assume is to hold the fuel and the clay ball retains the wick (to keep it from falling into the bottle)? Is that correct?
Thanks for the info.
Would this same idea work with something like Everclear or high alcohol content vodka?
James,
It would work, however I must caution you that a flash fire (due to spillage etc) is a risk so I would recommend you use a cooking oil etc.
I tried the tuna can with wesson oil. It burned for about 5 mins. The wick burned down to about 1/16 of an inch or so and the flame was so low, I could have gotten more light from a match. Does the hole size have any bearing on the wick as far as being to constrictive on the oils ability to be “wicked” upward? I did have to pull the wick through with needle nose pliers.
5 minutes? Did all the oil get burned up? Mine typically last much longer than this. The hole size I used was about the size of a wood nail. I did not need to use pliers to pull it through however (just fingers).
It may be (as you surmised) that the hole/wick is too small/thin to create the necessary capillary action. What did you use as a wick? Be sure it is 100% cotton and not partially polyester or nylon.
Hope that helps.
Most of the oil was still in the can. And to be honest, the wick I used I assumed (and you know where that leads) was 100% cotton. I will, however, do this over again making sure the wick is as you instructed and that the material isn’t choked for oil. I’ll get back to you. Thank you for responding. My wife thinks I’m loosing it for doing all my little practice experiments. But like I told her, if the SHTF she’ll appreciate my thinking and this site.
Wow, I never thought of bacon. . . not talking about this, though. Do you suppose you can use that bacon tallow in creating lye soap? I was reading up on making it, today, and I got as far as making the lye, a simple process, but then I figured if I have to go out specially to buy this tallow or lard, it screws up my purpose. Could I just gather up this white greasy substance that collects under my bacon and use that to make lye soap bars? That would be awesome! And I could smell like bacon all day, PERFECT! XD
But if you smell like bacon…don’t forget the dogs he mentioned.
Lol Good point, Ed. Well, I’m not worried. I just want to make my own soap because I am into woodcraft. Woodcraft is often mistaken for survival, as woodcraft is used in survival, but is less of staying alive short term to get to safety and more of. . . well, you may have money, but not much, and you would rather just make your own amenities and food out of the ground around you and not have to spend your money on the same things. But you know, maybe you can mix some doe pee in with the mix and go hunting
Seriously though, I feel your desire to be independent of the manufactured products that “have to” come from China. I also enjoy making things that are from what people may consider waste product. So, how do you do it? I’d like to make some myself. If you can tell me or throw me a link, I’d appreciate it. But leave out the bacon grease. My family likes bacon. But in a survival situation, I don’t want them looking at me with a gleam in their eyes.
You could also use a cotton mophead for wicks. They sell them at the dollar stores for… a dollar. Strip down each strand of the mophead to a few strings. This makes for LOTS of wicks for $1.00, and you can save your T-shirts for strining dirty water, or even wearing!
Excellent tip Kevin. Thanks!
I use cotton mop head strings to make char cloth for my flint and steel, mainly because of the reasons stated by Kevin, although I use the strings full-sized.
Great tip Cliff.
I say recycle/reuse. I know we have a lot of used oil from our french fryer. I strained the used oil with chees cloth and used that. Worked great! I am now making an effort to save a few gallons in case the SHTF.
That’s a perfect use for old oil. Good job Shawn.
You can use bacon grease that has been strained to make sure those small bits are gone. The recipe you use will give you different fats and lye ratios. Too much fat will cause a soap not to set and too much lye will cause it to be flaky, which is fine for laundry. After the soap has had time to go through the ” cooking ” process it won’t have a bacon odor or any real scent unless you add essential oils during the process. I made approx. 100 bars this last year and LOVE home made Lye soap. Good job to those who want to enjoy learning to be self sufficient! And thanks for the info. on the lamps!
Lilly,
Thanks for the great comments and tips!
An alternative to using cotton as the wick is using all the lint from your dryer’s filter. You just roll it around a toothpick. Good for the candle your making. Also speaking of toothpick, I think it would be a better alternative to the Q-tip because some q-tips are made from plastic and you dont wanna burn plastic.
Great tip, thanks Lee!
I am a midi-evil reenactor and have made unfired clay “dishes” with raised edges and a pinched “lip” to lay the wick into. Once dried, you can easily pour in any vegetable oil ( I use olive oil but any will do ) and a length of candle wick.
Light up and depending on how much oil you have in the lamp, good for several hours.
( and also historically accurate, many documented finds of this type of oil lamp in many cultures and many centuries, all the way back to BCE times )
Great comment Richard, thanks. Nice to hear people using these skills in all sorts of scenarios.
Interesting article, I have been saving grease collected for the last few years to try and make a grease candle based on what my grandmother had told me (as a kid) of how she did it during the great depression.
I am also interested in trying to make a stove that would run off of grease. Many years ago I hiked the Appalachian Trail using only a Pepsi can stove to heat my meals. I may try modifying a Pepsi can stove and see if I can use grease as a fuel instead of alcohol.
If you don’t know about Pepsi can stoves I can highly recommend them. They are easy to make from two Pepsi (soda) cans, run on alcohol (denatured is best since it produces no smoke or soot) and only need about one ounce of alcohol to cook a simple meal. I used to cook up a Lipton side dish of rice or a box of Mac and cheese with just over an ounce of alcohol. Just Google “Pepsi can stove” and you will find dozens of designs. I perfected my own design and added a home made stove ring to support a pot on. Most long distance hikers swear by these stoves, plus the alcohol can be carried in a light weight plastic soda bottle.
Thanks again for the good info
Rick the LoneWolf