There has been some talk on SBF [1] [2] [3]  of sodium alginate (which is derived from kelp) being a useful polymer for bubble juice -- especially for making bubbles in dry conditions. It has a wide variety of gastronomic applications from acting as  foam stabilizer for beer, making spheres with a thin gel skin and liquid center to jelly candies and more.

I have had some S.A. for a few years because of my interest in molecular gastronomy (a phrase I hate). A few weeks ago, I mixed up some sodium alginate and water and added it to some diluted eGoo. I haven't had much time to make bubbles. I did a quick test on a day with 50% humidity but changeable conditions due to a shifty breeze. I couldn't drawn any conclusions. The solution with S.A. m…

Read more >

I have been exploring some new 100" top-string setups and refining my HEC-based mix (my preferred mix is now 20:1 water:detergent with 2.3 grams HEC -- either Natrosol 250HHR or CelloSize QP100MH) plus baking soda and citric acid.

I have had nice results with a RubberMaid microfiber webfoot top-string and just a single strand of twine for the bottom or a strand of twine and a strand of bamboo yarn. I want try a slightly higher capacity bottom (maybe two strands of twine) with a higher-capacity top.

Here are some vids of this setup:

Here is a giant bubble with just a single twine strand for the bottom.

http://youtu.be/bbOfbi3MLpE

Here is a giant that I didn't manage to close but which I found beautiful. I have slowed down the bubble so it can be…

Read more >

I have been playing around with the soda-washed Bed, Bath and Beyond cooking twine as the bottom strings for 100" top-string loops whose top strings are usually full-ply rayon mop yarn or webfoot microfiber mop yarn (both from RubberMaid). I have been impressed by the size potential with a strand of this twine. I have been able to make bubbles (closed ones) that rival the biggest I have made. I have made bigger bubbles with a single oversized strand of rayon (which seems to hold a bit more juice than the twine and is more self-closing at this size when empty), a double-strand rayon bottom and t-shirt yarn bottom. I have been thinking that I would like to try both a double-strand of twine and a twine/bamboo yarn combination to see if it wou…

Read more >

A few weeks ago, cut 3 130" lengths from a spool of the Bed, Bath and Beyond Twine that I purchased in 2012 (the 17 unfluffy thread kind). 

All three strands were soaked in water and Dawn Pro in the sink for an hour, rinsed and hung to dry.

The remaining two twine lengths were simmered/boiled for 30 minutes.

Both of those lengths were hung to dry.

One of those strands was soaked for 30 minutes in 1 tablespoon washing soda and 8 ounces water then rinsed and air dried.

The final length of the strings was 118" for the unboiled twine. The other two strings were 110".

The strands were marked with different colors using colored permanent markers (red, green, and blue Sharpies) and then tied to make a loop. Split rings were attached with lark's head kn…

Read more >

I often love to save old juice, but now my taste for quality is killing me when it comes to the stuff. In the past old juice would be much better then new but now as my mixes are getting more complex now my shelf life has shrunk. No real tests done, just the overall impression I get. I used to make simple mixes around 12 to 15 dilution solutions with just KY, or some J-lube, and baking powder, but now I have started using BLM and using citric acid and now when I re-use the bubbles are no good. Another factor may be that my BLM is aged too. I only made one batch back in OCT and it lasts me a long time for I only bubble about once a week. It is FEB now, perhaps time to freshen up the polymers? Any tips or old save the good old stuff info sen…

Read more >

[IN PROCESS. PLEASE VISIT LATER. IMPORTANT TEXT MISSING] Not quite a year ago, I started exploring the impact of water:detergent ratios on bubble juice and posted my first blog entry about the topic . The explorations were eye-opening, at least to me. I had intended to have frequent blog entries with updates as my explorations progressed. I never managed to do that. This entry summarizes much of what I have learned during that time period. This information will be the basis of some proper wiki articles, but my thoughts are not yet organized enough for that article. In the meantime, it seemed like it would be worthwhile to gather together the relevant information in one place as I think that it is important info for any serious bubblehead t…

Read more >

Since I am a bit space-challenged, I like using concentrates -- even better super-concentrates (like eGoo) if they work. I can mix up enough concentrate or super-concentrate to make many gallons of juice in the same time that it takes to mix a gallon of ready-to-go juice.

PEO. PEO-based super-concentrates are easy. PEO is so potent that you need very little extra water to make a stable uniform super-concentrate. However, even with PEO a waterless concentrate doesn't work out. You get a nice slurry but it will separate out after a few days.

GUAR. As readers of the blog know, guar-based juice will stratify into layers if there is not enough water in the mix. I have made some stable concentrates but no stable super-concentrates. I am currently …

Read more >

Building a Simple Tri-string Bubbling Rig

This is one way to build a simple tri-string bubbling rig, using easy-to-find materials.

Materials:

2 4-foot, 3/8 inch poplar dowels
137 inches of 100% cotton cooking twine
2 1-inch wooden dowel caps with 3/8 inch holes
1 15/16 inch split ring

Here in the U.S., the best cooking twine can be found at Bed Bath & Beyond. I found the dowel caps and split rings at Hobby Lobby. The dowels from my local Menards are generally less crooked than Home Depot's (not that it matters much).

1. Measure and cut a piece of twine 137 inches in length.

2. Wet the twine with water, and pull the length of it through a thumb and forefinger. Hold your arms up high and keep the ends apart as you do this, so that the ends can dangle…

Read more >

Followers of the blog, may recall that I am interested in super-concentrates (like eGoo). If they can be made to work, they are very convenient. In the same amount of time as it takes to make a gallon of "fresh" juice, you can make enougn concentrate to make tens of gallons of juice, and they take up relatively little storage space.

So far, PEO-based super-concentrates are the only ones that have been succesful for me. I have made concentrates for HEC and guar-based mixes but nothing that I would call super-concentrated. (Guar super-concentrates tend to result in a separate guar layer that becomes increasingly hard to re-incorporate as time goes on).

SBF's scorpiochickie mentioned that she has had success making a guar-based concentrate that…

Read more >

I shouldn't draw too many conculsions from a single session. But it is looking like HEC-based juice can get results every bit as good as the Bangwool juice that was such such an eye-opener this past fall. This morning there were almost ideal conditions and the HEC juice was the clear winner in a shootout. The bubbles were easier to close, lasted longer and were just as colorful. The Bangwool juice has one really nice characteristic: almost ghostless popping but not that super-cool disappearing into fine mist that Hisao Oono's mix does.

I will try to get some video posted soon.

Conditions: 48-50F. Humidity: 85-90% RH. Overcast. Very slight breeze.

VIDEO

RECIPE - CONCENTRATE

This recipe is still under development. So, it isn't yet listed on the r…

Read more >

I was testing a kid in a bubble from the bottom up where you have them stand in a pan in a kiddie pool. I have used 12 to 1 mixes with just baking poweder but wanted a more durable mix or bubble in bubble life so I tried it with the guar mix done by the book and it closed up to fast. That is to say, by the time I lift the giant hoop, the bottom of the bubble touching the water is shrinking so fast it hits the pan the kid is in. I have done this with success using BLM and a 13 water to 1 Dawn detregent mix and a hot water 20 to 1 Joy mix with baking powder.

Read more >

I love testing two mixes against each other at the same time with the same wands. I made two of the recipies by the book exactally as decribed on this site with no vartiation. http://soapbubble.wikia.com/wiki/BLM (12 parts tap water to 1 part Dawn pro manual pot and pan), testing against http://soapbubble.wikia.com/wiki/Recipes_Guar_EAS (gycerine surry, citric acid and baking powder as directed). No pics but the verdict is.. GUAR by FAR! Both big bubbles and small guar outlasted the BLM based mix for both 52 inch top sting bubbles and small 3 inch wands.

Next will test egoo vrs guar, then on to text a xanthum gum vrs guar mix.

Read more >

These are my current procedures for making BLM (Brian's Lube Mix) - that powerful and superbly effective additive for giant bubble solutions. Many thanks to BLM's creator, Brian Lawrence, for sharing his recipe and helping enable so many people to create and enjoy truly GIANT bubbles.

Please see Brian's recipe for the real deal.

I hope that by describing this recipe in a different way and with extra detail, I might help those who are just learning to make BLM feel more confident with their first steps. I don't claim this is the best way to make it, but it works for me and gives consistent results.

This recipe makes 1 quart (32 oz) of BLM - enough for about 10 gallons of bubble juice. Ingredients are as follows:

• Distilled water: 32-40 ounces (…

Read more >

Often my best bubble experiences are not parties or in parks or beaches with many people but rather times when people didn't expect to see magic. This is why one of my favorite places to bubble is from my fire escape at night.

Read more >

Just a quick note. I have probably mentioned this before. I have been finding that "really large" loops have different juice demands than even "pretty large" loops. Since I haven't been looking for this, I don't know exactly (or even vaguely) where the break actually occurs. What I can say is that under very nice bubbling conditions where I can make long tubes (30 or 40 feet or longer) and and large closed bubbles that last a reasonably long time (more than 20 seconds on average and up to a couple of minutes -- even for quite large bubbles with 5 or 6 foot diameters) that I can have great success with my 70" and 75" top-string loops but only occasional success with my 100" top-string loops.

When I do close super-giants, their life expectanc…

Read more >

I have had a few sessions the past few weeks that have me rethinking some of what I thought I new about dilutions. When I started investigating higher-dilution mixes (on the order of 25:1 to 50:1), I noted that there was a dramatic improvement in bubble color when using ? water:Dawn Pro dilutions around 25:1 with improvement in longevity little or no impact on size. At the time that I was exploring this (Spring and early Summer 2012), I was mostly using 32"-48" top-string loops with some sessions making use of a 70-75" top-string loop.

Large loops and dilution? Lately, as you may know, I have been exploring much larger loops -- mostly a 100" or so top-string wand as I am not very proficient yet with a 120" top-string.

Recently, I started usi…

Read more >

Every once in a while, another bubblehead will mention that sometimes during the course of a session their mix seems to get a lot more viscous towards the end and stops working until they add more water. I have always been puzzled by this because I haven't experienced it myself but a lot of people have mentioned it.

One possible explanation is ingredients settling out. I have seen casually mixed polymers settle out slightly. But this seems to happen for people that are very careful in their mixes using bubble juice that shows no signs of settling when left for days or weeks in the bottle. So, it is not likely that over the course of a couple of hours that the polymers are settling out.

Evaporation has been suggested but that also seems unlikel…

Read more >

Experiments on what works best for me. I will try to test a variety of mixes and post the results here.

Read more >

Following the great garland Kevin Reynolds, I made a garland super fast when needed. For that I use the cotton rope. a tissue glue. a needle and thread.

I put a bead of glue

I put a bead on the other, the glue take immediately.

in a few minutes a wreath, a garland

glue resists washing, but for safety, I put stitching between each loop.

see you soon

A bientôt

francois {*.*}

Read more >

Since I am quickly running out of my Dow Cellosize QP100MH HEC and have a supply of a few different types of Natrosol 250, I have been mixing up some HEC-based juice  using the Natrosol in search of the right amounts of each. Natrosol 250 comes in a variety of viscosities. I have already found that 250HHR (the most viscous formulation) works nearly as well as the QP100MH when substituted on a 1:1 basis.

Since 250HR, the least viscous of the 250 series, is pretty widely found, I figured that I should explore that next. I mixed up a batch using 1.5:1 (Natrosol for QP100MH) substitution. While I haven't measured the viscosity, the resulting juice seemed a lot more viscous than the "standard" QP100MH juice.

With a small dimestore wand, I was get…

Read more >

Today is a busy day -- lots of work to be done -- but I couldn't resist the foggy conditions. So, I went outside to do a quick test with a couple of 100" top-string loops and some mixes that I haven't tried with large loops under conditions like these. Given how great the HEC-based mixes have worked lately, I was excited to see how eGoo and a guar mix would do.

I mixed up a 16.5:1 (water:concentrate) eGoo mix with some added baking soda and citric acid, and a guar quick mix with 1/4 heaping teaspoon Bob's Red Mill Guar Gum per liter water, 1/2 heaping teaspoon baking powder, and 40 grams Dawn Pro per liter.

The loops were 100" top-strings. One was webfoot microfiber top with 2-strand rayon bottom. The other was a full-ply rayon mop yarn top …

Read more >

A year or two ago, I had a lot of fun making bubbles with HEC-based recipes . Despite what many people had said, I found a good HEC mix could create giant bubbles on a part with PEO-based mixes. Surprisingly, I found (as did a few others) that under some mysterious conditions, HEC-based mixes could work considerably better than PEO-based mixes. There have been several times when, despite conditions looking good on paper, my best PEO juice could not make a bubble, but an HEC juice worked well. I have wondered if this is possibly related to charged particles in the air such as some kinds of pollen that have a particular polarity. Perhaps, HEC and PEO juice have different sensitivities based on particle ionization (but maybe not).

I spent a lo…

Read more >

This page will be for lab notebook notations (which may be sketch) to detail various attempts to find a 'ghost busting' additive or additives other than purchased bubble juice -- which seems to work quite well. (See this related blog entry .) I apologize for the sketch nature of the write-ups. Limited time prevents me from extensive investigation or blogging at this time. But, perhaps, a few minutes at a time, I may capture some data that will either shed light OR save someone else time reproducing my own failures.

2012 10 12

It has been noted that when Mr. Bubbles is added to homebrew juice that a few things happen. Ghosts are reduced or eliminated and bubbles pop with a whoosh rather than silently.

I recalled from past experiments that when…

Read more >

I had the great fortune to spend an afternoon with Louis Pearl , Amazing Bubble Man, who, besides putting on a great show, has a lot to say about bubbles. He mentioned that he often uses a mixture of homemade bubble juice and Mr. Bubbles. I asked him what characteristics Mr. Bubbles brings to the mix that can't be brought to the mix adjusting its primary constituents (detergent, water, and polymer). It is something that I have wondered about. When I ask some people, they tell me that it makes the juice more self-healing which puzzles me because if anything I am often trying to make my juice less self-healing. Others have mentioned characteristics which I (perhaps mistakenly) think of as properties that can be altered by changing the balanc…

Read more >

When I first started bubbling, I bought a lot of different types of cotton twine as I had seen Keith Johnson mention that he made his tri-strings from braided butcher's twine. I wasn't sure what counted as butcher's twine, so I bought lots of balls of cotton twin -- mostly at hardware and grocery stores. Most of them worked pretty well, some better than others--then I noticed the cooking twine at Bed, Bath and Beyond when I was looking for something else. I bought a cone of it and fell in love with it. It held a lot of juice for its weight and released it nicely. I made 2, 3 and 4 strand cords from it (preferring the 3-strand version).

A few months ago, I ran out of it and went to Bed, Bath and Beyond to buy some more. I found the same size…

Read more >

Ed ask me to post some info & picts. reguarding Big Game Bags as a wick material. Game bags are used to protect the meat obtained by hunters until processed. I use the gauze type not the canvas ones. They are also referred to as beef tubes and "modern" cheese cloth. They start out quite elastic & will stretch out quite a bit. After being used to make bubbles they retain their stretched length. Most of these bags are made from a 50/50 cotton/polyester blend. They can be obtained from sporting goods stores as well as local sports departments in places like Fred Meyers, Walmart, & such, mostly during hunting season in the department stores. They are also used for decorating during Halloween and may be found in costume & decorations places dur…

Read more >

9-29-12----We woke up this morning to the first snow of the year, a bit over an inch. So it seems as though I will soon satisfy my curiosity as to whether I can create giant bubbles during our long, cold, & dry winter. It should be quite fun trying to develop a bubble solution that works. I know smaller bubbles that freeze can be made, But I want to try for some big ones. If not it may be nearly 5 months before I can enjoy bubbling again. Hopefully there will at least be a few nice days here and there so I don't "Jones" to much.  

10-10-12----Beautiful evening 46F, clear skies, 71% humidity, 29.96" pressure, & 4mph breeze. Where is a camera when I need one ! The sun was setting and the bubbles were the biggest yet. Beautiful bus size…

Read more >

Is it just me or does time really go by faster as we age?

As a child and younger man it seemed to take forever for the

days to pass and for upcoming events to arrive. My Parents

were old and my Grandparents ancient. Upon reaching my

50th birthday a couple of years back I reflected upon how

quickly the days had actually gone by and was profoundly

saddened by how short our time here really is. Looking back, events that seemed to have occurred

just a while ago had actually happened years or even decades before. How can this be ? Can our

perspective of time really change that much ?

I recently began making giant soapbubbles as a form of relaxation and enjoyment. Some of

these bubbles are gone in an instant and some last for several minutes. The ones tha…

Read more >

One-man Top-down Kid-in-a-bubble Rig

This KIB (kid-in-a-bubble) rig is fairly easy to build and can be operated by a single person. Materials:

2 4-foot, 3/8 inch poplar dowels

4 1-inch wooden dowel caps with 3/8 inch holes (2 are drilled through both ends)

4 15/16 inch split rings

4 #7 barrel swivels

About 130 inches of bleached cotton cooking twine (main wick)

About 40 inches of cotton household string (for leaders)

The arrangement of the dowel caps and the sliding of the split rings helps to open the rig when the tips are pointed up, and minimizes tangling of the lower and upper sections when it's dipped in the bubble juice. Each side is 30 inches, except for the bottom section nearest the bubbler, which is 26 inches. It's a little easier to han…

Read more >

Hi all,

since long I didn't contribute at this place but as Edward asked me to give some advice on how to (more or less) easily take apart a mop head.... here we go!

Currently in Florida I had the chance to get hold of some of the discussed mop heads, in this case the Rubbermaid Rayon mop head.

I first tried to remove the stitching by using scissors but this really resulted in a hassle! I then thought over a better way and tried a little side cutter I had brought which worked much easier and faster. With such a side cutter or similar tool deconstruction should be possible in less than an hour (just a feeing - I didn't measure the time).

See following pictures and explanation:

The mop head, part of it is already deconstructed (right side)

The too…

Read more >

For some time, I have wanted to see if I could make use of CMC (Sodium CarboxyMethylCellulose) which was reported to me by a chemist to be the most beneficial polymer for bubble juice other than PEO. I had some disappointing attempts a year or two ago to make a juice that was CMC-based. This was around the time that I was having a lot of success with PEO-only and HEC-only mixes.

I had some nice sessions at the time with CMC-based mixes, but I didn't come up with any juice that was as good as my best PEO or HEC mixes. The CMC mixes seemed "tighter" than HEC or PEO mixes. When there was enough CMC to make water/detergent bubble-friendly, the solution also resulted in a "tight" skin. The bubbles were less self-healing than PEO or HEC bubbles a…

Read more >

Here are a couple of pictures to put the test videos recorded on my street in perspective.

The lines in the pavement are 10 feet apart:

The street is 21' 6" from mid-gutter to mid-gutter:

And, I am just a tad over 6' tall:

The gutters are 3 feet wide.

The street (not including the gutters) is 18-1/2 feet wide.

It is 16 feet from the gutter edge to the edging beneath the tree.

Read more >

There has been a lot of discussion over the past months about age-related potency changes that high molecular weight PEO (which includes both J-Lube and PloyOx WSR301) can undergo over time.

On SBF, Dustin mentioned quite a while ago that when he got a new batch of WSR301 that it seemed like a whole 'nother animal from what he had been using. Others have reported the same experience. And this harkens back to SBF discussions a year or so ago about 'new' and 'old' J-Lube.

During this time period, I developed the eGoo recipe, and I had some great sessions with it -- as have some others who have raved about it...

BUT... a few people have had terrible results with it. A few mentioned it being unusably stringy even at high dilution. A few minutes a…

Read more >

I just got back from a trip to the Big Island of Hawaii where I fully intended to do a lot of dawn and dusk bubbling -- dawn and dusk because the Waikoloa area were staying is on the 'dry' side of the island. The humidity is reliable good (60% to 80%) around dawn. Unfortunately, when the humidity is up -- so is the wind. I was up before sunrise almost every day -- and the wind was rarely less than 7-10 miles an hour, and was very turbulent. Although, I didn't end up doing much bubbling, I learned a few things.

In order to travel light, I brought dry ingredients and some Dawn Pro with me but not any readymade bubble juice. I brought a small scale and the measuring cup and spoons that I use on the rare occasions that I mix up a batch by volum…

Read more >

A month or so ago, Megan on , mentioned that she had tried Dawn PowerClean and really liked it (at least compared to Dawn Ultra). I picked some up at the store last week for dish-cleaning since PowerClean has earned a reputation for making quick work of cleaning hard-to-clean dishes. I don't know if that is actually true.

Anyway, we are going on vacation and want to make bubble, but we don't want to lug around bubble juice or detergent if we can help it. I decided to see if substituting Dawn Ultra (which is pretty easy to find) into any of my favorite recipes would make acceptable bubbles. I was also curious how Dawn PowerClean would compare.

So, I whipped up two quick liter batches of my 'salty guar' mix (1000 grams water, 1.5 grams guar gu…

Read more >

Until the last week, it had been a long time since I had used EGoo. At that time, it was working great, and I was creating giants of greater size and with better color than I had with my previously favorite recipe. Recently, I have received mixed reports from people -- some experienced bubblers loving it and others disappointed. I could not imagine why there were the disappointed users.

So, I used it a few times in sessions with guar, and it was not behaving at all like it used to. I mixed up some solutions that were identical to eGoo but fresh mixed and they were outperforming the eGoo. Recently, I had also tested guar mixes with and withoug baking soda/citric acid. I noticed that these eGoo bubbles were popping the way that the bubbles cr…

Read more >

This evening, I had (surprisingly) one of my best-ever sessions, and, fortunately, someone was on-hand to capture it on video. Initially, I was just going to compare the performance of three detergents with my basic guar-based mix: Dawn Pro (my standard), Dawn Pro/Dawn Direct Foam (a favorite combo of Brian Lawrence), and Dawn Ultra (because it is so widely available). When I stepped outside at 7:45 pm, the wind was pretty brisk.

I wasn't sure that I would be able to perform a reasonable test. I had three modular 32" top-string loops that I find useful for comparison testing. They are a full 4-ply rayon mop yarn top and a single ply of the deconstructed mop yarn for the bottom. I have stopped using a keeper to bind the top and bottom string…

Read more >

Following the precious advice of Edward I'll try to transcribe my adventure with the adaptation of EGOO in a tropical climate.

Products:

fairy expert

water

peo (j lube)

ac/bs

if you want more ,you can see Egoo by Edward on this blog.

First test in July 2012

the base is an egoo with 16/1

ac: 1.6 g

bs: 3.2 g

fairy: 150 ml

peo: 2.2g

bubbles kinds has 30 degree Celcius, humidity 80 percent but have a very short lifespan. beautiful transparent color the change in temperature of the liquid has a small influence on the output of the bubble.

the pH of the water(no tape water) is 6.2

the pH of the mixture is 7.1

In this test the mixture does not support the wind, he disappears into tiny bubbles.

second test 10/07/12 :

egoo always the same, but this time the water is…

Read more >

This is a message that I posted today to , that relates to the difficulties of sharing recipes -- since our primary ingredients can vary in their 'freshness'.

I have had some interesting conversations with people about their success or disappointment with the eGoo recipe and thought that I would share a few tidbits. The issue-at-hand actually relates to other recipes, too. In short, it is pretty clear that the various PEOs that we have (WSR301 and J-Lube) are in unknown states that effects how much PEO is really needed to get a particular result. The method of mixing definitely has an impact on the result -- not just how the polymer is hydrated (as Thommy and I demonstrated a couple of years ago) but also when it is added to the mix.

It turn…

Read more >

Glowby's Flexible Mix

This recipe is based on "Sterling's Mix" for giant and smaller bubbles, with additional notes and flexible options for making simpler or more complex blends. Please see and try Sterling's recipe in this Wiki. It's potent! ... and a pleasure to work with, especially for creating colorful and monstrous bubbles.

The following mix is inflexible, however, in its requirement of BLM (Brian's Lube Mix). Please see Brian's recipe in this Wiki, and the discussions regarding its preparation. I recommend making your BLM at least 2 days in advance of using it, to let it blend thoroughly. HEC (from K-Y Jelly and its clones) can be substituted for HPMC (Surgilube) in the BLM recipe, with similar results but somewhat different behavior…

Read more >

UPDATED JULY 9, 2012

[NOTE: a little video demonstrating this phenomenon will be added soon.]

I am fond of making bubble juice concentrates for a few reasons:

• they tend to have long shelf lifes since it seems like the micro-organisms that normally feast on the polymers don't thrive in a concentrate's environment,
• they save shelf-space (with eGoo, for instance, a one quart bottle holds enough goo for a few gallons of finished bubble juice),
• they are time-efficient. It takes pretty much the same amount of time to make enough concentrate for gallons of bubble juice as it does to brew one quart of bubble juice.

I started exploring guar-based mixes about the same time that I was finishing up the eGoo recipe. Once it was established that people were e…

Read more >

(Currently, this is a placeholder and this article needs to be fleshed out.)

In March, several of us began a discussion of water:detergent dilution on the wiki's facebook page. I have, from the beginning of my interest in soap bubbles a few years ago, been curious about the huge range of dilutions in the recipes that one finds. I settled on about 12.5:1 which seems to be in the range most frequently documented by SBF members.

Over the last few years, I have asked on SBF many times about how people arrived at their preferred dilution and what differences they observed at greater and lesser dilution, but I never got any replies. On the FB page, a couple of people noted that they preferred dilutions over 20:1 because they found the colors to be…

Read more >

[This is article is in progress -- come back for updates as I refine the guar recipes. Guar-based mixes can create amazing bubbles and are well-worth exploring even if you are already happily using another polymer.]

See some pretty pictures here to get an idea about this solution.

For a number of reasons (mostly serendipitous), I decided to re-visit Guar Gum, which I had previously more-or-less written off as a primary polymer, as a primary polymer. One contributing factor was an interest in finding a bubble juice recipe for those that have difficulty finding J-Lube or HEC.

The search for a definitive recipe is ongoing as I have only just begun to have success, but there is clearly great promise here -- and others are confirming it with their…

Read more >

This page just documents various viscosity tests that I have performed -- mostly crude. This entry is mostly for my own edification but may be of interest to others.

I will try to fill in the details of how the tests are performed (at a later date).

2012 03 24

20 ml syringe tests to compare Dawn Profession and Dawn Manual Pot & Pan

Read more >

[[[ THIS BLOG ENTRY WILL DISCUSS THE RECENT DILUTE SOLUTION EXPLORATIONS ]]]

ADD LINKS TO THE OTHER RELATED VIDEOS

2012 03 15 - 25:1 Citrated Water: Dawn Pro

In this session I tried out two solution 0.002% PEO (a threshold amount) and 0.02%. The humidity was 75%, and it was quite windy. The 0.002% mix was very difficult to use: closing bubbles was tricky and opening it just a tiny bit did not result in the garland-like streams of bubble that one gets with a higher amount of PEO.

As seen in the video below the 0.02% WSR301 solution (twice as much as is found in Jumbo Juice) worked well. Long tubes were possible and one got garland-like behavior when the loop was held open just a small amount.

The colors and color stability seemed the same with b…

Read more >

IN PROGRESS -- THIS IS A PLACEHOLDER ENTRY -- TEXT COMING SOON

Read more >

Over the past month or two, I have become interested in yarn used in loop-end string mops. Dustin Skye and Todd Kamisugi are having great success with the cotton/poly blend yarn from a RubberMaid commercial/pro mophead replacement (model X884) that is available from WalMart.

Brian Lawrence sent me a nice tri-string loop that makes use of the yarn of a RubberMaid microfiber string mop that is quite nice.

Loop-end string mops can (with a bit of time) be unraveled into a single long length of yarn.

Anyway, I have bought a number of types of string mop heads to explore the yarns' suitability for bubble-making. I will be posting blog entries with pictures and videos of some of the trials. So far, I have made some nice bubbles with the X884 yarn, b…

Read more >

My work project which has had me working very long hours for a very long time finally shipped, and my family was in town for Thanksgiving which gave me a chance to spend some time making bubbles in very nice conditions: cool day time temperatures (low sixties), nice humidity (60% to 80% RH) and slightly overcast skies with (mostly) only a little wind. Fortunately my family (mother, sisters, nieces, nephew, etc.) enjoy bubbles. I got a chance to try out a few loops that I have not really used since I made them: a 6 foot top-string garland wand (from Lehigh SecureLine 3/16" cotton diamond braid wrap) whose looplets are secured with twist ties (lazy me), a 6 foot top-string tri-string that is all Lehigh Secureline and another 6-foot top-strin…

Read more >

The last few days, I have had my first chances to make bubbles in quite a long time, and the conditions have been excellent: cool temperatures (lows 60s F), decent humidity (60 to 80%) with the sort of overcast days that benefit bubble colors. My next blog post will feature some videos and pictures. All in all, I have made some of the best bubbles that I have ever made over the last few days.

Today, something very strange happened. Two bubble solutions from reliable recipes were total busts. I have run into situations where one can't make a bubble to save one's life outdoors with reliable solutions. Today was the first time that I couldn't even make a bubble with a small wand indoors with a reliable recipe and fresh batches of polymers.

It s…

Read more >

It has been a long time since I have done any bubble experiments. And my last batch of experiments (were they really in the Spring) haven't yet been completed or properly documented. This blog post is mostly a reminder to myself about topics that I need to explore some more or document on the wiki.

• 1 Baking Soda and Citric Acid
• 2 HEC-Based Mixes
• 3 Dual-Wick Tri-Strings
• 4 Wiki Reorganization
• 5 Wicks to try out
• 6 Nets
• 7 Pics

I had been interested in these ever since I started bubbling since I had seen some mentions of them on SBF -- although there didn't seem much in the way of follow-up. Baking soda had been mentioned to me by a number of people who had very non-specific comments. Then in Nov. of 2010, Alan McKay wrote a letter that appears on SBF that me…

Read more >