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Jul. 9th, 2007
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Well, update on a few things....
Dental issues are about resolved - Friday morning spent in the dentist's chair, getting drilled and patched. Tooth was broken below the gum but Doc (or should I call him Dent?) built it up and incorporated a lyaer of porcelain flakes for extra durability. This should last me a while but the fact of the matter is that I ground/grind my teeth a lot, and did/do them a lot of damage that will be with me for a long time. So, stick that stupid plastic thing in my mouth - nicer than being drilled for things.
Lianne left for Sault Ste. Marie this morning, so I am on my own for a few days before Akito arrives. I will spend it trying to get as much of my library on shelves as I can, so Aki can turn around in his old room.
I've been experimenting with formulas for patinas for my metal castings. I used to use lead, and a simple immersion of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide gave the casting a nice even iron-grey. (3 parts H2O2 at 3% plus 1 part acetic acid at 5%: see http://www.artmetal.com/files/imported/project/TOC/finishes/nonfe/H2O2.html) This won't work with the tin-bismuth alloy I use now, so I have had to try stronger stuff without getting into things like nitric acid. (examples abound here: http://www.sciencecompany.com/patinas/patinaformulas.htm)
On the weekend I tested out something that seemed to work, though the castings perhaps need longer immersion periods: water, vinegar, salt, copper sulfate (CuSO4 located after a lot of searching at Borden Mercantile, which has a lot of neat stuff for light farming, or heavy gardening, whichever, where it is sold in crystals as a base for a pesticide). More salt made for a darker patina, while less made a brownish-green. One interesting effect, which I am not sure I can duplicate, involved adding hydrogen peroxide and some extra salt to the above, which gave a vaguely iridescent bluish tinge to the metal. I then threw two old pennies in the latter, and some copper plated out onto the castings.
We also got a small solar panel on the weekend, and I will use that to produce a current in the solution - the copper sulfate should plate out nicely and more evenly in this case. Anyway, this is one way to teach Akito some chemistry he should be learning soon enough.
[EDIT: Ammonium chloride was easily if not cheaply obtained at Victoria Compounding Pharmacy, they would not sell me sodium hydroxide as it's allowed only by prescription (I wonder what for) so I will have to go back to Borden's.
I also got new glasses at lunch! Same frames as before, so I look the same, I just see differently.]
['NOTHER EDIT: We have new neighbours! The old renters (three young men who I think were students, never spoke to anyone or seemed to do anything much except sleep and bring in loads of groceries) moved out and the new ones came in on the 27th. A young man (carpenter) and his wife (microbiologist) and they seem better than The Sims (http://ltmurnau.livejournal.com/10738.html). They have a small fat black dog that I thought at first was an unusually fuzzy Vietnamese pot-bellied pig. Its name is Ace and so far he doesn't seem to bark.]
Dental issues are about resolved - Friday morning spent in the dentist's chair, getting drilled and patched. Tooth was broken below the gum but Doc (or should I call him Dent?) built it up and incorporated a lyaer of porcelain flakes for extra durability. This should last me a while but the fact of the matter is that I ground/grind my teeth a lot, and did/do them a lot of damage that will be with me for a long time. So, stick that stupid plastic thing in my mouth - nicer than being drilled for things.
Lianne left for Sault Ste. Marie this morning, so I am on my own for a few days before Akito arrives. I will spend it trying to get as much of my library on shelves as I can, so Aki can turn around in his old room.
I've been experimenting with formulas for patinas for my metal castings. I used to use lead, and a simple immersion of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide gave the casting a nice even iron-grey. (3 parts H2O2 at 3% plus 1 part acetic acid at 5%: see http://www.artmetal.com/files/imported/project/TOC/finishes/nonfe/H2O2.html) This won't work with the tin-bismuth alloy I use now, so I have had to try stronger stuff without getting into things like nitric acid. (examples abound here: http://www.sciencecompany.com/patinas/patinaformulas.htm)
On the weekend I tested out something that seemed to work, though the castings perhaps need longer immersion periods: water, vinegar, salt, copper sulfate (CuSO4 located after a lot of searching at Borden Mercantile, which has a lot of neat stuff for light farming, or heavy gardening, whichever, where it is sold in crystals as a base for a pesticide). More salt made for a darker patina, while less made a brownish-green. One interesting effect, which I am not sure I can duplicate, involved adding hydrogen peroxide and some extra salt to the above, which gave a vaguely iridescent bluish tinge to the metal. I then threw two old pennies in the latter, and some copper plated out onto the castings.
We also got a small solar panel on the weekend, and I will use that to produce a current in the solution - the copper sulfate should plate out nicely and more evenly in this case. Anyway, this is one way to teach Akito some chemistry he should be learning soon enough.
[EDIT: Ammonium chloride was easily if not cheaply obtained at Victoria Compounding Pharmacy, they would not sell me sodium hydroxide as it's allowed only by prescription (I wonder what for) so I will have to go back to Borden's.
I also got new glasses at lunch! Same frames as before, so I look the same, I just see differently.]
['NOTHER EDIT: We have new neighbours! The old renters (three young men who I think were students, never spoke to anyone or seemed to do anything much except sleep and bring in loads of groceries) moved out and the new ones came in on the 27th. A young man (carpenter) and his wife (microbiologist) and they seem better than The Sims (http://ltmurnau.livejournal.com/10738.html). They have a small fat black dog that I thought at first was an unusually fuzzy Vietnamese pot-bellied pig. Its name is Ace and so far he doesn't seem to bark.]
