https://www.heritagesteamsupplies.co.uk/lubricators-accessories/worsted-wool/worsted-wool-lubricator-kit

Would cotton string, e.g. garden or parcel twine work, provided it’s a moderately loose fit? Not synthetic fibre, that might be less effective.

It’s a good idea to lift the wick out of the tube or the oil when the engine’s stored, simply to minimise needlessly oiling everything else!

A representative drawing in one of my reference books shows the worsted wick spiralled round with thin wire, to help its use. Something like fuse-wire perhaps.

Terry, break up an old charger, extract the thin copper wire and double it up, and wrap round a pencil, make a spiral. Get a ball of worsted wool, (this is wool where all the fibres run in the same direction) from your local wool shop, double that up, thread it through the copper wire spiral, pull it all tight to make a copper/wool wick, and cut to length, and insert down the hole. you can remove the lubricator, hold it in a vice and fill with oil, and make sure it drips if you like.

Chris Gunn.

Well, you can make a worsted trimming as described, I used a few threads from an old WOOLLEN jumper.  Polyester will not do!

HOWEVER, with big ends there are other choices.  You could put a round wire nail in the siphon tube, which lifts at the top of each crank rev to let a bit more oil in.  What I think the previous owner has done is to arrange the slot head grub screw seen in photo 1 to leave a fine clearance to the tube in photo 2.  Basically a crude valve, so flow is then adjusted using the grub screw and locked up with the lock nut.  In that case you need do nothing, but the arrangement won’t feed if you are ticking over for hours at a rally.

Martin