Citronella Lamps

[cavingreer]

One of my many vices is the occasional glass of wine or liquor. I enjoy picking up wines, Tequilas and Scotches that I haven't tried before just because I heard it was good or because the bottle is pretty. One of the biggest problems of living in the South is bugs. As a buddy told me once, he was sitting on the bank of the river fishing and 2 LA mosquitos picked a nearby fisherman up, and as they were carrying him off one said to the other, "Should we eat him here or go further away so the MS mosquitos won't take him away from us?" One method for cutting down on the aggravation of the bugs while sitting out on the deck is burning a citronella lamp. The effectiveness varies with the determination of the bug. One day I discovered a really neat idea that combines the 2.

After a month or so sipping on a bottle and it's empty, I convert the bottle into a Citronella lamp. This allows me to knock some of the fight out of the bugs, or at least annoy them almost as much as they annoy me, while showing off some of the bottles I've collected and getting a little more use out of them. If the bottle has a paper label I'll coat it in Polyurethane. I buy the wicks from a vendor on eBay, fill them with any Citronella oil and voila! You can also use a copper fitting that will sit in the bottle and hold the wick (3/8" is standard) but the copper fittings are more expensive.

Behringer Merlot with a copper fitting

Glenmaorangie Single Malt Scotch with copper fitting

Camarena Tequila with aluminum wick holder

Number Juan (Ron White and Alex Reymundo's Brand) with aluminum wick holder

[tmays]

Cool idea. I'm gonna put up a bat box in my yard. Bats love them some Mississippi skeeters!

[Don McCombs]

Thomas,

Don't get discouraged if the bats don't take up residence in your bat box right away. It can sometimes take a year or two for them to use the box. Sometimes never. Good luck.

[outdoors4evr]

Would you please post a closeup of the copper fitting used or maybe a part number?
Does the copper fitting just sit there or is it threaded in somehow?

[cavingreer]

I believe it was a 3/8 x 1/2 male adapter. It doesn't thread in. I've seen discussions on using thread tape to put them in tightly but I believe the overall consensus is they burn better if they can draw air. I just took one of my wine bottles into the hardware store, picked up a pack of wicks and went through fittings until I found something that wouldn't drop into the neck and had the right size inner hole to hold the wick. You can actually buy kits off eBay including the fittings plus some hardware to actually hang the bottles by the neck and mount to the side of a post. My deck is open and I just wanted to sit the bottles around on the edge of the deck or on the table so I didn't go that route. This was one of the original posts I saw shared around Pinterest that got me interested in it:
http://www.designsponge.com/2009/08/diy-project-eriks-recycled-wine-bottle-torch.html

After trying a couple of copper fittings at about $6 each I found some aluminum fittings on eBay that I liked and they're cheaper (about $2.50 each) including the wick already in them. Just search for "Citronella Wick" and you'll find several vendors. The ones I have fit in most bottles including Patron Tequila and a couple of Scotch bottles I've had with wider necks, but would not fit in an 1800 Tequila bottle that was wider.