Issue With A Mathmos Silver Glitter Ball... Please Help!!

Hi All!!

I hope someone on here has some knowledge of these lamps. I managed to get hold of one yesterday for a good price. I fired it up last night and after quite a while it started flowing well. As well as the large silver blobs there are lots of tiny silver blobs/particles in the liquid. Is this right? I checked the lamp this morning once it had cooled down fully and there a still quite a lot of these tiny blobs / particles suspended in the liquid. I would have thought they would have settled back down to the bottom and merged with the large lump of wax once it had cooled.

Any help would be great....

Cheers!!

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Permalink Reply by LAVAMAN-UK on December 17, 2008 at 4:35am

Thanks for the info Bohdan, can I ask what watt bulb you use in the glitterball? My lamp seems to have settled down and cleared up a lot now. It seems to take ages to start bubbling though.... The wax melts quite quickly and turns into a large column the total hight of the vase but doesnt start bubbling for hours... Is this right. I have noticed that if I gently move the heated wax in the bottle after an hour or so by doing a swirling motion it seems to kick start the bubbling. I am thinking there is may be a lack of heat or somthing so a higher wattage bulb may help.

Have you had any experience of this?

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Permalink Reply by LAVAMAN-UK on December 17, 2008 at 4:49am

I also noticed that my lamp has a coil in the bottom which seems unusual for a silver glitterball...

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Permalink Reply by LAVAMAN-UK on December 17, 2008 at 4:01pm

Bohdan, please could you tell me what type of 40w bulb you use. The astro baby takes an R39 I think. They do not seem to do the R39 in a 40w, only 25w & 30w.

Is it a different type of bulb you use?

Cheers.

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Permalink Reply by LAVAMAN-UK on December 17, 2008 at 4:57pm

What type of 40w bulb do you use though?

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Permalink Reply by LAVAMAN-UK on December 19, 2008 at 7:25am

Thanks for all your help Bohdan. I have been to the local electrical store today. The only 40w bulb they sell in the UK with the same thread size as the original R39 is the R50. The R50 is much larger than the R39 and does not fit in the base of the Astro Baby. Looks like I am stuck with the original 30w bulb. Strangely enough, the lamp started flowing correctly after only a couple of hours last night. Much better that the 3+ hours it has been taking to start bubbling.

I can understand now why Mathmos stopped making the Glitterball. Although it is a beautiful lamp they do seem to have a few faults. Firstly, the huge amount of time it takes to start flowing and secondly, I have read that the wax stuck to the sides of the vase in a lot of the lamps. Luckily my lamp does not suffer from this problem.

Nevertheless, I am still very happy with my new Glitterball!! It takes a while to get going but once it starts bubbling it is the coolest lamp I have ever owned. A real bargain I think at £20 ($40)