Repairing Vintage Lavalites

[JC Harris]

I have a dozen or so Lavalites. Most are the 32oz ones and a couple are like 24oz. I bought a 'Mini-Goo kit' and have a couple of questions:

1. One of them, the wax seems 'dead'... it just lays on the bottom. Is there any way to 're-energise' the wax or does one simply replace it?

2. Can I  apply dye directly to a heated bowl of liquid goo (ie. dye the goo -before- it goes into the lamp)? The instruction kit seems to imply that you pour in plain goo and then somehow add dye to the goo once it's already flowing in the lamp. That seems complicated to me. Or is it easier than it sounds?

3. I have a couple of lamps that had ugly blue water. I drained that out and replaced with distilled water+surfactant. What happens now is that I have to give the lamp a good shake for it to start making blobs. Otherwise, the wax just stays on the bottom. Did I do something wrong? Or is there something I can add to the water to increase the 'floatation' of the wax? Or maybe the new surfactant isn't compatible with old goo?

4. Finally, obviously I had to break the bottle caps to open. I have some blank bottle caps from beer making, but no capper. Is there some way to re-seal a bottle cap properly without a capper machine?

THANKS IN ADVANCE!

---JC

[Keith]

1. It's possible, depending on what the problem is.  Replacement may be the best option though.

2. A lot of members color the goo-kit wax first because you have better control but either way works.  A little bit of dye goes a long way.

3. Distilled water plus surfactant isn't enough.  Lava lamp and most lamp makers use additives in the wax that make it heavier.  They also use additives in the water to increase density.  You will have to add something.  I prefer propylene glycol, others use epsom salt.  Search the discussions for either of these to find more info.

4.  Here is a method for recapping without a capper http://oozinggoo.ning.com/profiles/blogs/lamp-repair  scroll down about 2/3 of the way.

***DO NOT SHAKE THE LAMP!!!

[JC Harris]

1. 2 of the 3 lamps where the wax was stuck at the bottom are 24oz. The other is a 32oz.

2. OK, I shook the lamps... and it did the trick for the 24oz ones. Maybe they just got 'stuck'. Nothing bad happened. I promise not to make it a regular practice, but why is shaking the lamp bad?

3. It didn't help with the 32oz. The 32oz had another problem where a LOT of the wax was stuck to the sides... so I followed the cleaning instructions post here, saved the remaining 'good' wax and tried re-using with Gookit surfactant and dist. water. Maybe there isn't enough wax left to 'float'.

4. Can one mix 'original' wax with Gookit wax? Kim from Magma wrote me that you can, but I kinda have my doubts. Can anyone confirm?

5. Where you wrote: "Distilled water plus surfactant isn't enough." According to Kim at Magma, this is -exactly- the instructions. So again, a bit confused.

Sorry if these have been asked/answered 5 squillion times. I've got like 12 of these... collected over many years... and I don't wanna mess 'em up.

Thanks again.

[Keith]

JC Harris said:

2. OK, I shook the lamps... and it did the trick for the 24oz ones. Maybe they just got 'stuck'. Nothing bad happened. I promise not to make it a regular practice, but why is shaking the lamp bad?

Shaking the lamps breaks down the wax, maybe not the first time but eventually

3. It didn't help with the 32oz. The 32oz had another problem where a LOT of the wax was stuck to the sides... so I followed the cleaning instructions post here, saved the remaining 'good' wax and tried re-using with Gookit surfactant and dist. water. Maybe there isn't enough wax left to 'float'.

4. Can one mix 'original' wax with Gookit wax? Kim from Magma wrote me that you can, but I kinda have my doubts. Can anyone confirm?

5. Where you wrote: "Distilled water plus surfactant isn't enough." According to Kim at Magma, this is -exactly- the instructions. So again, a bit confused.

In your original post it sounds like you are using old Lava light wax, if that is the case water and surfactant is not enough, but if you are using magma tower wax it should be

Sorry if these have been asked/answered 5 squillion times. I've got like 12 of these... collected over many years... and I don't wanna mess 'em up.

Thanks again.

[Carol]

JC, I have kitted many a lamps and have at length discussions with Kim at Magma on the phone.  I am with Keith as to being confused as to what you actually are doing here.  If you are doing a straight up "goo kit", then cleaning the globe thoroughly, using 100% goo kit wax, distilled water and surf is all it takes.  If you are not achieving flow from this receipe, there could be other factors that are going into play here.  The most biggest problem is that the magma goo needs a bit more heat then the standard lava from Lava Lite.  For instance, my 52 ounce lamps that used to be Lava Lite lamps which used a 40 watt bulb, now are goo-kitted and need a 60 watt to even achieve flow.  Once they are flowing I try to keep them down to max 3/4 or less (you can see my post on my discussion with Kim on my "fogging" on inside of my globe problems).  I've found that adding more surf does little if anything to achieve flow, but temperature is more the name of the game here.

 

If you are trying to do a wax hybrid of 1/2 magma, 1/2 Lava Lite wax, then that is a whole different ball game as Keith said Lava Lite wax is a totally different chemistry.  I've never attempted that, but I have known other members have. 

[Brad]

for #3 in your original post - you need to increase the density of the water in order for the wax to rise and fall.  this can be achieved by heating the globe until the wax melts, then add small pinches of epsom salt to the globe until the wax rises.  wait 10 minutes or so between additions of salt to make sure you don't overshoot the amount needed.  if you do, the wax will float, and you will need to dump some water out of the globe and replace it with distilled.

[JC Harris]

Dear Carol/Keith/Brad,

Thanks for the replies...

I had a lengthy phone chat with Kim before ordering a Mini-GooKit ... he certainly seemed passionate. He explicitly said 3 things that contradict what you've written here so sorry for my confusion... however... what you say agrees with my personal experience.

1. Kim said that one could use original 'Lava Lite' wax with GooKit 'surfactant'+H20... no other chemicals needed.

A. For a 24oz lamp I just replaced the blue water with H20+surfactant. It -seemed- to work---after I gave it a shake. (Which I promise never to do again.)

B. But for my 32oz it did not. This is one where the wax had stuck to the sides so -maybe- the old wax is just worn out. In this case I wanted to save the old wax because it's a Purple colour which I haven't seen too often. I will try adding a bit of epsom salt and if that doesn't work, I'll just redo with 'Magma'.

2. Kim also stressed (I mean -several- times) how the 'Magma' needed LESS wattage than a traditional Lava Lite. Since my experiments have been with Lava Lite wax I don't think this is an issue for me... unless mixing the Lava Lite wax with the H20+surfactant changes the heat requirement. I only mention it because I was hoping to use -lower- wattage bulbs to save some energy/heat.

3. FYI: The reason I tried using the old Lava Lite wax with H20+surfactant was something else Kim said: he was adamant that traditional Lava Lites did not use any 'chemicals', but I -swear- when I opened up that 32oz (the one with bits stuck to the side) I smelled -something- distinctly 'petroleum'... maybe it's just the wax, But he insisted there was nothing in the Lava Lite liquid which made the reaction 'go' but water. From what y'all write, there is -something- else in the original formula which alters the specific gravity so the wax 'blobs'. (I recall from org. chem 400 yrs ago). I only mention this because I'm thinking about making a REALLY large one some day and I'd like to understand the chemistry a bit more... also I coulda sworn the original inventor had a patent on the -liquid-.

Anyhoo. THANKS AGAIN for the patient replies. I have endured decades of snickers about these things in my house and it's good to know there are others that enjoy them.

---JC

Brad said:

for #3 in your original post - you need to increase the density of the water in order for the wax to rise and fall.  this can be achieved by heating the globe until the wax melts, then add small pinches of epsom salt to the globe until the wax rises.  wait 10 minutes or so between additions of salt to make sure you don't overshoot the amount needed.  if you do, the wax will float, and you will need to dump some water out of the globe and replace it with distilled.

[Brad]

no problem at all.  i've never tried goo kit surfactant, distilled water, and lava lite wax together, so i can't say if that will work or not.  using logic, i don't think it would work because it would change the density of distilled water, and goo kit wax flows in unaltered distilled water.

however, i know for a fact that lava lite wax and distilled water will NOT flow unless the density of the water is increased.

[Chris]

I'm a little late to this party, but I restored 2 lamps over the weekend (my first goo kit experience!) and here is how I approached a couple of your questions:

1. I carefully pried the bottle cap off of the bottle with a flathead screwdriver, one little bit at a time going around in a circle until finally the cap was loose enough to come off. To recap, I used a hose clamp and a flathead screwdriver to tighten the cap back on little by little until it was no longer spinning on the bottle. You just have to be careful that you don't tighten it so much that it breaks the glass. 

2. I colored the dye by stirring it into the melted wax with the little plastic spoon BEFORE pouring it into the clean bottle. This seemed to work fine for me. For the one I dyed green, while the wax was about half dry in the bottle, I decided it wasn't going to be green enough, so I dropped a couple more flecks of dye into the wax while it was drying, and used my funnel tube to poke the dye down inside the unmelted part of the wax. I did this because I was worried that if it sat on top of the wax, it would dye my water green, which I did NOT want. This seemed to work--the wax re-hardened over the top of the dye and it mixed into the wax fine without coloring my water.

I used distilled water and the surfactant from the goo kit, and that is ALL I used. The two lamps (One 90's Silver Streak, one China Lava Lite) are running absolutely beautifully, though I will say that I have to run them at full blast to get them flowing and then dim them down to about 75% to keep things calm.