Scratching Around

Where it began...again

I've had many lava lamps over the years and like my Action Men, Star Wars Toys, watches etc I failed to realise what they were worth until they were long gone. Then a couple of months ago I went looking for lamps at the local flea market, I was looking for interactive ones for the Austistic primary school I was working with and unusual ones to decorate the marquee for an old friends wedding.

So I bought the Lava Brand Magma Color Fountain and a 12" plasma globe for a couple of quid and took them home to tinker.

My Grandpa was a great technician and tinkerer and there is a good Roma bloodline in the family, to give me justification to fill the house up with interesting, but broken crap and try to fix it. So I'm never too dissapointed with a broken purchase, unless it's beyond repair, or is less interesting than the ammount of work needed to make good.

I cleaned off the water damage, corrison, dried and resoldered the circuit board and made it work. It lit up and pumped beautiful little explosions of 'magma' up, whilst making not entirely convincing explosion noises. This wasn't to last though as the board was damaged and bodged together with wire and also the liquid started clouding up with white goo.

Ok so why am I bothering to write any of this? I thought it might be fun to keep a record of my lava lamp adventure from the very begining and in particular buying and fixing experiences. So that I or anyone else can look back on any particular moments of genius or foolishness and find something in them.