Soap Bubble Wiki
Soap Bubble Wiki

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 at a time, I have been trying to adjust the recipe..but I was focused on things like the amount of baking powder and citric acid ... since enough people were getting good results that I was thinking that my PEO was still pretty similar to when I got it.

THEN

The other day, Mike A. ended up with unusably stringy bubble juice using eGoo at a dilution that is normally not stringy at all for me. He was kind enough to send me a few grams of his JL so that I could see what adjustment needed to be made for his J-Lube.

Mixed per the eGoo recipe, I ended up with unusably stringy bubble juice. I could barely make a bubble with a small plastic wand (versus getting 20 bubbles per dip with juice made from my old J-Lube). With a tri-string, the results were just as bad. Many premature pops. Maximum tube length 8-15 feet (versus 30-40 fert). And when the bubbles popped they did so with an explosion of strings.

At 1/4 the concentration that I normally use, the solution is much stringier. It is seeming that even when the concentration is adjusted so that viscosity is the same that the potent stuff results in a mix that is stringier than the "degraded" stuff.

The degraded stuff actually seems to be a friendlier ingredient.

A few others are experiencing this and we are trying to put our heads together to find a way of making them behave more like each other.

...to be continued PEO