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.

[Chantal]

Ahhhhh, that's awesome. Great job!

[Critter]

Thank you Chantal. It is nice to see you back here again. Plenty of us have missed you.




Chantal said:

Ahhhhh, that's awesome. Great job!

[Chantal]

Thanks Critter... Time to start adding to my collection again ;-)

[Jonas Clark-Elliott]

Yellow/green looks amazing! Hard to believe it's Chinese wax.

[Johnny]

Looks devine, hopefully it will keep going without sticking, my wax level in mine ( bottle in base ) is about 1cm below the copper,  How long does it take to get blobbing with solid wax?

[Critter]

My level is similar Johnny and it takes about 30 min to spike and about 4ish hours to flow. But once running I leave it on for days and days.

[Critter]

LOL Analog, me too. Thank you!

[Silas Jordan]

I'm in the process of starting to make a Princess replica, or at least a lamp very much inspired by one, and this may have pushed me in a certain direction. I had been tossing the idea around of doing either yellow liquid and orange wax or green liquid and yellow wax. I have a bunch of salvaged wax from 90's Lava-Lite globes, as well as yellow wax from 2 2010 Grandes. Seeing this green/yellow in an actual Princess makes me like the combo even more.

Quick question though. How much wax do you put in yours? Do you have a volume or weight, or even just how many inches in the globe?

Thank you!

[Critter]

It takes about two quarts of wax to get the fill where it needs to be. 

[Silas Jordan]

Good to know, thank you! I've found a Grande, at least 2008-2010ish, has just about a quart of wax. And talking with someone with an Imperial, they had roughly ~1.7-1.8 quarts in there. The Princess globe is just about 6" taller, so a bit more wax makes sense.

It's also super convenient, because I can likely just mix the 2 Grande waxes I have, whip up some master fluid, and call it good.

Long story short, I'm using a GL200 lamp from Goolamp as a base, and building a base/stand with wooden legs in a similar fashion to the Princess. Just waiting for parts to arrive, and probably ~6 weeks to get the globe made and shipped it sounds like.

Critter said:

It takes about two quarts of wax to get the fill where it needs to be. 

[Critter]

The good from two Grande lamps would be right at two quarts so that is enough.  The diameter of a vintage Princess cylinder is about 5-6 mm larger than the 200mm goolamp cylinder so you may find that two quarts is a little too much so you should have plenty.  I don’t know if Grande wax will stretch 30” in a continuous column of wax but it is worth a try.  I made my current pink wax myself and the yellow wax in the pictures was Colossus wax that I harvested from my Colossus that exploded on me…that’s another story. 

[Silas Jordan]

Yeah, the old Imperial and Princess were, well, imperial standards, right? Both at 8", where modern scientific glass manufacturers make 200mm, which is where I assume he sources his globes. The Grande wax seems to stretch pretty well in other similar size applications that I've seen. There is a guy somewhat local to me here in MA that has a 10" diameter, 30" tall globe in a custom lamp with modern Grande wax and gets good stretch out of it. So I suspect with some coaxing from some surfs it should flow well. I also wouldn't be surprised if the Grande and Colossus used similar, if not the same, wax blends. I saw the tragedy of your colossus and noticed the wax looks basically identical to the wax I have saved from those 2010 Grandes.

But if I can't get the flow I want, I also have the wax from many 90's 32oz Lava-Lite globes which also seems to flow well when put in larger globes, like a Grande. One way or another, I'll get it flowing, haha.

Critter said:

The good from two Grande lamps would be right at two quarts so that is enough.  The diameter of a vintage Princess cylinder is about 5-6 mm larger than the 200mm goolamp cylinder so you may find that two quarts is a little too much so you should have plenty.  I don’t know if Grande wax will stretch 30” in a continuous column of wax but it is worth a try.  I made my current pink wax myself and the yellow wax in the pictures was Colossus wax that I harvested from my Colossus that exploded on me…that’s another story.