And if you dilute it, be sure to observe the safety rule of *always* pouring the acid into water rather than the other way around.
That way, it will be the diluted acid that splashes or spills, not the full strength...
The reason is a bit less obvious than that, as demonstrated in high-school chemistry to make the point. At least back when I went to high school it was - with all the skittishness about exposing young persons to the faintest shred of real life, it's no doubt no longer in vogue, regardless of proper safety precautions.
When you add water to acid, the water can be heated to boiling - I forget the details of why, but I remember the effect. Effectively, you can consider acid dilution to be an exothermic "reaction." The heat is there in either direction, but the distribution of heat is significantly different with acid to water .vs. water to acid. When water is added to acid and the water flashes to steam, you get acid being flung out of the container by the steam - not good.
Chemistry students who retained more are welcome to fill in the details, or the web probably can as well. I don't need them, I recall the effect and that's plenty for me.
you can wipe it on, or put it in a container near the wood and cover the pair and the fumes will do the trick.
Interesting. I never took chemistry but my biology teacher did drop a small ball of sodium in water once. That was fun.
Makes all the more sense; the likely hood of it splashing/spilling is much more likely if it tends to explode on you!
...Kevin
I'll attest to that. Brought back memories of my early automotive days and filling dry batteries with suulfuric acid and topping off a battery with water. Adding water to a charged battery would result in what appeared to be boiling acid. Then there was the time I was filling a new battery with sulfuric acid and the hose came off of the acid container, tghe acid poured right into my crotch. Thank goodness there was a Coke machine near by.
I recall doing that in chemistry, however we were trusted to slice off a piece of the sodium ourselves and then cover it back up quickly. The sodium would also react to being exposed to air although not as voilently as dropping a piece in a beaker of water. I forget how the sodium was stored to stop the reaction with the air. Corpus Christi was/is a very humid city.
"Leon" wrote: (clip) acid poured right into my
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ What a strange time to stop and drink a Coke.
IIR, it's usually stored in kerosene.
That would sound reasonable... I wonder how it is preserved in nature.
LOL, and thank goodness a quarter would buy you a Coke.
e
The order of mixing water and acid is very important with sulfuric acid, but of no real concern with hydrochloric. In the lab we keep 1+1 hydrochloric acid (1 part water + 1 part 30% acid) on the shelf for routine use. It doesn't fume like the concentrated stuff and is generally easier to handle. You can spill the 1+1 on your skin and simply rinse it off with water with no damage. It is concentrated sulfuric acid (battery acid) that is dangerous to handle. FWIW, the worst burn I ever got in 30 years in the lab was from Hydrofluoric acid (the stuff used to etch glass). Now that's some bad s---! Paul Gilbert - retired chemist
It's not. Sodium doesn't occur in pure form in nature. *Can't* occur in pure form, in fact, since it reacts spontaneously with both air and water.
Ahh.. So that raw Na is processed? IIRC in the more pure form it was more like clay.
The order of mixing water and acid is very important with sulfuric acid, but of no real concern with hydrochloric.
Unknown back then to me and unfortunately there was not much choice to topping off a battery with water unless the battery was dead. Then you were basically adding water to water. I recall so many customers wanting to add sulfuric acid to a dead empty/low battery. That could not be done, you had to add water and recharge. Simply refilling a dead battery with acid would not allow the recharge/chemical reaction to take place. Back then batteries were charged at the factory and drained. The shop would then refill the new empty charged batteries with acid.
I suspect that the sulfuric acid we used to refill the new batteries was a weaker mix that a strong solution of sulfuric acid. I recall that if you got it on your bare skin nothing happed immediately but shortly you would get this severe itch. If you got it on a cut it was like pouring alcohol or lemon juice on the cut. Any piece of cloth, like your cloths, that it came in contact with was immediately predestined to descenegrate in the wash. Ahhh.. sulfuric acid has a very tart salty sour taste. ;~) I some times would touch an itchey spot very lightly to the very tip of my tongue to determine if the itch was natural or caused by acid. Like being electrocuted with 110-120 volts you instantly knew if there was acid on your finger using the taste test. :~) I filled lots and lots and lots of batteries when I was a kid 5-10 a day.
In the lab we keep 1+1 hydrochloric acid (1 part water + 1 part 30% acid) on the shelf for routine use. It doesn't fume like the concentrated stuff and is generally easier to handle. You can spill the 1+1 on your skin and simply rinse it off with water with no damage. It is concentrated sulfuric acid (battery acid) that is dangerous to handle. FWIW, the worst burn I ever got in 30 years in the lab was from Hydrofluoric acid (the stuff used to etch glass). Now that's some bad s---! Paul Gilbert - retired chemist
It's a very soft metal. As far as I can remember, most of the methods of purifying it involve passing an electric current through one of its compounds (for example, I believe that electrolysis of molten sodium hydroxide yields the pure metal plus oxygen and hydrogen as gases).
I am very inexperienced at this, but I have made 5 cherry bowls. I spend more time sanding them than anybody else does, probably. As I am sanding/polishing them them with pretty fine grits, let's say 600 or so, the heat from the sanding darkens them a fair amount. I even tried polishing a couple with the back side of the sandpaper, and I can see definite darkening from that. So far, I have only been finishing them with a can of natural ancient linseed oil and that darkens them even more. This is all air dried for 5 or 6 years, cherry that I cut myself.
Pete Stanaitis
---------------------
Bob Daun wrote:
That's called "burning". It's entirely different from the rich red-brown patina that cherry acquires after a few years of exposure to sunlight.
We bought a Cherry Grandfather clock in 87 and it glows very nice. Sadly spiders got into it and jammed the gears. Put camphor balls to run off people and spiders. :-)
Mart> >> I am very inexperienced at this, but I have made 5 cherry bowls. I
As the originator of this thread and a retired chemist, I am glad someone finally clarified the situation with acid and water. The only real dangerous actor is concentrated sulfuric acid as far as reacting violently with water. And I agree about Hydrofluoric acid (HF). This is really nasty corrosive stuff. On the other hand, sulfuric acid has little odor but a sniff of hydrochloric with clear up your sinuses real quick (not recommended). Do not really want to prolong this thread too far but I have another question to throw out. What about turning immature black walnut. It has a lot of grain but not the typical walnut color. Is there a way to treat a bowl turned with immature walnut to convert it to the typical Brown color. I tried ammonia but it didn't seem to have any effect.
The order of mixing water and acid is very important with sulfuric acid, but of no real concern with hydrochloric. In the lab we keep 1+1 hydrochloric acid (1 part water + 1 part 30% acid) on the shelf for routine use. It doesn't fume like the concentrated stuff and is generally easier to handle. You can spill the 1+1 on your skin and simply rinse it off with water with no damage. It is concentrated sulfuric acid (battery acid) that is dangerous to handle. FWIW, the worst burn I ever got in 30 years in the lab was from Hydrofluoric acid (the stuff used to etch glass). Now that's some bad s---! Paul Gilbert - retired chemist
I have sold some walnut at a gallery, and got good prices ($400 to $800) for pieces that featured a mixture of dark and light wood with a mirror like lacquer finish - in my case the light color came from rot, not immaturity, but it was quite spectacular (and took quite a bit of CA glue to get it hard enough to hold up so I could finish it)
so, my suggestion is to not dye it dark
InspirePoint website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.