New Stuff

[renaeden]

Is the lead tinsel actually lead? Allowed to be sold?

Mum's cups are somewhat different to what I saw on eBay - they have 4 (I think) lines etched around them near the top.

Some of the Tupperware, wow. I remember using that as a kid.

[Icequeen]

Is the lead tinsel actually lead? Allowed to be sold?

Mum's cups are somewhat different to what I saw on eBay - they have 4 (I think) lines etched around them near the top.

Some of the Tupperware, wow. I remember using that as a kid.

It did have lead in it, lead foil...which gave it weight and made it drape better and last almost forever. We used to have a massive bag of it, and I used to glob it on the tree until you could barely see the lights when I was a kid, it was forgiving stuff, not like the plastic stuff now.

I don't know if they ever officially banned it...they basically told U.S. manufacturers/people you need to make it from something else, it's a health risk and it kind of disappeared like orange Tang. It's still made in other countries.

You can't sell anything "currently" under recall on Ebay, but once recalled items sometimes turn into sought after collectibles years later and are allowed...and manufacturing standards change on things...like electric blankets. Normally sellers state "does not meet current manufacturing/safety guidelines"...and "this was a recalled item...sold as a collectible only".

[Parts]

Is the lead tinsel actually lead? Allowed to be sold?

Mum's cups are somewhat different to what I saw on eBay - they have 4 (I think) lines etched around them near the top.

Some of the Tupperware, wow. I remember using that as a kid.

It did have lead in it, lead foil...which gave it weight and made it drape better and last almost forever. We used to have a massive bag of it, and I used to glob it on the tree until you could barely see the lights when I was a kid, it was forgiving stuff, not like the plastic stuff now.

I don't know if they ever officially banned it...they basically told U.S. manufacturers/people you need to make it from something else, it's a health risk and it kind of disappeared like orange Tang. It's still made in other countries.

You can't sell anything "currently" under recall on Ebay, but once recalled items sometimes turn into sought after collectibles years later and are allowed...and manufacturing standards change on things...like electric blankets. Normally sellers state "does not meet current manufacturing/safety guidelines"...and "this was a recalled item...sold as a collectible only".

   we did the same thing,  you could throw it on the tree from across the room    The manufacturers  took it off the market voluntarily  in the early 70s with the governments prodding, my dad stocked up on it so we had it for a few years after. I always look for it at estate sales but have yet to find any.

[Lestat]

Thats quite a funny mental image, throwing tinsel onto an xmas tree from across the room.

Could probably make it from just a strip of lead metal with a blunt knife and a hammer. Pb is so soft and malleable, you could just whack it with the knife using the hammer to cut in the frondy bits, then whack the entire strip repeatedly with the hammer to flatten it out, perhaps cutting more fronds in the side strips when its thinned out and there is more space to do it. And if you bugger it up or don't have a long enough piece you could always melt-cast it from a block, or just bits of roofing lead, skimming the top with a bit of scrap metal to strip off the oxide layer. You can melt it with just a blowtorch. Or you can buy electronic solder-pots online for a bit over a tenner UK, I've got one that I use for lead casting, and casting other low melting point metals or alloys, as well as first melting a suitable metal (mine goes up to 500 or 600 'C, I forget which now,) in it, then using pliers, putting in a ceramic or carbon (the latter heats up especially well) crucible, for melting things like alkali metal hydroxides, with suitable protection from air hacked up plus a tank of argon to fill the air-shield, and a couple of electrodes and power supply for electrolysis, although one must be pretty careful with both the bath temperature (you let the metal melt, shove in the crucible, then turn the power off completely to let the metal solidify and lock the crucible in place, then turn it on but keep it below the MP of the metal hydroxide). Before reading of non-electrolytic processes for alkali metals using magnesium dust in a thermite-like reaction, then grinding the cement-looking magnesium oxide/alkali metal slag up to powder in a blender purged with argon, and boiling it in 1,4-dioxane, produced using hot, concentrated drain-cleaner sulfuric acid (since this is a distillation process, one can use bog cleaner grade sulfuric) and ethylene glycol (again, use antifreeze grade, just use the concentrate type sold for adding water and making up one's preferred concentration.

Works for making sodium metal in bulk without the finnickyness of electrolysis using just caustic soda, magnesium powder (ebay, cheap as) and a bit of magnesium strip to ignite the thermite mix, a steel container to contain the mixture and something like a steel plate and cement block to hold the top on to prevent the mixture from boiling off the sodium, potassium, rubidium, caesium etc (lithium IMO would be problematic because of the dioxane stage, since molten alkali metals are evolved, and unlike the other alkali metals, lithium, when molten according to my reading, melts through glass), and the 1,4-dioxane, made from antifreeze and bog cleaner plus a distillation. of the dioxane (and removing the polymerized glorp during the dioxane synthesis)

Pretty neat, the 1,4-dioxane even provides a protective vapor blanket (topping off with inert gas isn't a bad idea though) to help prevent contact of alkali metal and air. Which would be disastrous. (and with something like caesium....well kiss goodbye to your head, never mind your flask! *still hasn't forgotten that youtube video he saw of a lump of Cs being thrown into a bathtub full of water.....or the resultant detonation and hail of bathtub-shrapnel or the way the water was thrown meters into the air*...that, in a glass vessel and flammable ether solvent would be ugly and no mistake )

[Lestat]

Some new stuff, just arrived today. New Buchner funnels, glass frit (all no.3 frits), all 24/40 joint size, vacuum takeoff for vac filtration. New Erlenmeyer flasks, again, 24/40 joint size, as is my typical joint size for most of my glassware, came with a bunch of (plastic, so limited use, I rarely have use for plastic ones, I typically only use stainless steel  ones) keck clips, and some rubber hose. came free with it, as did a small handheld pistol-grip vacuum pump with top-mounted vacuum gauge, for use in vacuum filtrations)

And something else that came for me, (the bottles all contain the same thing, 1-diisopropylaminoethanol, 120ml in total. Going to make myself some Hunig's base (diisopropylethylamine, a sterically hindered, non-nucleophilic base, very useful for catalysis of alkylations and acylations of amines because of its non-nucleophilic nature and high degree of steric hindrance it won't quaternize, and diisopropylaminoethanol ought to be the perfect precursor for making Hunig's base, via iodination or bromination, reacting with elemental bromine should do the trick to form the bromoethane then amination with ammonia. Wouldn't work for most tertiary amine syntheses but diisopropylaminoethylamine ought to be an exception, due to the non-nucleophilic character, meaning an SN2 nucleophilic addition won't progress further to the quaternary ammonium salt, which happens with most amines, since susceptibility increases, in the direction 1'>2' and most '3 amines, meaning that its difficult to alkylate primary and secondary amines to form tertiary amines because you get overalkylation, typically ending up with a quaternary ammonium halide.)

[Lestat]

A pair of gas-inlets. CBF taking a picture unless anyone is curious and wants to see them, since they are basically a wide, short glass hollow column a few inch long, with male and female joints top and bottom respectively, and a hose-barb in the middle.

[renaeden]

A pair of gas-inlets. CBF taking a picture unless anyone is curious and wants to see them, since they are basically a wide, short glass hollow column a few inch long, with male and female joints top and bottom respectively, and a hose-barb in the middle.

You describe them well.

[Parts]

I have a hand vacuum pump just like the one in your photo, I use it mostly to bleed brakes

[Icequeen]

I have a hand vacuum pump just like the one in your photo, I use it mostly to bleed brakes

Mity vac...had one too. Gave it to my BIL a few years back since him and SO started doing all the brake jobs. Used the hell out of it when I ran the VW's.

[Lestat]

Heh I used to have one of those too, the OTC brake bleeder kind, fucking thing was only fit for salvaging the vacuum gauge from it, the gauge seal broke and it won't hold a vacuum anymore. Complete heap of steaming police officer, first time it was used it bloody broke, and it was only being used for a vac filtration through a fucking buchner. Not what you'd call hard vacuum. Just fell to bits, total sack of dog shit. Hopefully this one, that came with a filtration funnel itself as a freebie along with the funnel and an erlenmeyer.

And ren-lol, well there really isn't much to describe about a gas inlet. Its about 3 inches give or take of hollow glass tubing with a 24/40 joint either end, male and female, and a hose barb poking out the middle. Not what one could call the most sophisticated piece of equipment in the lab, or the hardest to find or priciest. Bought a pair of 'em for about the price of a burger and a large coke, inc. shipping. Total cost a few dollars. Although thats one of the few times the chinese haven't undervalued the shipping. Not like I was buying another Kipp gas generator, or a large multi-necked flask, or anything really exotic. They are just a couple of cheap and simple, although perfectly functional pieces of glassware for pumping gases out of a flask used to generate them, and the top joint allows for a pressure-equalized addition funnel for when one is generating something gaseous with a liquid and a solid, the funnel (got a pressure-equalized funnel of that sort too although it isn't new) is similar to a separatory funnel, with a stopcock and a ground glass joint at the bottom, only it also has a sidearm that connects to a short stem just above the top of the joint fitting and leads back up inside the funnel so that when adding a liquid you can do it with the addition funnel stoppered and clipped without having to worry about the liquid draining only until a vacuum is created above the surface of it, stopping any more from coming out properly, which happens with separatory funnels. The equalizing tube allows a return flow from the system as the liquid drips or pours out of the bottom, as one sets it to do depending on what you might be doing and how fast you want the gas to be flowing.

Useful for things like piping chlorine gas into things, with say, potassium permanganate in the generator flask, tubing on the hose barb leading to a glass pipette with the bulb taken off so it bubbles through into whatever it is you want to be filling with chlorine, and adding hydrochloric acid via the pressure-equalized funnel. Quite convenient, and sure beats something like using a plastic bottle with holes burnt through it and tubing epoxided on, squirting in the acid with a syringe (I don't mean the likes of the kind used for injecting people, this one is all made of glass and holds about 150ml, nearly a foot long and a couple of inches wide, and the cannula needles for it, those are at least a foot long from attachment point to the sharp end. Although I do have smaller glass ones, 10 and 30ml ones, but still, even if they weren't used repeatedly for all manner of potentially poisonous things and corrosives, and the odd poisonous corrosive, then that would be a HUGE volume of fluid to inject a person with, the needles are big and wide bore and would hurt, and shit, who the devil would want to shoot up with a long, flexible, bendy, wide needle tip thats a foot long or close to it?

And I'd hate to see the heroin habit on some poor bastard if they needed a bit under a third of a liter of water to dissolve the amount of gear they'd be shooting...christ, it'd fell an elephant. And withdrawals, that is something you don't even want to think about, damn. Opiate withdrawals usually aren't fatal, but that just might be.