Oozing Goo - The Lava Lamp Syndicate

Since I am new here, I'll first introduce myself a bit.  I've been fascinated by Lava Lamps since I was a little kid.  I can remember when my older sister had moved into her first apartment we all went to visit her.  As we left, everyone was out front of the building yakking away, it was about dusk.  I noticed a Lava Lamp on the window sill of a garden level apartment so I wandered over to watch it, messmerized.  After about 10 minutes I guess the resident wanted a little more privacy and came to the window and drew the curtains shut!  I'm not a peeping Tom, just a kid fascinated by the goo!

 

I must have been successful expressing to my parents how bad I wanted a Lava Lite because I got one on my 14th birthday and I've had it ever since.  I wish I'd kept the box!  I do still have the warranty card and instruction sheet around somewhere...  Anyway, it was a gold Centry, it is dated May 1975 and originally had yellow fluid and red goo.  I used it a LOT when I was a kid.  That may be why it has a few issues now.  It still functions and does okay, at least as well as it ever has, but it has a few issues I hope I can correct given all the data I've found and read on this site.  Anyway, I'll list out the issues I want to address and hopefully I can get some good advice on how to bring it back to like new condition.

 

1.  The cap is cracked.  I posted a note in the Buy/Sell/Trade section, hopefully one will turn up. 

2.  The fluid now appears clear, not yellow.  It never sat in a window, heck for the past roughly 20 years it sat in a closet away from all light.  How can I recolor the fluid back to its original yellow?  I read that McKormick's food coloring can be used.  Is this correct?  Perhpas just add a drop or two at a time until the proper color is acheived?  Any dangers in doing this?  Any idea why it faded?  It was certainly yellow when it went into the closet.

3.  The fluid, while not exactly cloudy, does have a fair amount of visible particulate in it.  Is there any way I can safely filter this out without damaging the fluid and perhaps without going so far as the ceramic filter method I read about?

4.  The flow isn't the greatest.  Good sized chunks of wax get stuck at the top while on.  Much of it eventually falls, but often it has a writhing column of goo from top to bottom instead of nice floating blobs and terminated fingers of goo. 

5.  The wax appears chunky.  The method for addressing this strikes me as rather drastic (boiling) and I'd be concerned about doing harm to the wax or fluid but I do want to take some action.  This probably came about by overuse when I was a kid (I often left it running for days at a time) and/or having sat neglected for so long although I remember it being chunky also many years ago.

 

Even with a cracked cap, the lamp has not lost much fluid, maybe 1/8" or 1/4" from back in the day.  I've read I can top this off with distilled water.  I see no harm in trying this.  Mechanically the lamp is in great shape.  I just installed a new bulb and it warms up in less than two hours and seems to work as well as it ever did, I just know it could work better.

 

I recently bought a new LL at Menards for $7.50!  I wanted to remind myself how one SHOULD work.  It is a 14.5" tall (32 ounce?) unit with purple fluid and yellow wax.  I love how the goo looks yellow/orange/red depending on how the light catches it and how far up the globe it goes.  I've heard the current (made in China) lamps often don't work that well, but this one works great.  Who would have thought you could find a bargain on Lava Lamps at Menards of all places!

 

Anyway, thanks in advance for any and all help that may be provided.

 

I'll try to post up some photos at a later date.

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Ah, yes, thinking backwards on that.  No idea how to correct that then other than removing some fluid and replacing with distilled water thus diluting the surfacant content.  Not sure it that would be a good plan of action though.  Maybe if I can fix the chunky wax issue some of the other issues will be addressed along the way.

Oh, I do have a clear bulb in it right now.

Too much surf can make the wax chunky, especially when the wax gets ripped up, and you get tons of tiny water bubbles mixed in with it. I think sometimes what happens in vintage lamps though, is that some or all of the surf breaks down, chemically, and doesn't have the same effect that it once had. I'm not a vintage century expert by any means, but I have restored a couple of them. When there's not enough surf, the wax can also look chunky, or even rough and scaly, because the surface tension isn't being broken as well any more. I had a vintage century with chunky wax that I could have sworn was shot out...turns out it was just the liquid, and once that was restored, now it's buttery smooth again.

What did you do to restore the fluid?  Sounds like my lamp's issues are the same as the one you fixed.  I'd absolutely love to get my old friend working as well as it should have back in the day.

Loren said:

Too much surf can make the wax chunky, especially when the wax gets ripped up, and you get tons of tiny water bubbles mixed in with it. I think sometimes what happens in vintage lamps though, is that some or all of the surf breaks down, chemically, and doesn't have the same effect that it once had. I'm not a vintage century expert by any means, but I have restored a couple of them. When there's not enough surf, the wax can also look chunky, or even rough and scaly, because the surface tension isn't being broken as well any more. I had a vintage century with chunky wax that I could have sworn was shot out...turns out it was just the liquid, and once that was restored, now it's buttery smooth again.

I had to try several times to get my 74' yellow-red flowing again, and the last time I used fog fluid. The amount of surf is crucial, and tricky! Too much and it rips the lava to pieces, and too little will make the lamp resist flowing, because the surface tension is not loose enough. You want it to be loose, but not too loose.

But you know...I would seriously SAVE that liquid, if it is clear. The particulate matter can be removed without using a ceramic filter, and you're much better off keeping it, if you can. You can get it running again with replacement liquid, but it likely will not be exactly as you remember it.

Do you think there is anything to be gained by superheating the wax to theoretically remelt the wax and chunks back together and remove the chunkiness?  I read about it in the Lava Library, but it sounds like a crap shoot and potentially risky.

Odd thing, the particulate matter has been reducing each time I run the lamp.  Maybe it is wax particulate, though it looks white, but then so do the chunks inside the wax, and is just being reabsorbed into the wax over time.

My concern about surf is I don't know if it needs more or less and adding it is easy, but removing it would be tough.

It makes sense to just keep cycling it for a while.  Can't hurt it doing that.  I'll try to limit myself for now to just trying to fix the cap and perhaps dying the fluid yellow again and perhaps trying a foil heat ring.

Good to know about the coffee filters, the article I read seems to imply that using coffee filters could damage the fluid in some way. 

Thanks for all the comments and advice.  I'll keep after it and see how it comes along.

 

The particulate does seem to be growing less and less the more I run it.

As far as the heat ring goes, I should just wrap the lower part of the globe, the part that sits in the base, with aluminum foil?  This helps retain heat?  Wouldn't the cone shaped section of the base do the same thing?  I suppose the reflectivity of the foil helps direct more of the available heat into the globe.  Shiny side toward the glove I would guess.

I did at least tonight decide to try to recolor the fluid back to the original yellow.  I started off conservatively with three drops of McKormick's food coloring yellow.  Seem to have nailed it on the first try!

Okay, a little update.  The cap has been repaired and restored, looks great.  I started a separate thread on how I did that.  On the lamp in general, the precipitate in the fluid is almost nonexistant now, it cleared up by just running the lamp.  I also recolored the fluid with three drops of McKormick's yellow food coloring.  It turned out almost spot on to the original color. 

The more I cycled the lamp the more it seemed the chunkiness of the wax became more prominent which made the columns and blobs appear spotty in color and lumpy in texture.  I was bored this weekend so I took the drastic action to boil the wax per instructions found in the Lava Library.  To be honest, the process concerned me and I didn't want to do any harm, so I never actually let the water boil but it was close.  I did see an oil slick form and as the heat increased, it appeared to be reabsorbed into the wax.  The process was fascinating and nerve wracking all at the same time.  The instructions were unclear about how to cool the bottle and wax so I simply left the pot and bottle on the stove and just turned the heat off and let the whole mess cool naturally as a unit.  Once things were cool I removed the bottle and the wax blob at the bottom looked outstanding.  It has shrunk and seemed to meld with the fluid during the heating process so I was very happy to see the wax hadn't been harmed.

I refilled the bottle, recapped it and started it up.  It took FOREVER to warm up because it started out with a coil flip which held the coil entirely off the bottom of the bottle.  I kept myself busy with home repairs and such and it eventually warmed up and it worked better than ever!  The wax still contains some internal white-ish particles, but the wax is smooth and shiny and moves with glorious gooness.  I'll try to post a new video later tonight.

I'm also very much enjoying my brand new Classic which I think flows very well but yet very different than my old Century.  I will be picking up a blue/white Midnight later this week, a great Craigslist find for a ridiculously reasonable price.  More on that when I get it home.

sweet!  thanks for the update.

Rich, your lamp re-do looks great!  I'm really liking it!

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