reconditioning replacing wax services vintage mediterranean

[joust]

Does anyone know how to or offer a service to refill a lava lamp tat has wax flow issues? It seems that my wax gets stuck to the sides of the glass .
I own a 1970 Mediterranean

[joust]

Yes Here is a few pictures of it when I first turn it on. It doesnt look much different when its well heated.
It seems like most of the wax stays at the top and there is a thin wax coating that is pasted to the sides of the glass.
I have seen lots of examples of reconditioned blood red wax lavas with nice crystal clear fluid surrrounding the wax with great flow.
I am not sure if I should attempt to refurb this myself or leave it as is?
If I could send it out to someone who knows how to refurbish this kind of lava I would also be interested in that too.
Thank You

[Manix5]

This thread discusses how to refill that type of globe. I have refilled several and they all work great. Good luck.
http://oozinggoo.ning.com/forum/topics/cursed-mediteranean?xg_sourc...

[Jennifer]

My Mediterranean was doing something very similar to yours. The best thing you can do is this-
Let the lamp cool.
Remove the water and save
Heat the remaining wax and poor in separate container
Find a long brush (like a tooth brush but with a longer handle)
Scrub the doo wop out of the inside of the globe with Dawn dish soap. It has to be dawn.
Then rinse
Fill globe with rubbing alcohol and let sit for a few hours.
Remove alcohol and rinse with distilled water.
Reheat wax in a sauce pan on the stove with water and your container with the wax.
Monitor this constantly. I'm not too sure this is the safest thing but it works for me. I even put my wax in a small plastic tupperware-probably so wrong! Make sure the wax is really liquid in it's consistency.
Use a funnel to put wax back in globe.
Once the wax is back in the globe you will have to keep heated with a dish towel around the globe so the wax that sticks on the side of the globe will melt.
Once all the wax is nice and neat at the bottom of the globe, let cool.
Return your water and heat.
Hopefully your water isn't too cloudy or your wax isn't too fried.
If you have cloudy water or the wax won't work, that will be a whole other discussion, but it's totally fixable!

Good luck!

[joust]

Thank you so much for posting the instructions on how to refurbish a lava lamp.
However I am sill confused about replacing the clear liquid in the lamp i am not sure if the clear liquid is water or alcohol?
also not sure if i should buy a cheap China lava on ebay and simply dump it into my empty precleaned with dawn Mediterranean .?
New wax or same old wax?

[Jonas Clark-Elliott]

The "water" is a precisely-balanced mix of water, propylene glycol and a few other things. Reuse it, because it's nigh-impossible to replace it.

[joust]

hello and thank you for any info you may have.
what do you think about me dumping everything down the drain completly and go buy a modern day lava and open the top and just pour it into the empty cleaned jar and seing if that sticks to the walls?

[Percolation]

Alcohol isn't a good solvent for wax. Something like carburetor cleaner or tetrahydrofuran should work better.