a pack of tea candles and several small glass canning jars would be an inexpensive alternate... mini hurricane lamps

it may be a Florida designation, but hurricane lamp is just a candle in a glass jar, so the flame is well below the top opening and no bottom air vent....can withstand a pretty good wind without blowing out

In the winter months Walgreens often has a bag of 40 tea lights on sale for $3.00. At our Dollar General I found citronella tea lights in boxes of 10 for .50 cents on clearance. I only bought four boxes however. Live and learn eh?

Wow, thanks Dagny! That really helped! It showed me what to buy. Okay, here's an update. I purchased two dozen of these 8 hour liquid paraffin candles. They arrived today and despite the dimensions given on the website they are indeed the precise diameter of a tea light. My feeling is that these really should drop right into a UCO Micro or Mini. Maybe tomorrow I'll have time to snap a pic of them one atop the other to show the sizes of them both. The liquid one is a bit taller, but probably not enough to make a difference in use.

I'll probably order one from Amazon soon and try it. Worst case I have another lantern and I'll just use it with tea light candles. Best case I can use either wax or fuel cells. Now, can anyone advise me which is preferable, the Mini or the Micro? I understand that the Micro is collapsible, which should somewhat protect the glass and make it more compact. Yet the collapsible part was the point of failure in my Original UCO- one of the pillars snapped off cleanly after one week of use. The Mini may be more robust, aside from the exposed globe. It seems the Micro is far more popular, though. Has anyone here actually used the Mini?

You make some excellent points, and I meant to address them. I understand they're a fire danger, and I don't really plan to use them "camping" so much as have them as a survival item. In this case the flammability is one of the reasons I want to carry them. If you can't get a fire started with an 8 hour fuel cell you don't belong in the woods.

If I do use the product outdoors I'll take considerable care to design a plan to do so as safely as possible and minimize all possible risks.

Okay, I was too excited to wait! Here are a few pics.

First is the 8 hour paraffin next to a beeswax tealight:



Here's one with the wax part of the candle removed from the aluminum holder:




Now here's the cool part! The paraffin cell will very snuggly fit inside the aluminum insert! So not only is it the exact right size, using the insert will probably insure it's held more firmly.





My enthusiasm got the best of me and I ordered both the Mini & Micro! Like I said, worst case they work better with wax candles but I know the fuel cells will fit.

Great find. I'm not sure how hot it gets inside the UCO candle lantern. Does the draft keep the interior reasonably cool? It will be interesting to see how the plastic bottle reacts when burned in an enclosed space.

Good point, but these things were designed to burn in very small "lanterns". I've used them in restaurants since the 80's. There are very small "lanterns" on each table, and each contains one of these cells. Of course there are different sizes; some restaurants use 16 hour cells, some use 8, some use 32. But every single one is used in a lamp/lantern that's fractionally larger than the cell.

My decades of using these paraffin fuel cells is what drew me to this project in the first place.

That said, I totally agree- the Micro is very small, a bit smaller than the table lanterns they're usually burned in. But they're also made of aluminum & tempered glass. My hopes are high but reality will have the final word.

Okay, I'm gonna keep this short- I'm working on a paper that's due Thursday but I got my UCO Micro wanted to give some initial impressions. First off the candle holder will grip the paraffin cells but it's held more securely when the cell is inserted into an empty candle tin. No surprise there, really. As is the cell rides a little higher in the lantern than I'd like, and it comes it's about 2 mm too tall to completely collapse the lantern while the paraffin cell is in it. Now, the cell will rest very solidly in the bottom of the lantern if you take the holder out but then it's just a tad low. It does work and burn just fine. I let it go for half an hour and it didn't get too hot or give me any issues.

I'm sure that with a little tweaking I can mod or alter it to either lower the cell with the holder or raise it a bit without.

Right now I've blown out the paraffin and I've lit a beeswax tea light in it. I want to see how well it burns and if I have time, how long. It sure does smell nice, though!

Anyways, back to my paper. Maybe I'll take a few pics in the next day or two after I present my paper & PP to the class. "The Management Challenges of Globalization", a real thriller to be sure!

No pics yet but my UCO Mini showed up today. Very nice! Larger than the Micro by a bit and not collapsible, but it's got a much larger glass globe, so it seems like it puts out more light. It's simpler than the Micro but as it lacks that wobbly/flimsy slide opening system it feels more robust.

I burned an 8 hour paraffin in it and it worked wonderfully! I'm not sure if it's worth hacking/messing with the Micro for this purpose. The Micro works well with candles, while the Mini seems almost made for fuel cells.

I'll undoubtedly do some more tinkering and get some pics but I'm liking them both so far.

I haven't had time to take pics yet, and maybe you're all sick of this thread ( ) but the 8 hour paraffin cells are a slam-dunk, home-run-ball with the Mini! It's incredibly well designed, probably accidentally, for this purpose. As an added bonus the plastic tube it's packaged in fits perfectly in a padded cozy (w/drawstring) that I happened to have.

Still, for those who are interested I'll try to snap some pics of all the products mentioned.