Wax and fluid change for Mediterranean Consort - Lessons Learned

I am just sharing in case someone else decides to refurb a consort.

Let me start by saying that all Consort bottles are not created equally. Depending on the year, they may be slightly taller or slightly fatter. I learned this because I took a bottle from a black Mediterranean and refurbished it with wax and fluid from some 90's globes. Unfortunately, when I went to put it on the base of my Gold Mediterranean, it was a pubic hair too wide and would not seat correctly! There goes hours worth of work!

I ended up cleaning out the original bottle by following some instructions someone else supplied on this site, but basically cleaned best I could with a brush, soap and boiling water; rinsed well, filled it with rubbing alcohol and let it sit overnight; cleaned again (brush, boiling water and Dawn soap), rinsed with DI water, dried, filled with original LL fluid to make sure the bottle walls were coated to avoid the dreaded "wax stuck to side of globe" situation; popped in the coil. Although not the best method, I put the wax in one small chunk at a time through the bottle opening, dumped the fluid in a container, melted the wax on the base, cooled, and added fluid back into bottle.

When the lamp would get warm it still was not flowing as "clean" as I wanted so I adjusted with a very very small amount of perc. Still not flowing to my liking - I am very picky!

The Consorts use, what appears to be, the same coil as the vintage 16.5" globes; I found a smaller coil that I believe was from an unknown glitter lamp. It was about 3/4 the size of the original coil. This smaller coil made a significant difference. In my quest to keep the bottle as original as possible I actually removed the smaller coil and replaced with the original, but this only confirmed that the smaller coil was a much better solution.

Anyway, my $0.02 contribution to the community.

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