back to beans 4 u
Reason No. 346 Why I Love the Net - The Lava Conspiracy
I decided I would make my own.
Perhaps it was the fact Dana is so rich that he owns his own house!
and has the ability to buy anything his heart desires, that
made me want to prove that often it's much more fun trying to
make something yourself instead of just paying up the wazoo. Maybe
it was his teasing scepticism that made me wish to rise to the challenge
and crush his doubts like a bug.
Or
maybe it was because I resented the Lava Lite® monopoly
Lava World International has enjoyed for over 40 years, especially
distressing in light of the fact the man who patented the contraption,
Craven Walker, didn't even INVENT the damn thing, he just copied one
he saw in a bar and brought home. The original was created by some
artist/guy who never saw dime one of the millions garnered from
acid-flashin hippies over the last decades.
So why should I put more money in their over-stuffed pockets?
Together we combed the aisles at Cliff's, buying various components that
could be adapted to the purpose. An Italian canning jar, oval with
a beveled magnifying "window" and a vacuum-tight lid, was to be the
receptacle. A small hand-held flour sifter (complete with fly-wheel
and screen) would be the bulb-case, with a heavy black plastic pipe
join as the base. We grabbed the necessary 40-watt appliance
bulb that the typical LL® utilizes.
For a socket, since there were so many to choose from, I thought we should
consult the services of the electrical expert at Cliffs, an over-tall,
emaciated Kris Kringle-alike in a red apron.
Whatever I did did the trick, because he stopped going on about arson
and house fires and started pontificating instead on the variety of
sockets and their uses. I laffed appreciatively when he made a joke about
ceramic insulation. Eventually I settled on a pull-chain socket
because I love that little "click-snicky" noise they make.
Finally, it was time to get the soupy ingredients that are the lifeblood
of a LL®. I thought: Mineral oil for the fluid, and parafin wax
for the lava. (Stop laughing. That's what it LOOKS like.)
We took the bundle of materials home to Dana's place and settled on the
back porch with a screwdriver, a wire shear, a hammer and a nail. In
endeavoring to attach the electrical wires to the socket, I made the
terrible mistake of unscrewing the base of the socket. The spring
loaded click-snicky mechanism exploded outward showering the porch with
little boingy pieces. We struggled for an hour or so putting the thing back together,
only to discover the resulting doohicky would click but refused to snick
back. So back it was to Cliff's, where I effected an exchange of the
"defective" item, then I hunkered down to put the thing together.
I punched holes in the sifter to allow heat to escape, attached the
pull-chain of the socket to the handle of the sifter so that instead
of sifting, squeezing the handle pulled the chain. I removed the fly-wheel
and dropped it into the bottom of the jar so it would act as a heating coil,
conducting heat to the lava for a more even flow. I poured the
estimated amount of mineral oil into the jar and dropped in some chunks
of wax.
It was time to give it a try.
We plugged the lamp into a socket in the garage, and sat and watched
it for about 10 minutes to make sure it wouldn't spontaneously combust,
condemning us to a 10-20 year sentence for arson. At that point the
oil was heating up nicely, and we decided that a watched lamp never
lavas, so we went out to grab a bite.
Upon our return an hour later we were not surprised to discover that the
wax was simply melting into the oil. As well it should: both are
petroleum-based. We weren't suprised because we had noticed that
the parafin floated annoyingly on top of the oil instead of sinking
to the bottom until it heated up.
At the time, in a foggy, satiated state of mind, I decided the problem
was the lava: we needed a denser wax. Dana suggested that I check the
Web for a formula, certainly someone else had tried to do this. I told
him don't be silly, who else would try to make a lava lamp?
So back to Cliff's (did I mention it's the hardware store of the stars?)
where I purchased a variety of candles (beeswax and other) and a pack
of Crayola Crayons. I tried the crayons first, and they sank nicely to
the bottom. We played Demolition Derby while waiting for the stuff to melt.
Eventually the crayons started to behave strangely, shooting off hot
bits of colored wax "streamers" to the top of the jar. They looked not
unlike brightly colored semen.
Dana mentioned that this was identical behavior to his own lamp when
it first heated up, so we were hopeful. However, half an hour later
the crayons had melted enough to color the oil a shimmery purple, and
the little waxy semen loitered at the top of the oil, doing nothing
spectacular for minute after tedious minute.
It was late in the day, and disappointment sapped my problem-solving
skills. I was downright depressed, as any scientist would be, and
I decided I would continue the project on Sunday.
On Sunday, I awoke with a fresh perspective: surely I couldn't be
the only person in the world who had tried to make their own lava lamp.
Surely there were thousands of enterprising folks on whose dismal
failures I could capitalize!
So I hit the Web. Sure enough, a Lycos search revealed a number of excellent
pages on making your own lava lamp, including a paranoid page about the
great Lava Lamp Conspiracy (excellent reading at
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/1346/)
I was, of course, working with all the wrong materials. As it turns
out, you can make quite a nice lava lamp using isopropyl alcohol as
the fluid and mineral oil (as the lava this time.) Since I conveniently
happened to have mineral oil of a spectacularly nice bluish hue in
my possession, all I required was a quick trip to the drug store for varying
concentrations of isopropyl alcohol. Within an hour or so I had my
lava lamp happily blurbing away. Its light blue fluid and whitish lava
are hypnotising. And it was half the price and only took two days'
fun labor!
So there ya go. I got so carried away I made a mini-lamp out of a
salt-shaker and a night light. But that's another story.
"Craven Walker, 77-year-old inventor
of the lava lamp, told People magazine that people who don't like them
are
`frightened of sex.' The lamp, he says, 'starts from nothing, grows
possibly a
little bit feminine, then a little bit masculine, then breaks up and
has children.'" (from Leah Garchik's Personals, 9/9/96)
benzyl alcohol/brine solution plans
the self-made lavalamps page in germany
I was hanging out in Cliff's Variety, hardware store of the
stars, with my rich friend Dana on a too beautiful Saturday afternoon,
when I noticed that they had some lovely over-priced Lava Lite® Lamps.
For a long time I've coveted Dana's own Lava Lite®, a gorgeous
red and gold gleaming tower of strangeness; but although I wanted one
bad, it seemed too lame to pay such a high price for what essentially
appears to be wax and oil stuck in a jar. "Appears," being the operative
word.
Cool LAVA LINKS:
the beanie cam 9-5pm
(I have my SGI indy-cam trained on my workmate's lava lamp)
(for a more realistic lava lamp)