I have some jet lighters in my shop. I’m not a smoker but they are useful for other things too. My problem is that they seem to not work at all?
When I buy them they are fine, push the button, clear “click” sound and a fine hot jet of fire. After a while though, they simply won’t fire anymore, even though the little window shows that there’s plenty of gas inside.
Are these also using the normal propane/butane as regular lighters?
Usually problems with refillable butane lighters are because they have air trapped in them, and they need to be bled, lots of guides with pictures and such for that online but basically just take a small screwdriver and press the little fill valve until it stops hissing then refill it, do it in a well ventilated place away from sparks and open flames of course
Sometimes that valve is also slotted to make some adjustments and you can try fiddling with that
Yes, they use the same butane as other lighters, it’s not the same thing as lighter fluid in case that’s what you have in mind, it comes in sort of a little aerosol can with a skinny tube sticking out the top instead of a spray nozzle. I’m not aware of any propane lighters out there
Also, in my personal experience, torch lighters just tend to go bad after a while and no amount of fiddling with them will make them reliable again. To be fair I’ve always had cheap torch lighters so maybe that’s just a case of getting what you pay for, maybe nicer lighters are more reliable.
Thank you for the tip about bleeding the air out, I will look into that.
Yes, the gaseous version, not fluid. Cans here in Europe are typically marked as “propane/butane” so maybe it’s some mix of those gases.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the lighter gas we get here in the states is also a mix of gases, I’d be lying if I said I ever read the whole can so maybe it even says so somewhere in the fine print, but I’ve only ever seen it marked as butane here, so I figured I’d throw it out there in case someone reading it tried to refill their lighter from their grill tank