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Court
| | Posted on Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - 05:53 am: | 
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In all fairness . . . I can't blame it solely in the Mg and Al.
Few of you were alive . . you'll have to take my word for this . . but there was a day in the 60's when THE thing for middle-class daddy's to do was to "finish off the basement".
Tom's Father, a hard working Goodyear tire builder, had started and had the suspended ceiling hanging in the nice gold grid.
The studs were up but there was no sheetrock and the floor was still the virgin poured concrete.
That's where we emptied the entire can of crystal Drano. . . . yep, you used to be able to buy it in crystal form . . . 12 oz. of about the strongest base a human can purchase.
He poured the Drano on the floor . . then took a 50ml beaker of HCl (Hydrochloric acid) and we waited.
. . . and waited.
Damn . . . nothing . . . we'd expected it to have a reaction and all it did was sit there and bubble in what appeared to be some sort of a boil as the two melded.
Hmmmmmm . . . . Tom pondered and went up to room and reappeared with another beaker filled with the Mg and Al dust.
We stood back and he tossed the contents of the beaker toward the bubbling pile.
In what likely extended for only a Mini-Micro-Nano second I saw the most violent reaction I've ever witnessed.
It wasn't really a BANG . . . just the woosh of Oxygen being consumed and the brilliant white light before us shot skyward . . . unaware and uncaring that the new suspended ceiling was hovering at about the 6'-8" level.
It was pretty much what I would describe as a 1 foot diameter shaft of brilliant white flame.
The entire span of time as about 1/14th the blink of an eye. You had to be quick to view the shaft of flame.
But . . the 12' diameter black circle on the ceiling? . . . . yep, that was permanent testimony to the science that had occurred there that day.
Tom's Dad . . . like many of the other members of the United Rubber Workers Local #29 stopped and drank a few beers at Speck's Tavern on Gage on the way home each day. I don't think this helped.
I didn't see Tom for a while and I opted for what appeared to be a far safer career path . . working on energized 345,000 Volt electrical transmission lines. |
Littlebuggles
| | Posted on Thursday, November 25, 2010 - 01:02 am: |
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Wow, thanks Court!
...and now we know the rest of the story |
Buell_bert
| | Posted on Thursday, November 25, 2010 - 03:33 am: |
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Cool Court. The old house always had crystal Drano, I remember the red cap. We all stood back (at the insistence of that days mentor) during a class while he (or she)cut the string holding a broken sodium filled valve above a bucket of water. Look up spontaneous disasembly. I also remember a chem teacher pulling a small piece of Mg out of a jar of water. Hey, good thing Tim tossed it and didn't POUR it. Can we play with mercury again during class? |
Reepicheep
| | Posted on Thursday, November 25, 2010 - 12:46 pm: |
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I distinctly remember sitting in Chem II with the (really sharp) chem teacher, when we heard a "bang" followed by a scream from across the hall. The chem teacher looked up for a split second, said the name of the football coach, and shot out of the room and across the hall quick as a cat.
The football coach was doing the "sodium in water" demo for the basic science class. He used a little too be a chunk, and in a glass test tube. They were able to extract the glass from the coaches eye fine and he made a full recovery.
That was a real lesson to the lab rats who worked in the biology lab (good friends of mine), so when they stole about half a pound of sodium metal, they made sure they were far away when they lobbed it into the pond in the park. We weren't stupid you know!  (Unfortunately, I missed that adventure. Or probably fortunately, as I was the hand wringer of the bunch and if I had been there, common sense might have prevailed, and a good story would have been ruined ). |
Oldog
| | Posted on Saturday, November 27, 2010 - 04:51 pm: |
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fatty:
I am under the impression that anodize does not weather well. (colored finishes)
great idea to give protection the metal though
as the layer of al-ox will resist most assaults except a grinder or wire wheel (rock damage / tire iron ) |
Ft_bstrd
| | Posted on Sunday, November 28, 2010 - 01:20 am: |
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I think the weathering will depend on the depth of the color penetration.
For the most part, I think that the durability and color fastness won't be any worse than powder coating. It can be stripped and reapplied as needed. |
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