Finding Radioactive Thorium Mantles in Antique Shop
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- čas přidán 10. 01. 2023
- Found some radioactive items at Bozeman Montana antique shops. Its very rare that I don't find something radioactive at shops like this. On this hunt I found something I've known about but have never found before...some Coleman Thorium Lantern Mantles. These haven't been made by Coleman for a couple decades now. They are a bit radioactive...but nothing dangerous.
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(Gamma Radiation Tier)
Walter Montalvo
K Taylor
Don Reyes
I was at the Bozeman downtown antiques the day after you. The lady said someone was in the day before and bought a few of those mantles. I got the last radioactive Coleman mantle. I found a slightly dangerous collection in one of the glass cases in there. Just a small collection of radium watch hands in a small box. It's now my hottest sample since it's not in a clock and the paint is just flaking off. Small world!
Это очень, очень опасные предметы! Вооружитесь средствами защиты и под вытяжкой, покрой её каждый элемент лаком. Достаточно лака для ногтей.
Это смертельная опасность! Помните об этом пожалуйста
@@emilschaffhausen Quit being such a narc!
I started collecting lanterns a few years ago and I knew the old mantles had some radioactivity to them. I recently found an old cdv 700 in working order and waved it around my shop to discover some of my unrestored pieces definitely move the needle as well as some residue on my workbench. I also had some new production mantles from india that must contain thorium as well. I'm keeping my counter in my history classroom for when we talk about the cold war. Thanks for your content. I love the mine and off-roading videos.
Thanks. The mining and off-roading video will start again in the spring.
My grandparents used those mantles for decades. Their home was lit by propane lamps. I lit quite a few myself. They didn't like the switch to the yttrium mantles in the 90s.
Anyway, after they'd been used a while, the mantle would become very fragile. It was very ease to end up with a lung full of thorium if you weren't careful in removing old ones. The point of the mantle was to increase the brightness of the propane flame.
My bother and I used these in a Coleman lantern some years ago when camping. When you changed the mantle the fine dust was all over your hands. No one back then knew to wash your hands after changing, stay up wind from the dust, etc. It was fine enough for some of the particles to be respirable.
They also put out some nasty smoke when you first burn them. Not sure how much thorium was in that smoke.
@@-Jethro- Likely very little in the smoke. The thorium oxide is already oxidized, so won't burn, and its evaporation point is 3000°C (5400°F), far hotter than the fire.
I've seen the thorium mantles give off a slightly greener light than yttrium ones, funnily enough.
Run a geiger counter over your propane tank and lines sometime.
Man I love doing this. I've been doing this for a while too, and call it "artifact hunting". I'm now know as "Mr. Uranium" by my local antique shops, which were so kind, interested and grateful to learn about the radioactive items they have.
Thank you so much Drew for sharing this. I love those kinds of videos!! Treasure hunt for "screamers"!
I have four Coleman lamps we used to take with us on hiking and camping trips. The Coleman’s were “the thing” back in the 1980s when camping and we always carried 10 or 12 extra mantles as newbies tended to damage them while starting them up. They were (and still are) amazingly bright. We have a few of the lanterns in our attic and have used them over the years for get-togethers forested Pennsylvania. I’ve used a couple of the newer ones but they just don’t burn as bright but still gives you the ambiance of camping over the LED lanterns sold everywhere. Besides, what good is a Coleman lantern if you can’t find a replacement mantel.
Those used mantles are incredibly fragile and crumble to dust or small flakes of mesh when you remove them. The textile fibres burn away when you light them, the oxide coating is the only thing that remains. As long as you don't touch them, it's strong enough to keep its shape. But yeah, removal is a bit of an issue.
I found a WW2 Spitfire navigation compass in an antique shop while testing some supposed "vaseline" glass for the owner. The compass "glass" (some kind of plastic) had become opaque and the storekeeper wanted to open it to see if it could be repaired. We checked with an expert restorer and he warned against doing that because the radium paint had probably disintegrated into radioactive dust. It really set a GM counter screaming! Now we have to find a way of disposing of it....
You could try and open it...in a controlled environment and see what condition the paint is it.
@@RadioactiveDrew Outdoors on a day with not a whisper of wind, perhaps and wearing a respirator!
I'm hunting for one of these Thorium mantles, very interesting! Hey, I made a discovery that certain fossils like Megalodon teeth found in the southeastern Atlantic Ocean are radioactive (50CPM+ on my GMC 320, likely much more on yours). There's a seller by the name of thesharktoothlady that scuba dives for them - the damaged ones are cheap even at over 5 inches. I then tested out my fossil ammonites from Morocco and they were not radioactive at all.
The radioactivity of fossils really depends on the geology of the area where they were formed. Sometimes I find prettified wood out in the desert but not all of it is radioactive.
love the background music. good with a cup coffee in the morning.
I used a couple of those years ago in a gas lamp in front of my condo. They burned 24 hours a day and gave off a fair amount of light at night. I'd get easily a year or more on a pair. If you ever had to take the glass up to clean, the mantle would just disappear in the wind like ash. 👍
I could only image what would happen if some wind hit one of those already burnt up mantles.
I been keeping my eye out for those mantles.
Love the content! I have definetly learned many things from your channel that I can also use when I hunt too! Thank you for sharing your fun adventures!>:D
No problem...glad you enjoyed the video.
DREW IS BACK 🎉🎉!! Also please be carfeful and have a healthy Janurary, remeber to limit your Exposure radioactive items based on its levels.
Thanks for the concern.
Thanks for another good one Drew and glad to see that you are getting more subscribers.
Thanks for uploading another antique snoop/check video :D Happy New Year Drew.
No problem.
We commonly use these thorium lantern mantles as a check source for alpha particle detectors such as the Ludlum model 43-5 and 43-90 probes.
After you install a new thorium lantern mantle, you light the mantle on fire and allow the silk to burn up, leaving only the ash, which is mostly thorium. It is this "skeleton" of thorium that produces the light. After this initial burn, when you light the lantern, the heat from the burning gas heats the thorium skeleton up to a high enough temperature to cause it to become incandescent. That releases a lot of visible light. They're very efficient at producing visible light, actually. Think of the thorium skeleton as being similar in how it works to the tungsten filament in an electric light bulb. It releases visible light when it's heated to a high temperature as well.
The gasoline stoves and lanterns are actually quite excellent, and far less expensive to operate than the propane versions. You do need to use caution, of course, and use unleaded gas or "white gasoline".
There's an old joke about Coleman stoves:
A man is parachuting, and his chute seems to be failing to open. As he's falling, he passes another man who seems to be flying upwards! He yells to the man: "Do you know anything about parachutes?" And the man answers: "No, do you know anything about Coleman Stoves?"
Theoretically, the thorium "ash skeleton" that remains after the initial burn of the silk mantle would last for a very long time. But it's so fragile that one often damages it when transporting the lantern. And when replacing the mantle, it makes sense to remove the old thorium ash outdoors, with the wind blowing away from you and the lantern held downwind from you. You just want to avoid inhaling the thorium dust particles. While not very penetrating, alpha particles are extremely biologically damaging. Inhaling the fine thorium dust particles will likely leave some deposited deep in your lungs, where it will continue to decay, constantly bombarding your lung cells with alpha particles.
The main radioactive isotope of thorium is Th232, with a half life of 14.05 billion years. Since they just mine this stuff, that's the isotope that's going to be predominant in these mantles. While not extremely radioactive, the long half life means that any particles that get stuck in your lungs will remain pretty much exactly as radioactive for your whole life. So the prudent thing is to avoid breathing the dust.
It also makes sense to wash your hands after handling the bare new thorium mantles and avoid breathing any dust that might come off of them.
They're also fun to put into a cloud chamber!
"White gas" for lanterns is a whole different animal than the lower grades of pump gasoline or kerosene of any flavor. It's a highly refined/pure petroleum naphtha (like zippo fuel) without additives like Ethanol or the many others in pump gas. Sure, old white gas lanterns "can" run on pump gasoline, but they'll burn _really_ dirty into the air and tend to clog up internally in short order when the fuel turns to varnish. I'd only suggest using that as a last resort and mind not to poison yourself on the additional fumes and carbon-monoxide.
A tip, they only use Ethanol in the coastal areas/states, not the Midwest, but if you're stuck on the coast and in need of illumination, seek out a local boat marina to fill up. Marine gasoline at the docks is all Ethanol free which will burn a bit cleaner in those lanterns.👍
Which reminds me, I've got two gas lanterns in my garage in need of complete teardown overhauls after my uncle ran pump gas in them... 😒 By the way, do you know anything about parachutes?
I hadn't thought about the ethanol, actually, but that seems like it could certainly be a problem!
I can believe that the white gas sold for these stoves and lanterns is very highly refined. But I still believe that if you get unleaded, and ethanol free gasoline, you have pretty much the same thing (other than accidental impurities that may have been introduced in trucking or in the gas station's tank, not to mention the special "additives" that certain brands feel the need to add to their particular fuel).
I did some electronics work years ago for a local refinery, and when they load the different trucks up with a particular octane of gasoline, it all comes out of the same tank. The driver adds a little dose of whatever additive that brand's gasoline is supposed to have, fills the tanker, and it supposedly mixes in as they fill the truck and drive the truck to the first gas station. But it's actually all exactly the same gasoline no matter what brand you buy. So just buy the cheapest brand you can find! ;)
On the other hand, I have always believed that petroleum naphtha is a different product than either gasoline or white gas. It definitely smells a lot different and seems to behave differently when handling it. From what I just looked up, the naphthas are lighter hydrocarbons than what's used for gasoline.
After gasoline, come some heavier compounds that are used as Kerosene.
And then come the even heavier molecules used as diesel fuel.
Next you get heavier chains used as heating fuels.
And finally, you get the lubricating oils.
You made me look this all up, so I've learned something tonight!
We have, unfortunately, Ethanol in most of the automotive gasoline here in Wyoming, too. You can get Ethanol-Free gasoline from at least one gas station in the town where I live, and while you pay more for it, it's a better choice for lawn mowers, snow blowers, chain saws, etc., because it doesn't seem to damage them as readily, and lasts far longer in storage. We still use a fuel stabilizer, but starting off with ethanol-free gasoline makes a big difference, too.
A while back I had a 1991 Ford Explorer, and I was always able to find non-ethanol gas for it. But late one night, the only gas station that was open at the time had only ethanol "tainted" gasoline. And because I was almost out of gas, I reluctantly filled it up. Within a hundred miles the fuel pump failed! Now, you have to really go out of your way to find non-ethanol gasoline around here. But cars are designed to deal with the ethanol better now, of course!
Ethanol has less fuel energy than gasoline, so they should give you a discount on the gasoline price when they adulterate it with the ethanol. Don't get me started on what an ecological and economical travesty using ethanol in motor fuel is in the US. I can see it in someplace like Brazil, but in the US, it's a total loser.
I guess, despite the higher price, it's probably best to use the special "white gas" that's sold for these lanterns and stoves. It's not as if a guy really uses a huge amount of it over the course of a camping season! I should get some unleaded, non-ethanol gasoline and some white gas, and run it through a GC or even an infra-red spectrophotometer and see if I can discern any differences. I have a batch of old GCs in storage that I got from a well-logging guy one time for repairing a nice old audio power amplifier for him! What a deal. ;)
@@jsigmo yeah Ethanol is hell on older style seals that aren't viton. It absorbs water and it has negative lubricity, the likely trifecta that killed the fuel pump. I had the same thing happen with my 78 Scirocco after filling up with high Ethanol fuel. And you're spot on about small engines like chainsaws ETC. The Ethanol causes _MUCH_ higher cylinder head temps and because they're air-cooled it ROASTS the valves/ports and rings, which absolutely murders the cylinder compression over time causing gradual power loss until they die altogether.
It’s mad to think we handled these regularly as kids when fishing. Mantles broke and we swapped them out…I know for a fact we knew nothing of the danger and just swapped them out!!!! But then I often look back at stuff and think how am I alive 50 years later! 😂
Thank you Drew, I had heard about Coleman mantles being radioactive.
I remember when you had less than 100 subscribers. Nice to see you at over 35k now!
Oh I remember...thanks for being there at the beginning.
Believe it or not you can still buy Coleman dual fuel/white gas lanterns today. They also still offer kerosene models. There's a company called Peerless that makes lots of new production mantles today, many of which are still thoriated. Coleman ditched thorium in the 80's for fear of having to put a radiation warning on the packaging (even though that's never been an issue with other companies). The early yttrium mantles had a very orange glow to them which people didn't like. Thorium type mantles burn very bright white and occasionally have a slight greenish tint. I collect older Coleman lanterns and still use those old silk lite (and Peerless) thoriated mantles today. The light they make is incredibly bright and they're so much tougher than the new Coleman mantles. If you look at those wrong, they fall apart.
Thanks for sharing ,good watch ‼️👍
No problem. Thanks for coming back to watch the videos.
I just ordered some mantles from Amazon and was surprised to find they are Thorium laced! They are a Chinese brand,(sorry I forgot the name, and am not a home to check it). I did some research on the internet and other people reported the same thing. They are not as “hot” as my vintage Coleman ones. I actually bought these to use in my lantern, but I’m adding them to my radioactive collection. Always look forward to your posts..
Bought some from Ukraine a few years ago, also not as hot as Coleman mantles but surprised they are still available
well, drew, i finaly found a very interesting and informative channel on a topic i knew nothing about. your videos are very compelling to watch. radiation is awe inspiring .
Glad you found the channel. I've always been interested in radiation as well. I make these videos because its stuff I want to see. There are some pretty cool things in the works that I'm excited for.
Great video buddy! You have helped me learn a lot and love the new content
Thanks. I’m glad people are learning something new.
Wonderful antique stores. I am increasingly finding the contents of such store very familiar. I recall much of it from my own youth. I suppose that makes me an antique too!
Quality content Drew 👌
Thanks…I’m always trying to make it better.
Nice, new vid, these are always fun! The title of this one reminds me of the ‘radioactive boy scout’ interesting story/book.
Who knew? I still have our 1952 and '55 Coleman gas lanterns with mantles and new mantles in a bag. We used those lanterns every night in our mtn shack all summer long. I also have radioactive spark plugs that were used in electric generators for 1930's airways route beacons across the Mojave Desert.
I think those spark plugs used polonium. I’m sure all that material has decayed away long ago.
@@RadioactiveDrew When I collected those plugs 10 + years ago, my old CD "geiger counter" reacted slightly to them.
@@janblake9468 that's pretty cool that it would still respond to those plugs...even after that time.
@@RadioactiveDrew I was surprised too.
@@RadioactiveDrew I have a few of those as well. Yes it's polonium 210 and yes the radiation is gone to nothing. I think the spark plug would last longer than the half-life of polonium which is 138 days. I think they're probably the most useless example of radioactive material being used in a product.
Other more useful items are radioactive vacuum tubes. Ones that used krypton 85 had a half life of 10.76 years, good for the time but now those too are at zero levels. Keep an eye out for them as some tubes used other radioactive sources like radium which would still be detectable today.
I have a whole bunch of those old mantles I bought in 1971 for 29 cents a pair.
The Gasoline lights are much superior to the propane ones. I've used both, and the gas ones are brighter, and the load of fuel lasts a lot longer.
And the gasoline lanterns are far cheaper to operate; furthermore disposable propane cylinders consume steel and all the energy used in their production, and end up as waste, thus having a ridiculous environmental impact compared to gasoline lanterns.
I might have to pick up one of those gasoline lanterns I saw. I want to do a video using one.
keep up the great work!
Thanks. I will.
@4:00 there were what looked like a couple of orange Fiesta Ware coffee mugs.
I checked and they wren't hot. I check everything.
Another common use of thorium is in thoriated tungsten filaments in high power transmitting tubes. These are still somewhat common in both commercial and amateur radio transmitters and amplifiers, though they're being replaced by solid state devices. Good ones still command a high price, though. Do be careful with "external anode" type tubes as they often use beryllium oxide insulators. BeO is safe as long as you don't turn it into dust and inhale it.
I’ve heard of all kinds of problems with people being exposed to beryllium dust. It’s a super fascinating element but yeah, can be toxic.
Thoriated tungsten filaments were also used in car lights, head lights, turn signals, etc. The were more durable than regular tungsten filaments and withstood vibrations from driving better. I don’t know when they stopped adding thorium to filaments but I don’t think it was too long ago.
I still have a pack of those mantles from the late 70's i got from K-Mart in the City of industry Ca. We used to go use them for camping on the Kern river :-) Love ur vids!
Thanks.
I used to collect paraffin (kerosene) lamps like those in the shop. The Thorium containing mantles do burn brighter than the later Ytrium doped mantles with a whiter light. I have a few in the back of a cupboard.
❤'d "this cream cup was a little radioactive"
9:23 - "I'm picking up curious life readings" ~ Spock
I have been binging on your videos a bit lately. I've been to both of those shops a few years ago. Hmmm industrial smoke detectors and thoriated lamp mantles... what are you up to Drew? 🤣 if you want some Thorium just ask... I have some gold claims up North with Thorium in the placers 🙂
Thanks for the offer.
I recently went to Shelton Washington and found a ton a radioactive stuff in their antique shops. Airplane Dials, Watches, various dishes. Clocks. You name it!
Some shops are better than others that’s for sure. I’ve been to some pretty awesome ones near LA. Also some great ones out in Washington.
I enjoyed this, informative and interesting. Does all your exposure over the years ever concern you.
I'm wondering that Too.
Though having red/green color-deficient vision, I really like the pale green of some of that uranium ceramic ware.
Once again, great musical choices. Where do you find that stuff? I visit this channel for the music. I stay for the radiation!
I find all the music at Musicbed.
When i was a kid black outs were very common so we had lots of candles and gas lanterns. of course we were very curious and touched those mantles, that when burned are very very brittle and fragile. our parents got very angry at us for that.
who knows how much thorium we breathed.
i have a mantle in my radioactive objects collection
Nice find!
Thanks...the antique shop I found these in is gone now.
@@RadioactiveDrew Thats a shame. Some of these objects will be lost to the eons
Now I think I'll bring my Geiger counter the next time I visit an antique shop. The fact that you were getting up to 5000 CPM from some boring looking ceramics when the background is less than 50 CPM is freaky. 5k is nothing compared to the things you are used to measuring, but it's still surprising.
It was very surprising when I first started doing this.
I now want to taste the forbidden tea bag.
Find much less radioactive things in the antique stores here in New Zealand, theres very limited glazed items with uranium, there is uranium glass and the odd radium clock, and a few old aircraft and navel gauges and compasses. i did manage to get a box of these thorium mantels from an old camping store, very old stock in wax paper packs. often go out looking with both the uv torch and pocket giger counter. nothing super radioactive here as we are so isolated from the rest of the world during the time it was big, ironic considering a kiwi helped in its discovery.
Ditto here in my part of Oz.
Sometimes I go out with my UV light as well. Good way to identify possible radium items and uranium glass.
There is a number of small uranium and thorium deposits in NZ
I have some Butterfly brand mantles, bought new a couple years ago, which are ~11.6uSv. New mantles can be radioactive as well, depending on where they're from.
Good examples of several less popular zesty colors in there. You missed a few but got most of them. There were some shakers and also some Hall china. The more you scan the more you learn.
Lots and lots of old china is a bit 'hot'. Not a surprise there. Fiesta Red is notorious for radioactive glaze.And 'uranium glass' green.
5:57 oh man, a Hallicrafters Model S-38, crazy when they came out they was around $50
Great video Drew. Another thorium item is thoriated welding rods. Still available in most welding shops and online.
I’ve heard of those. They never seem to be very active. Of course I’ve never tested them in person…
@@RadioactiveDrew Thoriated Tungsten TIG electrodes. 1% and 2% if I remember correctly.
That's a good point, I use 2% thoriated electrodes. I'll have to test them!
Tested my 2% thoriated TIG electrodes, no response, same as background. I only have a cheap Pudibei detector, something higher quality or more sensitive might get a response.
Having a detector that can see alpha and beta radiation would give much better results.
Those mantles are what that boyscout used to build an electron gun. He got scared because it got so hot and radiation isn't something you can just turn off. He burnt them down into a powder so he could compress it into a smaller space. Burning something may change the chemistry, but the stability of the nucleus and therefore radioactive properties are not altered. I wonder if this is the reason they're no longer sold.
They aren't sold anymore because they found a non-radioactive replacement to use in the mantels.
The major part of these mantels, as you buy them, is silk. This gives the mantel a structure you can work with. When you install a new mantel, you burn them, to burn the silk away. That leaves only (for the most part) the thorium. Technically, ash is just whatever is left over of something that won't burn, and in this case, that's the thorium because the silk burns almost entirely.
Seeing The Matrix merchandise in an antiques shop really makes me feel old!
I hear you there.
I actually have several that I bought new years ago.
Man, this looks like fun! I love going antiquing and have been wanting to get a Geiger counter to expand my rockhounding, my husband does ham radio and I can't help but wonder what kind of radioactive treasures I'd find when I go with him to the ham swap meets or the antique malls!
It’s fun for sure. I love driving to far off places because I can usually find antique shops that I would have never gone into otherwise on the way. There are plenty of the same radioactive items in these shops but sometimes there is something very rare.
We used Coleman mantels are targets when I went through the California rad school in San Luis Obisto for First Responder training at the Governor's Office of Emergency. It was a very intense week. We had a failure rate of just below 50%. If you didn't get an 80% on the finale test you didn't get a card, I got a card.
I could see these being a good test source for an exercise. Very low activity compared to something dangerous you might encounter in the field. Powerful radium targets are great to use as they can freak out some equipment and creat a decent gamma field.
Hi Drew, i found some old american thorium lantern mantles on E-Bay for a good price. ☢☢☢
I've got the Coleman ones and ones from united nuclear but have never seen mantles in a shop before cool
This was my first time seeing them as well.
We still had those mantles for lanterns in german army in 1980s. They were considered antique though.
I’ve got some Aladdin Lamp rigid mantles that have thorium in them. I bought a few and apparently got a mix of old and new, as some are radioactive and some are not.
I've run across those Aladdin Lamp mantles before. But usually when I find them they are in bad shape.
Drew, too bad you weren't east of Bozeman to the places you'd mentioned, as I have a mint, old thorium Lox-On mantle in the original box. I bought it online a few years ago thinking I'd end up using it in my Aladdin kerosene lamp but I have a couple newer ones with yttrium. From what I understand, it's the heat that brings the thorium mantles to a nice white light much like a 60 watt bulb, but the newer ones are only able to get around to a 40 watt equivalent glow.
Free sun ☀ shin simulator in mason jars for the cold ones in the north 😅😅😅
I got a few of them old Coleman lanterns . even the gas stove and still works and today 2023 Walmart in NY has the fuel for them. and you still can get parts for them. I only have the new mantels and Walmart sells them. We use LED lights now. I do have the Coleman 2 tube florescent lantern that uses 6V spring top battery's . and the rechargeable one as well and eBay had the 6V AGM battery for it. I do have that CD ION chamber detector set. From eBay new in box. so many of them around. The one with the GM tube in a wand is hard to find. I do have a CD alarm that you plug in . during cold war the US had a plain to switch power grid to 50 Hz setting off alarms during a nuclear attack. It dos work. I have inverter that is 50 Hz and it's loud.
Trying to get 90 volt batteries for the old Geiger counters is very difficult.
White gasoline powered lanterns & stoves were a popular camping item back some years ago.
Unless your Geiger counter is very small, you can just take 10 standard 9 volt batteries and wire them in series...that will work fine.
There are other ways as well, but that's the easiest way.
back in the early 80's we used them for nuclear disaster training. we hid them in the clothing of people going through decom to make sure the testers where doing there jobs.
That is a good use for them.
Grew up on Colman everything,there were no LEDS,even have a Colman fold up oven, you pot on fire 🔥 sill using them today,
I use to use a Coleman stove all the time camping.
Aladdin lamps have radioactive mantles as do some of the first gas lamps used in homes.
I love these videos! And I'm a regular user of these gas and kerosene lamps. I'm happy to know for sure I have never used one of these thorium mantles. And what do shop owners say about your surveys? Are they aware of the (only slightly) radioactive items? Thanks for the video.
When I talk to people about radioactive items in the shop I let them know it’s pretty harmless but a good way to date certain objects.
at 1:09 I seen some uranium dishes on the shelf on your right second shelf for the bottom.
Yeah, they use to have a big stack of uranium glass there...but I think they moved it. Next place I go to will have a little area of uranium glass.
@@RadioactiveDrew I do love collecting uranium glass.
I had heard having two of these mantles in your pocket will set off the nuclear detection equipment alarm if touring a nuclear reactor facility
These and a bunch of other stuff. A watch with radium paint would do the same thing.
A question if I may? You have a smaller detection device than I do. You the Radeye, me a Ludlum with a pancake wand obvious bit of kit. And antique stores and second hand stores in my area up the wazoo. How would I go about looking for items of interest? Do I notify the shop owner? Through Google I've found a few places that may have items that might have a radioactive past.
I only ask because as I was walking into my workplace with my "working" Ludlum meter to fix broken solder joints during my lunch break that a building engineer identified the Ludlum unit as a Geiger counter. Can I look freely or do I need to ask permission from the store owner to look for "hot items"?
I think every shop is different. Also those larger Ludlum units are a little intimidating. Since it’s pretty big I would talk with whoever is working the shop that day and ask if you can use your Geiger counter to date certain objects. Explain how objects made during certain time periods are sometimes made with uranium or radium. Just make sure you are willing to buy something when you go into these places. A purchase can buy a lot of goodwill. Also be calm and don’t try and scare anyone.
Excellent as usual Drew!! I found a few old thoriated lantern mantles for street lamps in an antique shop once. Unlike the Coleman mantles, these have a distinctive formed shape, and come in a box. They are exceptionally fragile, so I rarely attempt removing them from the boxes they are packaged in. If I get a chance, I will email you a picture of them sometime.
I have a side question for you - what got you started in this hobby? I'm sure we all have our own story about how we got involved in it. I certainly have my own story. If you are ever needing a topic for a video, perhaps you could tell us your story!
I’ve run across these same lantern mantles. I believe they are for an Aladdin lantern. They are extremely fragile…at least the old ones are.
That would be an interesting video maybe. Short answer is that I saw a video done by Braniac75 about radioactive items. I’ve always been interested in the subject but that video really peaked my curiosity.
Does it look like this mantle right before it goes phoomph? czcams.com/video/F3rncxf4Or8/video.html
@@eckligt I will check mine and see. Could be!
@@RadioactiveDrew My story is really simple. I had this clock sitting on a shelf for years. My folks picked it up decades ago at a garage sale. I always wondered whether it was phosphorescent or radioluminescent, since it didn't glow very much unless you hit it with a black light.
Finally purchased a cheap Geiger counter and found out it was just plain old phosphorescent. Well, having a new shiny Geiger counter handy, I was naturally curious and wanted to go find something radioactive "in the wild". I started going to antique shops and flea markets, and reading, and learning and learning. It amazes me, how much history there is out there on this subject. One thing lead to another and I was eventually driving down to St Louis to explore some of its history in the Manhattan Project.
Then later on, up to Ottawa IL where the Radium Girls in Illinois worked. Talk about history (both good and bad)!! There is now a memorial to them in Ottawa. If I remember correctly, a school girl learned about the towns history and was the driving force behind getting the memorial commissioned.
@@eckligt I checked them - one is an Aladdin Kone Kap Mantle in the red box. Appears to have been made around 1940. Another one is in a round cardboard tube with the name Sensation Mantle and the number C3603. I haven't been able to find anything on it :o(
Nice Geiger counter, more info on it please thank you
Its a Thermo Scientific Radeye B20. The price use to be around $1300 and now its over $2000. The company is kind of a pain to deal with if you are trying to buy one new. Sometimes they can be found on eBay.
Thoriated tungsten welding rods are radioactive too 9:25
Be careful if you ever come across the British Mark I compass, made during WWII. That thing has gobs of exposed radium on the sighting markers on the mirror and case and puts out more than 260,000 counts on my detector. You don’t want to inhale any of the dust from the decaying exposed radium sighting markers. It’s a huge alpha emitter, plus it decays into alpha producing radon, various alpha producing isotopes of polonium, and various beta emitting isotopes of bismuth and lead.
Thanks for the heads up. I have a couple aircraft dials that are very hot. I don't keep them in the house...only pull them out for special occasions.
I have some of these mantles stuck somewhere although they are used in a propane lantern. They have to be about 30 to 40 years old because I haven’t used that lantern for about that long. Now I have to tear my basement apart to find them. Ahhhh
I’m sure these mantles could be used on propane lanterns. On the Coleman packaging it said for gasoline lanterns…that’s why I was saying it.
I want to take my Geiger counter to antique stores and other second hand stores. I'm a bit worried that the Geiger counter's threshold alarm will go off, and make everyone think I'm stealing something.
As a child i wondered why it would be considered remotely acceptable to have thorium mantles when my dad would be swapping them out. He died of cancer just recently.
Dinosaur bone are very too🤪
I had a Coleman dual fuel in the early 90's, worked great, but not near as good as the new LED's.
I saw a Hallicrafters 😊
One piece I have that isn't super common, is a piece of cobalt uranium glass. It's blue until you put it under uv light, then it turns green.
I've only seen a couple pieces like that. They don't seem to be very common.
I had one 3 decades ago.. Dunno if I handled it save now.
@radioactivedrew During which time periods were uranium common additive to glazing and glass?
Commonly used uranium pigments in ceramic glazes started in the 1920’s and went up until 1945. Then there wasn’t any used in glazes until 1947-1949. At that point it’s reported people were using depleted uranium. Of course this is mainly for ceramics made in the US. There might have been earlier uses elsewhere.
Have you ever checked the famous radioactive lenses ? would be interesting too
Yes…it was one of my first videos I did. This Radioactive Lens Might Ruin Your Pictures
czcams.com/video/_epmkWtIDC0/video.html
@@RadioactiveDrew Oh thanks, just discovering your channel since 2 days through suggestions I missed that one, i'll have a look at it now :)
Have you ever tested thoriated tungsten tig welding electrodes?
Not yet but maybe in the future.
Imagine just blowing into a shop and whipping out a radiation counter. You must get some weird looks from people.
Not as many as you would think. Some people do ask questions and I calmly explain what I'm looking for.
Was that Uranium glass @1:08?
Dude, those gas lanterns were dangerous as heck. Like kerosene, you have to pump them up. But unlike kerosine, you know that gas vapor is extremely flammable….. I’ve seen many of those go boom, well light boom,… scary
I can only imagine what happens when one of those lanterns misbehaves.
Thorium mantles were a thing when I was a kid.
The interesting thing about both thorium and yttrium is how they (seemingly by magic) take two infrared photons and turn them into a single visible light photon. Thorium is better for the transformation, but it is nasty when it turns into dust. I'd prefer working with asbestos dust than thorium dust, actually. Gasoline (or white gas) lanterns are still a thing, BTW, and are good to have on hand as liquid fuel is more available than propane. White gas (the preferred fuel) is also more portable than propane for the serious backpacker.
@@peterwexler5737 I agree with everything you said right there! You're probably an old fart, like me! ;) The gasoline is very energy dense, and because you can use a relatively thin container for it, it's a lot lighter to pack than the equivalent energy in the form of propane cylinders.
@@jsigmo It's hard to fathom, but yes, I am an old fart. I am to thorium as my grandparents were to radium, if that makes any sense. My grandparents were born around 1910.
I wonder if thats the same case for thorium glass cups. I have one
What kind of detector do you use? Like the model. Does it detect alpha?
It’s the Radeye B20 and it detects alpha, beta and gamma radiation.
The effect of 'glowing' is one of specific exitation-bands states in the eletron shell of a atom(in the eletron-bands of a solid-state), this is for visual light the case for example radium(the reason why we used it as night-visible paint) so this should also be radium based not thorium based i guess.
Ok correction, my fault: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_mantle#History
Radium was used with zinc sulfide and that's what made it glow so well as a paint. The alpha radiation would excite the zinc sulfide causing it to glow. Radium will glow on its own but that usually takes a decent amount of observe that effect.
Love your videos.
I feel like a jerk saying this but I do have a comment/quest for future though (and of course this is only my own opinion!): I can't really hear you over the music. You give really good information so my request is: can you keep the music a little lower?
I always welcome technical criticism of my videos. I want to make them the best I can. I’ll try and kick down the music a bit in the next one…when I’m talking.
Love that Thermo counter.
I'm very happy with it.
@@RadioactiveDrew Absurdly overpriced tho. I had a lot of the previous model from TSA I bid on but lost.
We call them feebly radio active , look for lox-on mantles for aladdin lamps ,tilley lamp mantles , ( old ones) the most danger to humans is when you burn a ne w mantle " in" you will get a dusty radio active cloud for a few seconds do 8t outside , you guessed it im a lamp collector 😃
Well that’s good to know about those old mantles.
There used to be a limit on how much radioactive stuff you can own, I think. Concerning radium. Aware of any regulation? I find uranium glass regularly, here in Europe. I have about 50 pieces.
I don't worry about the glass. I'm not comfortable with a few pieces with radium. Too dirty. I'll probably get rid of those. As a little project I'll call the government and waste disposal with the specific question: where do I go with my radioactive trash? I think they'll send a swat team instead of advice, in their ignorance.
In the US there are exempt quantities of nuclear material. Pottery and radium painted dials are exempt.
Still would be interesting to know for it is alpha, beta, gamma or neutron radiation.
Well if its thorium 232 the majority of the radiation is going to be alpha and beta with some gammas.
What’s the music used in this video please?
Both of these tracks can be found on Musicbed
Avenoir by Katharine Petkovski
Butterfly (with Red Licorice) by Roary
@@RadioactiveDrew - Thanks Drew. It was the second one I was looking for. Thanks for the details!
Do cashiers mind if you do this? I want to search for radiation to but kinda scared if they will tell me to stop
I’ve only been kicked out by a couple places. I usually explain that I use the Geiger counter to check authenticity of objects. Then I explain that some radioactive elements were used in items back in the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. The big thing is to be friendly and not scare anyone.
What detector are you using?
In this video I’m using the Radeye B20. Thermo Fisher makes it but they are kind of a pain to deal with. I believe Fisher Scientific is the one that sells the units and they run a little over $2000 right now. I don’t think they will sell to an individual so you might have to say you are buying it for your business.
@@RadioactiveDrew Thermo is sort of a pain to deal with even for laboratories who might do millions of dollars of business with them in a year! They set their website up so that you can't just look up devices and parts and see the prices, let alone place an order. Instead, they want you to create an account and jump through hoops. It seems like a very foolish way to do business, but that's Thermo for you!
My question is, if you find such radioactive tableware is it harmless or harmful to use it for dining or tea like the teacup?, iknow the radiation is not that high but if you use it everyday to eat your food and drink tea multiply times a day its sounds harmful. if seen more videos of you with more radioactive tableware than you found here in this shop. Are those tableware from another video harmful?
Is it?
Using uranium glazed ceramics to serve food on isn't that dangerous. But it does depend on the foods and drinks you are using with them. Items that are acidic can leach some of the uranium out of the glaze or if you use metal utensils that can scrape or chip parts of the uranium glaze off. It would take a lot time of continually using these items to have any type of effect on your health. Biggest concern would be damage to the kidneys.
@@RadioactiveDrew thank you😁 i was curious about this!