India Elephant Lighter Restoration

India Elephant Lighter Restoration

Restoration of a BROKEN elephant cigarette lighter from India in a very poor condition. I will do my best to rescue this indian beauty and bring this spectacular animal back to its best form.

A subscriber from India sent me this very damaged cigarette lighter from his hometown New Delhi. He was so kind also to send me an elephant statue of Lord Ganesha or Ganesh – a very worshiped Hindu god. Its very fine and will now be a true friend at my new Awesome Playground.

Restoration Process
I started by wondering if I really could restore this lighter. It was old and the elephant part was made of thin pewter with several holes. Anybody who has worked with thin pewter and trying to repair holes in thin pewter knows it is a NIGHTMARE. You need heat to fix it, but too much heat and it will all melt down. I had to repair 2 holes and I also created a new leg and attached it to the elephant.

The lighter part was made of cheap and thin mixed metal it looked like brass but it wasn’t. So yes, it’s not as easy as doing a Zippo lighter restoration. But here we go! AWESOME as I am 😉

I started by separating the lighter part from the elephant part – I did use a bit of heat but easy job. I choose to use baking soda when doing the sandblasting part because I think that regular sand would have gone thru the thin pewter and would have vanished to many details away from the elephant.
After that I did the pewter casting job to repair the holes. I started by filling the elephant with special casting sand and casted the two holes with success. I protected the surrounding area with clay. I also casted a new leg for the Indian beauty. I used a lot of time hammering and grinding to get it right and to get the new leg to fit in on the old animal.

The lighter part was an easy fix. The metal was just so poor that I didn’t separate anything. I just cleaned it as it was in my mini tumbler. I added a new flint stone and a new lighter spring, a new wick and added some new cotton balls. I filled it with Zippo lighter petrol, and I ignited, and it worked very well.

It was a cool restoration video to make and and my first item from India that I have ever restored. Hopefully more to come. ❤