Just Another "from scratch" Project

[Anil Celik]

Hello

Like everyone involved in the lavalamp hobby, I have been following your forum for years, but I have only just become a member, so first of all, thank you guys. For about a month I have been trying to build a lavalamp from scratch. I made several unsuccessful attempts here with many different materials (soy wax, waxes with different oil ratios) and on my 7th attempt I managed to make a lavalamp using paraffin wax, PERC and microcrystalline wax.

My main issue is this. When I first fill the lavalamp, the specific gravity of the wax seems correct, meaning the wax stays at the bottom. However, when the lamp heats up, a blooming effect occurs, just like in my original lavalamp, but this time it happens far more intensely. As the wax melts and tries to rise, it lifts all the wax sitting at the base of the lamp and pushes it upward, breaking the contact between the bottom and the wax. Because of this, the wax never fully melts and turns into a thick blob that gathers in the middle and upper parts of the lavalamp, as you can see in the photos I attached. What do you think I might be doing wrong?

[Anil Celik]

I realized that I had not gone into much detail because I had been busy compiling all the notes I took throughout the entire project, and I thought that adding a bit more detail would at least help bring out clearer ideas about what the problem might be. So I would like to give more detail now.

RAW MATERIALS I USED

PARAFFIN WAX

As I mentioned before, I bought and tested almost every paraffin I could find on the market in Turkey with different oil contents. I started with the paraffins that had the highest oil percentage, and I noticed that as the oil content dropped, the consistency of the lava we obtained improved. While making these evaluations, I always observed how much the candles melted under the same conditions on a hot plate and within the same time frame.

*5 percent oil content: This was the hardest paraffin to melt among the ones I bought. Later, I learned that this type of paraffin is mostly used for mold making, which explained why its melting point was higher.

*1.5 percent oil content: This type was also very hard to melt under my conditions. It also turned out to be used for silicone mold work.

*Microcrystalline paraffin: According to what I learned from this forum, this one is used to make the lava more opaque, but it is extremely hard to melt or maybe I bought the wrong kind. Every time I tested it, it gave me trouble. Do we really not have any alternative to make the lava opaque?

Since the paraffins I mentioned above were the hardest to melt in my tests, I wanted to evaluate them separately.

The paraffins below gave very similar and generally good results.

*Gulf wax: In Turkey, this is sold as Iranian paraffin. It is used as a multipurpose lubricant. This paraffin gave really good results.
*German wax: This one also performed very well, and the paraffin I used in this project is this type.

There is another paraffin I want to mention here, which I saw referenced in posts on this forum, and that is soy wax. I could not produce a proper specimen with it because it clouded even the distilled water. Yes, its melting point may be low, but the haze it leaves in the water is quite annoying (or maybe there is a specific process required when using this wax and I might be skipping it, I am not sure).

PERC OR BRAKLEEN?
Like everyone else, the first shopping list I put together for making a lava lamp included BRAKLEEN brake cleaner. Since the can does not list any ingredients, I do not know exactly what is inside, but the first recipe I followed said something like there is already PERC in it, so using it should be enough. BRAKLEEN never gave good results in any of my tests, and thanks to this forum and you wonderful people, I learned that I needed to use PERC, and I did get good results with it.

LIQUID PARAFFIN (LAMP OIL)
In Turkey, everything has several different names, and you run into this problem constantly when doing DIY projects (I would love to write about this in detail in another post because it is hilarious). In the market, there is liquid paraffin called kerosene, liquid paraffin called lamp oil, and products sold under random names invented by companies. I cannot afford to buy all of them, so I tried to be selective and bought one used for medical purposes, one sold everywhere as lamp oil, and one sold by laboratory suppliers with 99.9 percent purity. In the experiments I described above, I used the commonly available lamp oil.

While running the tests, I did wonder whether I should give soy wax another chance. But you have more experience with this, so do you think I should try soy wax again?