Crestworth Rocket aka Princess update

[Critter]

Well I have enjoyed my vintage Crestworth Princess since I finished the restoration and got it flowing.

I figured that the fourth and final Goo Kit attempt would last me for a long time.  Well last month I fired it up and WTF....the lamp started to get warm and the Goo Kit wax stuck like mad it even left light skid marks all up the glass.  Now I did nothing custom, this is a full on Goo Kit...2 quarts of Goo and 8 ounces of Surf.....it just didn't last and I bet I had no more than about 800 hours of run time on it.  

So out of necessity I had to do it over.  I decided this time to use Lava Lite wax and I had some yellow wax from a recently failed 2010 lamp.  I initially decided I would do the lamp with the yellow wax and a hot pink fluid.  I did that but in the end I did not like the color as much as I thought I would....in the lamp the hot pink looked more "Rose" colored.  Outside of the lamp it looked nicely pink but the copper base seemed to introduce enough copper color to the fluid that it made the fluid appear different than I wished.  It did flow great though.  In the pic below the colors of this attempt look pretty good but in person it was not as nice looking.....the flash pics really seemed to enhance the "pink fill" but in reality it was more boring than pictured.

I then decided to do the fluid once again this time in a bright green.  I just love this combo and it's going to stay this way.  Interestingly the re-gooing with Lava brand wax went without issue on the first attempt.  No sticking, no struggling.....it was so nice.  I had only prepped the cylinder by washing it up with Dawn and boiling hot water, no solvents.   This time though I used my homemade surf with SLS instead of Magma Tower surf.  This lamp is just 100% Lava Brand wax, purified water, kosher salt and my surf.  The fluid is set of a specific gravity of 1.011.  The lamp the wax came from was at 1.013 when it was emptied.  I wanted to slow the flow a bit and tweaked it down in density a tad.

Here are a series of pictures showing the sticking, the failed pink in the lamp and finally some pics of the yellow/green lamp.  I have not sealed the lamp yet again so the pics don't have the top on yet.  I want to run it for a few days to see if I need or want to tweak the contents any.  So far it flows like a champ and the wax is much more active than the Goo Kit wax was.  The Goo Kit liked to go in cycles that lasted about three minutes each and there was a brief pause of an empty fluid column
between cycles.  This wax is constantly active, it goes from long serpentine snakes to a dozen or more undulating blobs and back again and the fluid column always has something going on.

What do you all think?

Oh and I posted a video to here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiS8XY9d_t4

It's not a great video and promise to do another when the lamp is recapped.

[Brad]

you must be very patient to go through all of this trouble and the lamp still be in one piece.  that really stinks with the MT goo.  the SG you achieved relative to the original is a nice touch.  i hope this "new" batch of wax holds out (i'm sure it will).

[Keith]

Love the green!!  It has a nice "sci-fi" glow to it.  Sucks having to redo everything though.

[Critter]

Thanks guys.

Keith that is what I was hoping to achieve a sorta funky retro color scheme as it fits the vintage of the lamp. I think the pink yellow would achieve that too but in the end this green yellow works better for this particular lamp.

Brad...yeah it was frustrating but I just love this lamp and am so thrilled to have it around. It is a labor of love for me. That said I don't want to have to refill it anytime soon.

This new wax has an interesting story behind it too and I will post about it in the near future.....it's a shocker LOL!

[Verax]

Looks great now!  Nice work!

[Todd Miller]

Looks awesome !

You said you were using Lava Lite wax, are you dumping USA lava

lamps for the wax & liquid ?

[VOXul]

Shame about the lifespan of the MT goo, what a pain in the ass to change out such a massive vessel! It looks to flow real nice with the Lava wax, crazy that is Chinese wax, I guess it has more power in numbers

[Brad]

chinese wax you say?  that flow is really nice.  this suggests that the chinese wax is OK, but the liquid is in need of a tweak.

[Erin]

LOVE the yellow and green! What I wouldn't give to have a lamp like this. :) It's so beautiful. I would not have the patience you do, though. Well done Bill!

[Critter]

Thanks Erin.  I guess I am fairly patient, but also seem to possess a healthy dose of crazy too.  I really don't want to do this lamp again any time soon.  I want to make a new, leak tight sealing device for it too.  I want to pack up the original rubber seal and metal plate system and use something that I can seal off completely.  The way these lamps were designed to close up with the plate and gasket is not tight and when the lamp runs moisture builds up under the copper lid and tends to run down the bottle.  I plan to use some thin acrylic and build a slightly elevated lid that I can silicone tight around the edge.  So I want this thing to run reliably for at least 1/2 a decade.

I shut if off completely last night and a 1/2 hour ago fired it back up from cold to see what it does with this Lava Lite wax fill. Right now it is spiking like mad and in a few hours we will see how it does from a cold start.  I hope there is no sticking, I am confident that this will be the case the Lava wax seems to be less likely to stick than the M.T. Goo.

Here is a pic of it spiking as I type this:

[Loren]

TOTALLY loving the green/yellow!

So amazing...this is like my dream lamp. (@_@)

[Critter]

Thanks Loren. It is a striking color combo for sure. Yellow has to be my favorite color wax as it is so versatile with many fluid colors.

[Erin]

Wow, the spiking is amazing. Seems odd that Chinese Lava Lite wax flows that good. Hmmm...