Late 1940's / Early 1950's Zippo Restoration

Taking a break from all the DIY-heavy home improvement projects, I found this rusted out Zippo lighter at a flea market.

I've always been a fan of Zippos, their style (and that unique sound) is incredibly iconic, so I figured I'd have a crack at restoring it.

Plus I still have a bunch of spares left over from the trench lighter project I did a while back.

Before starting, I did some research to try and put a date on the lighter, just in case it was something super-rare.

 

 

 

 

The first thing to so is to check the stamp at the bottom of the case:

According to the table provided by Zippo themselves, based on the logo type and the patent number, this lighter was manufactured in the 1937-1950 date range.

Digging through some other online resources, I found that it could be dated further by the chimneys number of holes, and the pattern of the flint wheel.

Depending on the source, the chimney having 8 holes per side dates it as being from late 1946 or 1947 onward.

The diagonal-cut flint wheel puts it also at 1946 onward.

Finally, the hinge (again, depending on the source), puts it at either 1948 or 49 onward

So between all that, it looks most likely that this lighter was produced between 1948-1950.

It's pretty cool to know the lighter has some history to it, but it doesn't make it a massively rare artefact.

Removing the rust

The rust on one side in particular was quite thick. To remove it I started with a small rotary tool wire wheel, then moved to some high-grit sanding discs, before some wet and dry sanding by hand to even out some scratches, finally finishing up with a number of passes with the buffing wheel and polishing compound.

As much as I am trying to preserve the original chromed finish, it was clear even before starting that it had worn through in places - I was merely trying to not make it any worse.

However with that lot done, although it's not exactly 'showroom' quality, the lighter has it's shine back, but retains a lot of it's characterful aging which suits it's age.

Flints & Wicks

The obvious thing to note is that it's not functional. To start with, there was no flint to make a spark. Thankfully the flint spring was still there, so adding one of my spares was all it took to get it sparking again.

The wick had been worn down to nearly nothing as well. I thought that I would likely need to replace it, so had a spare to hand, but it appears as though there was still plenty of wick remaining to pull through. It's quite possibly that the previous owner just never knew to do this - or had lost the flint before it was an issue.

Then all that was left was to add fuel, and:

Metro 2033 inspired "Trench" lighter pt 2

In my last post I got the design and cap sorted for the trench lighter.

Sneak preview of the finished lighter

A post shared by Anthony (@darkmidnight_diy) on Nov 10, 2018 at 12:13pm PST

Wick & Fuelling

Most refillable lighters such as the Zippo refill from the bottom, but I didn't want to make unnecessary modifications to the case itself, so I decided to create a removable wick mechanism that would allow the neck to also be used for fuelling.

To do this I needed to create a screw thread in the neck.

I started with this, and using a grinder rounded off the outside diameter until it sit snug in the neck. Finally added some solder to secure it in place.

Then I took this F-F coaxial (satellite cable) adapter, and drilled out the plastic middle, leaving a hollow tube with threads on the outside that fit the lighter.
Some wool strands twisted together to create a wick and pulled through this creates the removable wick.


Also at this point I filled the lighter with some wool padding to for the lighter fuel to soak into.


This just leaves the ignition source.

Ignition

I still have the inner components of the lighter that I used for the screwdriver bit holder. The flint is long gone, but the wheel could still be useful, so I pulled it apart and took that. There was also a spring that is used to press the flint to the wheel, so I scavenged that too.


The assembly was constructed from a piece of a picture hook, which was widened to accept the width of the flint wheel.

A small hole was drilled and a hollow copper tube attached to the bottom, where the flint and spring was placed, and held in place with a small screw. (see below GIF for clearer explanation)

This assembly was fixed in place using another plumbing olive around the neck of the cartridge and secured again with epoxy.

The lighter in action

Metro 2033 inspired "Trench" lighter

In Metro 2033 the main character, Artyom, carries a lighter fashioned from a bullet that can be used to light the way in dark areas and burn away obstacles such as cobwebs:

At a local country show I found an army surplus stand selling brass cartridge cases and saw an opportunity to make Artyoms lighter for real.

There is some real world history to this style of lighter. Known as a Trench lighter, items like this were quite common amongst troops in the trenches of the first World War, and relates to a wider concept of "Trench Art".

The case, I'm not sure what it's from.
It's approx .50" diameter at the neck,
but has stamp "SB 13"
 It seems too short to be a
standard .50 calibre round.

So with the case sorted, the next things to consider are:

• Cap/means of extinguishing the flame
• Wick
• Fuelling & refuelling.
• Ignition

Cap

I wanted to keep the lid of the lighter as a bullet style like in the game, but firearms law and lead content make the idea of using a real one infeasible and undesirable.

Instead I opted to grind the end of a copper bar down to a bullet shape, and hollow the inside slightly to make a cap.

The rounded copper bar.

Creating a hinge for the cap
The next stage is to create a hinge. A copper pipe clip was wrapped around the base of the cap, and secured with Araldite.

A second pipe clip was bent into a 'P' Shape and a bolt used to create the hinge (see gif below)

To attach this to the case, a brass olive from a pipe compression fitting (see pic.) was placed around the neck of the case, and the bottom half of the hinge was squeezed between it can the case to provide a frictional fit for now - it would later be further secured with epoxy.

Part two continues here

Lighter screwdriver bit holder

A sign of a brilliant project is one that is "obvious with hindsight" - when you see it, it suddenly seems so simple that you end up annoyed at yourself for not having thought of it yourself.

For me, Laura Kampf's Zippo Lighter driver bit case was one of those projects.

I've had a similar lighter kicking about in the junk drawer for years, always holding onto it because I liked the aesthetic of it and wanted to use it in a project, but never knowing what that project was.

So I'll admit, this was a shameless copy of Laura's project, but as I don't have access to a milling machine, I had to take a different approach. The insert that I have created is 3D printed, and relies on a friction fit to hold the parts rather than magnets.

Rather than use the free plan, I decided to create my own, adding an additional hollow in the middle of the insert. The idea was that this less-accessible compartment could contain less frequently used driver bits, but still keep them together with the others.

In reality, the fit of the insert is a bit too tight to allow the compartment to be easily accessed, but it does still serve a purpose in reducing the amount of filament required to print the model (compared to leaving that part solid).

I also found that my lighter has a small metal tab in the lid that got in the way once the driver bits were in place, but this was easily removed with pliers. (I'm not sure is this is a typical thing of these lighters, or just because the one I'm using is an off-brand knockoff.)

A post shared by Anthony (@darkmidnight_diy) on Jul 22, 2018 at 3:38am PDT

I have to concede that the insert would've looked better in metal, but from a functionality perspective it works just as well, and sometimes you just have to work with what you've got.

The STLs for the model can be found on Thingiverse, and the OpenSCAD code is on GitHub.