Oozing Goo - The Lava Lamp Syndicate

Well, while I'm waiting for my goo kit, I was going to try experimenting with changing the water in my 52 oz purple neon.  The wax is ok, but the water is really super hazy as you know.  I've been searching around on here a bit, but I cannot find the thread that I read when I first joined on changing up the water.  Anyone??

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OK, I did it!!!  I did it!!  I am no longer a lava lamp virgin!!!  I cracked open my very 1st lava lamp!!!  Dumped out the crap liquid.  Put some distilled in, swirled around the best I could.  I really couldn't clean the globe the greatest as I still had the wax in there.  Put a squirt of dish washing liquid in, melted some Celtic Sea Salt down (didn't have Epsom salt and no way to get to the store, lol), added a few tips of a straw in (about 3)  and fired her up!!!!  At first it went crazy and I thought oh god......I'm think I'm still doing a regoo on this, but wanted to get acquainted with opening up a lamp.  The cap came off quite easily with a few prys of a small flat head screw driver and only needs a tiny bit of tightening to stay back on.  I'm leaving it loose for now because like I said I may still do a regoo but it looks pretty good so time will tell.  If it stays clear, I may just regoo my son's neon green because that wax is definitely fried.

 

Now the flow is pretty nice.  Question though??  If the flow is kind of slow is there any way or any thing I can add to make it faster?  It's snaking the way I like it, oh nevermind, lol, i'm leaving it alone.  I'll post a vid.  So I guess the celtic sea salt was ok to use after all.

if you want to speed up the flow, add more salt solution.

Ok, sorry guys, to keep reposting like this, I'm just so excited!!!!  Imagine my 1st regoo......this was just a fluid change.  I just didn't think it would flow again after I messed with it.  I watched a youtube video of a fluid change and 15 out of 20 comments by people who have done this and they said their lava just kind of domed and sat there so I was nervous, but thought, oh hell, i'm just gonna regoo it anyway.  So here it is!!!  Don't pay any attention to that early 90's pic of hubby and I on the right, oh and excuse the save 40 cents on Ragu coupon but that was all I had near me.  Haaa!!!  I wanted to show you how clear it was.  I didn't even take before pics but there are some on here somewhere I think.  I even put this one in the frig, bursted it, nothing.....now it's all pretty and new again.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3iQpRyjE8U

Still looks a bit hazy in the vid.  I think because I have a white wall in back of it.  It's much clearer looking through it towards the sun away from the white wall.  It's also flowing faster.  I guess it just had to get a bit hotter. 

 


 
Carol Morrow said:

OK, I did it!!!  I did it!!  I am no longer a lava lamp virgin!!!  I cracked open my very 1st lava lamp!!!  Dumped out the crap liquid.  Put some distilled in, swirled around the best I could.  I really couldn't clean the globe the greatest as I still had the wax in there.  Put a squirt of dish washing liquid in, melted some Celtic Sea Salt down (didn't have Epsom salt and no way to get to the store, lol), added a few tips of a straw in (about 3)  and fired her up!!!!  At first it went crazy and I thought oh god......I'm think I'm still doing a regoo on this, but wanted to get acquainted with opening up a lamp.  The cap came off quite easily with a few prys of a small flat head screw driver and only needs a tiny bit of tightening to stay back on.  I'm leaving it loose for now because like I said I may still do a regoo but it looks pretty good so time will tell.  If it stays clear, I may just regoo my son's neon green because that wax is definitely fried.

 

Now the flow is pretty nice.  Question though??  If the flow is kind of slow is there any way or any thing I can add to make it faster?  It's snaking the way I like it, oh nevermind, lol, i'm leaving it alone.  I'll post a vid.  So I guess the celtic sea salt was ok to use after all.

I thought so.  Salt.  I read Erin's thread and I think I might wait until I do a few runs and see how it goes.  Thanks!!

Took a few still's and I think the lamp looks way better with the still's then the video.  Maybe the way the light caught it in the vid.  This is my 52 oz purple neon.

Attachments:

I found the before pic......this was before I put it in the refrigerator.  Then it got worse.

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Looks like you did a great job!

What kind of dish soap and how much?

Believe it or not I have a generic brand.  Unemployment compensation will do that to you.  Shoprite brand Ultra Sosoft, lol!!  That's all I had in the house.  I'm sorry I didn't measure the soap.  I put like  a one second squirt in.  If I had to measure, I would say between like a half teaspoon.  Then I dissolved my Celtic Sea Salt in some cool water.  Held my finger over the straw and put about 3 of those in.  Not full straw.  You know when you put your finger on it, it collects some liquid in the bottom of the straw.  I did all of this at once after filling it with the distilled water.  Plugged it in and waited.  I just did my son's neon green 52 oz.  His lava is fried so it is now a weird color yellow.  To compensate for that, I'm going to add a few drops of the McCormick green dye in to the water.  I'm doing it while it's flowing.  I hope that's ok.  I want to make sure I don't over saturate the water.  So his will end up yellow lava/green liquid.  Should be interesting!!  Pics to follow.  Oh and Keith, the dish liquid says on the bottle contains surfactants.  Don't know if that makes a difference.  I think pretty much anything with glycerine will act as a surfactant, but maybe this has a higher concentration of them because I've had luck with this receipe so far with 2 lamps. 

Just wanted to ADD:  These are newer china manufactured lamps that I am working on with this receipe.  I don't know how it would work on a vintage.  I don't have enough courage to mess with them, lol!!!  I'm doing lamps that are "no hope" lamps.......

Project #2:  My son's fried 52 oz Neon Green........Changed the water and by George just got first sign's of flow and floating lava!!!!  Yea!!!!  Bouyancy of the water is good.  Next since the lava is fried and the coil has rusy looking gunk on it, this lamp is definitely going to be a regoo'er, but I still thought it would make a great experiment lamp!!!  My son wants to put a few drops of McCormick green in to color the water and hide the fact that the lava is kind of a weird yellow now. 

 

 

ok, decent flow after water change!!!  Added green food coloring.  I liked it better clear, but my son wants the green.  I bet it's going to look nice in his room at nite.  It's his bedtime lamp that's why it fried!!!  It will def tone it's brightness down some because the lava was a weird bright yellow of some sort as you can see from the above pics of it in warm up phase.  So here it is...Oh, I do think it will continue to become clearer because I accidently dropped some food coloring around the top neck, went to get it out with my pinky finger and accidently poked a blob of wax and it broke up in a zillion tiny bubbles as if it were shook.  I think once it cools down and they become one again it should become clearer. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeOUGtMxIVA

 

 

 

 

Some stills of the transformation.  I notice with these fluid changes (also Erin pointed out) the more runs you do, the lava kind of has to "normalize" itself again.  This change I shook up a bit too much and sticking my pinky in it when it was flowing didn't help, but there are a lot of tiny wax bubbles that I think will settle down when the lamp cools down and hopefully remelt into the rest of the wax.  I know my purple lamp cleared more and more as I ran it after the initial fluid change.  The air bubbles also settled down. 

 

 

 

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