Lava Lamp Scientists

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Comment by Jennifer on April 4, 2010 at 1:47pm

Wow, great idea! I have found springs at my local Ace hardware, but they are so stiff and thick that I have to get my husband to fix them for me and then still, he usually scrapes up his fingers.
Thanks!

Comment by MagicLamp on April 4, 2010 at 1:46pm

About the wax I used: I found it best to use high-quality candles with all-solid color wax. They cost more, but they are worth it, for they have great opaqueness and color consistency compared to white waxes with just external color coatings. The black wax comes from such candles. It occasionally shows bubbles or some blobs get too transparent, but otherwise it has a near pro-grade opaqueness. I will post the candle brand if I find it. They were quite expensive though, like 3 Euro for just two candles, enough for 1 lamp.

Comment by MagicLamp on April 4, 2010 at 1:43pm

Just a tip I felt like sharing with fellow lava lamp scientists: when making my homemade lamps: while the chinese one had its own coil, one of the challenges I faced was finding a way to provide the other two with their own coils....and hardware stores don't sell ready-made springs, apparently. I tried with electrical copper wire and metallic dish scrubbing brushes, but they didn't work well (too soft?).

Some pages on the internet suggested twisting your own coils from iron/inox steel, but I found an acceptable solution with materials I had at home: I just daisy chained some inox paper clips together (use your imaginarion, you can just make a girdle or form a flower-like structure, just threw them in the lamp and twisted it around so they "open up" on the lamp's bottom. They work great and break the wax just fine.

Comment by MagicLamp on March 31, 2010 at 2:34am

Ah yeah.."Casper" was my first homemade lava lamp, made to replace the wax and fluid of a defective chinese one. I initially intended it to be blue on blue, so I got some tealights from LIDL which were blue...only to discover they were mostly white with just a flake of blue on the visible side. So yeah, in the end it turned out blue/white. The wax is just tealight wax, mostly white with a speck of blue and a solid pink one mixed in.

Comment by Jennifer on March 30, 2010 at 12:26pm

Nevermind-I see them on your profile. I love "black beauty". You must share some of your techniques. Your wax looks more opaque than I get mine, I'm always looking for ways to make it more opaque!

I love that you are naming them, like works of art! I do feel like this is such a neat creative outlet! Screw sculpting and painting!

Comment by Jennifer on March 30, 2010 at 12:23pm

Hey Magic Lamp-post pics! Is your blue/white one you did? Looks great! What kind of wax did you use?

Comment by MagicLamp on March 30, 2010 at 10:12am

With 3 lava lamps under my belt in under 2 weeks, I think I'll fit right in ;-)

Comment by StickStoneBone on January 12, 2010 at 5:57pm

You'd have better flow if you mixed the PEG with Pickling Salt. The Salt makes it flow fast, the PEG can then be seen visibly affecting as it 'zooms' about.

Comment by Andy Man on December 22, 2009 at 12:07pm

Conclusion: It will flow, so it is a very mellow motion lamp. But not an improvement over relying on the salt.

Comment by Andy Man on December 18, 2009 at 9:40pm

I just got a lamp flowing with just the Poly Glycol. I found that soap was still needed to counter act the surface tension issue of PG alone. It flows slow and round blobs. Different flow than the salt solution. I'll post pics in a few days if it still looks good.

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