Hello! Newbie here!

[Liz B]

Greetings! New UK lava mad lady here! I've been silently reading all that goes on here for a few weeks! Finally plucked up the courage to introduce myself! I've only been collecting lamps for 3 weeks - mostly Mathmos as that is all that tends to turn up here - but a couple of Sata Hunters too. My kitchen is now a fully fledged chemistry lab! I have a huge pile of lamp bases and caps, and I have Perc solution, Polyethylene glycol, De-ionised water, glycerine, glitter, wax, wax dye, food colourings - you name it I have it! I have taken apart other lamps and transferred the contents successfully; changed masterfluid on a copper Crestworth Astro successfully; taken lava and redyed it then given it new masterfluid. Tomorrow I'm going to make a fast flow glitterlite using the tinsel glitter out of a broken Sata and put it into an old Mathmos Jet bottle. Then the next stage will be to try and make my own wax from scratch, so I can completely rebuild old spent lava lamps and breathe new life into them! I've really enjoyed reading up about all the tips on here for lava and glitter restorations. Fascinating stuff!

 

At the moment I have 17 assorted glitter/lava/wave etc lamps. I'm having 14 more assorted lamps sent to me next week so that I can restore or rebuild them and have a play! I will post pics at some point if you like. And thank you for letting me join!

 

Liz

[Arne]

well, as long as you're not hiding 250 marihuana plants in your attic I dont see a problem with cops comin;) but your idea isnt that far fetched as the pharmacy I used to buy glycerine etc at now refuses to sell me stuff like that coz they dont want to take responsibilty if I was building a bomb...although i told them what I was doin with it.

[Liz B]

Thats why I laughed when I bought all my chemicals off Ebay! I did try the search for Trichlorotrifluoroethane, which IS banned I believe, and had no luck! But the glycerine and the Perc solution were no problem to obtain!!!

[Astralav]

Perc is banned too.

Glycerine is harmless like propylene glycol, so no problem for them.

[Liz B]

My delivery of 14 lava lamps arrived yesterday afternoon! Any fluid that was cloudy has been removed; any wax not savable has been discarded. There are bottles drying all along the radiator in the kitchen! And the process has begun to restore or rebuild the vast majority! Three astro babies are in tact, the clear fluid glitter baby was perfect and I have dyed it purple - it looks like Ribena!!! See below pic! And the purple helter skelter water lamp is purring away next to me! Everything else needs work. The jets needed a minimum of master fluid change; they've been working for 6 hours to iron out any problems. Two jets are sorted - see third pic. I may dye the masterfluid......we'll see!

[Astralav]

14 lamps at once? Impressive!

Very nice babyglitter!

How many drop of dye did you use?

[Liz B]

I'm afraid I couldn't be precise with the amount of purple food colouring - all my food colourings are a paste, not a liquid. So I just kept adding small scoops with the handle end of a tea spoon and swirling. The colouring didn't want to blend much with a cold glitter lamp, I had to switch it on and add more once the glycerin mix has warmed up then it blended better.

[Liz B]

Oh and check out this mess in the pic below! It seriously looks like crispy bacon floating in urine! Nice!

[Tim Gill]

Yea that lamp is a bit of a mess,

Personaly I dont know about the purpal glitter - it looks verry dark, what colour was it before.

[Liz B]

Another unsuccessful day in the chemistry lab. Since the previous slow glitter formula (de-ionised water plus polyethylene glycol) was too 'thin' and not strong enough to lift anything, I decided to try the above again but with the addition of glycerine. This was a total fail. No movement. At least with the first go there was movement albeit very weak. But in the second trial the glycerine just sat at the bottom of the bottle and obstructed flow. First go was 233.333 ml of polyethylene glycol to 466.666 of de-ionised water to make up the 700ml astro baby bottle volume. Second attempt was 200ml of polyethylene glycol, plus 400 ml of de-ionised water plus 100 ml glycerine to thicken it up. But no. Pants. Nothing. Any thoughts People?

[Astralav]

Why don't you try propylene glycol?

This is the one used in glitterlite bottles.

[Liz B]

OK, I'll try some propylene glycol instead (goes off mumbling about more chemicals and more expense......!!!)

[Astralav]

so,

did you succeed to make the Hunter Glitter to flow?

I'm now in the same boat as my lamp arrived broken...