Recently, I'd stumbled upon an old lava lamp - while I'd wanted one since childhood, I was slightly disappointed by how cloudy it was. In addition to the fact that it didn't have the same vibrant colors as before, it was also nearly impossible to make out the wax, once everything was heated up properly.
After looking into the matter, I'd found out that the solution can degrade if the lamp is shaken, or if it's run continuously for thousands of hours (which it very well may have been.) More noteworthy was my discovery of an entire online community of lava lamp enthusiasts - sharing homebrew recipes for lamp solutions, discussing their favorite color combinations, and collecting vintage, U.S.-made lamps.
To me, this was a fantastic opportunity to get in on a new hobby - I already had the lamp, and I might as well give restoration a shot. ow, the proper way to do this would be with epsom salt, dish soap, distilled water, and food coloring. As I was lacking all but the dish soap, I'd hastily passed water through a Brita filter twice; the salt was regular sea salt, and I had no food coloring on hand.
Still, after tinkering with the lamp a bit, and getting it heated properly (adding salt and dish soap until I obtained the desired, classic bubbling of the "lava". I was pleasantly surprised, and frankly, delighted to see that the lamp was behaving just as it should.
Needless to say, the celebrations did not last for long (a mere few weeks). Because of a slight blunder by my beloved, if somewhat clumsy, girlfriend, the lava lamp was once again empty - the cap had been lost, the solution was all over the floor, and I was back to square one. Except, now, the actual lamp body was badly dented.
I've got a bit of a metalworking background, and so, used a few of my auto-body and blacksmithing tools to return it to as circular a shape as I could, and this time, I'd splurged on proper distilled water (although, I'd contemplated stealing some from my dehumidifier, it should technically be distilled), epsom salt, and a scent-free, color-free soap. I loved the food-coloring-less lamp so much, that I opted not to use coloring this time either. There was something highly pleasant, perhaps even hypnotic, about the way the bright yellow wax defied gravity in crystal clear water - almost like it was floating through the air.
Here is my recipe:
An interesting bit of trivia is that the U.S.-made lamps from the 1990s did not suffer degradation in the same way the modern ones do - they could be run for years, and have been, without any issue. Of course, the bulbs had to eventually be replaced, but those wonderful globes just never give out. Enthusiasts mention the modern, Chinese-manufactured lamps are not as long-lasting, attributing it to sub-par materials (namely, the chemicals in the globe solutions.