Brandon Ward's Page

Brandon, kitting as you may know, has it's rewards as well as it also being a huge PIA, lol!!!  When I get really aggravated with my kits my husband helps to remind me, "hon, it's your hobby and you enjoy doing it", hummm.....yeah, I guess so, lol!!  I have achieved some really nice colors through blending the different MT dyes.  I luv my lime/neon green and my pink is to dye for, lol!!  The blue is a redo as that thing gave me a run for my money.  Kept turning plum and when I tried to add more blue dye I accidently added red and turned it purple so I regoo'd the whole lamp and made another blue.  I just did a blue/purple, but the food coloring in the water keeps turning blue for some reason.  I may try to use McCormick's as I am using another brand.  Those imperfections in the glass are troublesome.  I've learned to use those specific globes for the "lighter" colors.  If you ever want to do a white lava/clear liquid, that might be the globe to use as you don't notice those speckles in the lighter kits as much so as the darker colors.  My pink has a lot of them but because it is a lighter color it isn't as noticeable.  As you can see from my blue pic, there is a lot of them.  I got burnt on an ebay deal on 2 globes, but that was all I had to kit with so I used them.  I'm kind of used to them now but they can detract

As far as the aristocrats, if flow is the only issue and you are thinking of kitting them anyway, you can also try to add another coil in there to break up that column.  I have multiple hardwares in most of my 52 oz lamps.  In some I've used stainless steel bracelet coil and in the 2 newer ones I have stainless steel lint trap reformed to resemble the original coil.  those are fitted to fit inside the circle of the original coil.  You can also try to fish the original coil out, cut it and make 2 out of it, but this is RISKY.  If you stir and fish around too much you are at risk for mixing the lava with the water and then you just have a slurpee that even a boil down and cooling won't fix.  The lava is trash then.  I just did that to my pink, lol!!  I redid it and I like it better now, but it had that column flow that never broke.  This also can be caused by a lack of heat.  You can attempt a 60 watt Sylvania garage door opener bulb (I know it sounds silly garage door opener but they fit) with a dimmer.  Sometimes if you give it a good blast of heat it help to break up the lava then you can dial down your dimmer to the flow you like.  Too much excessive heat will fry the lava though so this is another risky deal but if you want to keep the vintage the vintage these are a few tricks.  And last but not least, you can also try adding a bit of surf from your MT goo kit.  Some add dishwashing liquid but mine clouded using this.  Too many other chemicals at play here I believe.  You can also try a very minute tip of a strawful of Epsom salts.  This is risky also because too much salt will cause the lava to detach from the coil all together, then you will have to adjust the density of your liquid so I would probably try surf first.  Let me know how you make out if you crack that puppy open and fudge around with it.