for those of you (if any) who have been following my posts. Finally. Success. Even my bodge on the ignition coil worked out in the end. suuuuper stoked about it. Loving the beautiful amber colour.

Hey, good to see..! Not sure about the lampholder support, though 

I try and run them horizontally if possible, we use a lab retort stand (or two for long lamps) to hold them, it works very well.

Ehh I like running it vertically, more aesthetically pleasing to me personally. A bit sketchy but as long as I don't knock it it should be fine. Funny enough original spec sheet recommends running cap up at +/- 110 degrees (so horizontal is also included in that range obv) Overall though I'm quite happy with it

Yes, vertical cap up is fine, but only for the smaller wattages. Doing it with anything larger than about 55W can see a lot of sodium drop down to the bend end, which can starve the rest of the tube of sodium, causing it to run red.

Nicely done, the ignitor soldered up well then? 

Lol no. I don't have a soldering iron. I had to wind the wires around the torn out inductor pins in figure of 8's (luckily it was a configuration where that was possible) and then move it very very gently. I'll be looking for another one. But this will do for now

I gave you the link for the eBay seller who has some SX72 ignitors, which will work fine. If he won't ship to you, let me know.

Getting the lab stands was the best thing we could have done for running lamps in any orientation, as we do have a number of reflector lamps as well.

Lol no. I don't have a soldering iron. I had to wind...

You should buy for yourself some soldering. Withuot that you will be very limited in what you would be able to fix.
Even some as simple as this does most of the job...
Or this ELV powered one - this will work well even from an 19V notebook power supply...
Go for some with thermostat control...

And use proper solder with lead in..! Ruined too many circuit boards trying to get that lead-free stuff to melt 

And use proper solder with lead in..! Ruined too many circuit boards trying to get that lead-free stuff to melt 

Unfortunately as a private customer (so not a licensed business) you are not allowed to buy leaded solder anymore. That is the reason why you need the iron with a thermostat: The lead free alloys needs higher temperature, so there is less temperature headroom before damaging something, so the uncontrolled irons either do not warm up enough or overheat too much.

Mainly the second "12-24V" iron (with some tip set) offers very large heat delivery capability - there the feedback sensor is directly in the tip itself (so not relying to the often questionable heat transfer from the heater body to the tip, everything is pressed together), so is able to safely melt even larger things yet without the risk of overheating.
Plus these are really quick to warm up (within 10..15 seconds, even the larger tips).
For me most used are D24 for smaller and C4 (or D5 if available) for larger jobs.
This iron looks like it may be compatible with Hakko T12 series tips (there is huge offerings of these rather cheap), but be careful - they may differ in the temperature coefficient of the used thermocouple sensor, so the temperature may be off. But you may try (good reference point is the ~210degC - there the typical lead free solders just start to melt, so if that corresponds to the same knob setting, the thermocouples are the same and so you may buy the full T12 assortment if you like so).

@Medved - well that's your opinion, which of course you're perfectly entitled to. As we have more than enough proper solder to last our lifetimes and probably several other people's, we'll stick with what we've got 

By the way, leaded solder is freely available on eBay, at least for the time being.

I would also recommend getting a decent soldering iron from a manufacturer like Antex. Ria has one that has done twenty years plus of service and is still going strong.

@Medved - well that's your opinion, which of course you're perfectly entitled to.

Well, I would personally way more like to continue using the decent leaded solder  , but our mighty government had decided otherwise ...
 And did not care what I think about it at all ...

So what remained for me was to just learn to use what they left me with...

As I said, it's still readily available on eBay, see here