If you want one to be a good swimmer, better take your foot off his head first
And who needs a cinema when you got a lab
Speaking of which, got some nice shiny new replacement boss heads for my clamps just arrive. My last ones turned out to be die-cast metal, these are nice steel ones. Been waiting way too long for those, had to manage for a while with a shitty rubber moulded one, that I ended up having to glue with superglue to keep the fucking end on after the shite die-cast things broke.
Didn't cost me much, but worth a lot more in practice than they were in currency. Will put those to good use. Plus the new ones have a V profile where the screw meets up with the back plate, so easier to lock onto the round bars of stands (mine doesn't follow any special standard, its just a big block of iron/steel that I tapped a hole in with the lathe and made a matching threaded rod to go in it. by paring it down using a tungsten carbide tipped cutter, that works something like a rotary plane, only for steel instead of wood that slots into the side of the lathe on a movable post which moves in and out, axially to the plane of rotation of the workpiece to thin it out, then force it through a die-head. Pretty simple, but cost me nothing at all and the heavy counterweight serves to keep large bits of glass clamped and held where they should be, even when its something like a stack of condensers that very nearly pokes the top of the ceiling, full of boiling solvents laden with stuff you really wouldn't want falling on your head, like acid, or mercury salts. Or worse, mercury salt-laden acid (not that long ago had to do just that in fact)
Need to get more keck clips now, this time some stainless, preferably chromium-plated steel, all the ones I have/had were plastic, and now I only have a bare handful left, after the iodine monochloride synthesis I did a while back, even wrapped tightly in teflon, it ate through the grease and then resulted in the clips crumbling away into little pieces, whilst the surfaces closest turned to dust.
I've only got a handful of bottles that are capable of storing that, that I obtained by the sheer stupidity of the filth. Illegal raid on the premises, 'took samples' which they then left on the lab bench. Turns out those bottles, they obviously have to be prepared to encounter just about anything, if they were to raid, say a terror cell, or jackboot on somebody enjoying their right to a private life and doing nothing of the kind, but using some fairly nasty chemicals to do it. Those I think must have teflon caps or something. I wouldn't try them with hydrofluoric acid, or a very select few other chemicals but they are resistant as hell to STRONG oxidizers, acids, halogens and other, nastier things still. Could do with buying some bottles like that, because, with the threads wrapped in teflon tape, I've had just under an ounce of iodine monochloride sat in one for at least a couple of months now and there isn't even damage to the little gasket insert in the top that makes sure they seal well, don't think its even penetrated through to the other side of it, which makes me think the whole cap assembly must be teflon or something like it. Could do with some bottles of that kind in half liter and liter sizes for storage of reagents like chromyl chloride (its an extremely powerful oxidizer, likes to set things on fire, water sensitive as hell, giving off copious fumes of HCl gas and carcinogenic chromium (VI) residues, I spilled some once, and it burnt a hole straight through the bench! had to physically cut out the section it contacted and patch in another surface, after permanently gluing a sheet of wood over the entire remainder where only little bits of mist or splatter had gone, after a flask broke in the middle of a distillation, eventually got rid of the entire lot as hazardous waste)
But it does have its uses, despite setting most solvents on fire or doing other unpleasant things to them (needs using in something really inert, like anhydrous methylene chloride, chloroform or carbon tet)
