Oozing Goo - The Lava Lamp Syndicate
Repaired my 6821 Grande
I've been lurking here for a while now, but I wanted to express my thanks for the site and the content. I was able to rescue my old H6821 Grande lamp with the info here.
I bought this lamp around 2004. I never remember it being clear or terribly purple, but over time the cloudiness got worse and worse to the point where you couldn't even see the lava. Upon dis-assembly I found the white rubber stopper to be badly deteriorated, and I'm fairly certain the white cloudiness came from the stopper.
One thing I noticed is that the goo seems to have a lot of bubbles in it. So far it hasn't been an issue, but it's a change from the way it used to operate.
I siphoned out the old liquid, washed the globe out with distilled water, and replaced the fluid with distilled water, epsom salt solution and a few drops of Ivory dish soap. Later I decided to color the water a turquoise just to see what it would look like.
Cowmatian
Feb 2, 2014
Mike Pepe
Thanks! I suppose if too much surf in the liquid is the cause of the slight bubbling, there's really not much to do aside from draining and re-doing with less soap. Nothing leads me to believe that the bubbling is damaging in any way, so I'll leave that for if/when I get bored of the color and want to change it. I had a used Grande arrive this week frozen solid and with an exploded globe, but that at least gave me a rubber stopper in good condition to replace the deteriorated one that was in this lamp. I should start up a thread with some pictures of the frozen one. Also perhaps to ask if someone has an empty Grande globe for sale!
Feb 4, 2014
Mike Pepe
Strange thing happened- after a week of nice, normal behavior, the wax started sticking to the glass.
Any ideas what could suddenly have caused this change of behavior? Did my dishwashing soap get absorbed into the wax somehow?
Should I add some bubble fluid instead? How much?
Feb 12, 2014