Re-doing liquids

[Da9L]

A problem i have faced more than once and have never been able to understand how to recover..

When i redo liquids of my lamps i sometimes experience this problem..

You put in destilled water and add fog fluid / salt / glycerin / Pg or whatever you use to increase density of the liquid and you do this untill the wax eventually begins to rise.. But sometimes i get this flow

https://oozinggoo.ning.com/video/china-flow

Much wax at both top and bottom and one big blob flowing from top to bottom now and then.. In other words: very boring flow..

And i have no idea what to do with it .. The liquid seems both too dense (becasue of all the wax at the top) but also not dense enough (because of very slow flow) .. I add some SLES and it doesnt change much, but makes more column like shapes which is fine but the flow is still boring and slow.

Someone might argue that this is because of the wax, but ive in some situations been able to get the flow as i want later with the same wax and without knowing what makes the difference, because i allways do the same things

Does anyone of you in here have any idea what might cause this ? This is not exclusively seen on china lamps, but also some of my mathmos lamps.

[Erin]

I think it needs something to break up the wax a little. I don't know. I've had good luck replacing the liquid in older lamps (70s) but haven't tried with newer lamps. 

[Da9L]

Any suggestions to what that could be Erin ?

[Erin]

Have you tried something like Miracle Bubbles? It's what I've used. 

[Da9L]

Havent tried that.. Dont think you can get that exact thing in Denmark.. Whats the ingredients of Miracly Bubbles?

[Erin]

I don't know. Let's see: http://rsu19.org/msds/i/Imperial%20Miracle%20Bubbles.pdf 

Da9L said:

Havent tried that.. Dont think you can get that exact thing in Denmark.. Whats the ingredients of Miracly Bubbles?

[Da9L]

Okay nice, i will see if i can find anything with those things in it.. But you have had a problem with a lamp that was like in the video where it was fixed after you added some of that Miracly bubbles ?

[Erin]

I kinda got to that point with some of the older lamps I would fix. Just one blob moving up and down. So I would dump the liquid and start over. 

My documentation is here: http://oozinggoo.ning.com/forum/topics/lava-soup-replacing-the-liquid but this only really applies to older 60s/70s US formula and wax. 

[Da9L]

Just to update.. Iam still facing this problem in some of my lamps.. Havent tried out miracle bubbles yet though, but i've tried some different surfactants, but they all do the same.. Just one single blob up and down very slowly.. Boring .. :( Gonna go get some miracle bubbles tommorow !

[Da9L]

Another update.. I just tried out replacing SLES in my lamps with a density lower than water with miracle bubbles (or something like it) .. This have had a huge improvement in flow! This is quite interesting i think.. So now im finally able to fix the lamps i have that faces this problem. And all thanks goes to Erin!

[Erin]

You can only partially thank you. I think it was Lava Luva (Tiffany) who originally clued me in to using Miracle Bubbles! 

Glad you're able to fix them!