Spehro,

I completely agree.  So far, I have only used less than a pint of FeCl3
and I left the container out over night next to a vise.  Even at room
temperature, there was a fine powder of rust on the vise the next day.
The areas of the vise closer to the FeCl3 container were more rusty, so it
was obviously the culprit.

Which reminds me...

Before disposing of ferric chloride, a good practice is to deactivate it:

1) Dump bolts and nuts or steel shavings into the solution for 24 hrs.
2) The copper precipitates to bottom, pour off liquid into another bottle.
3) Slowly stir in baking soda (NaHCO3) to raise the Ph.
3.5) Stir baking soda into the steel bits and copper sludge.
4) Spread the resulting sludge out on some aluminum foil covered pans.
5) Dry in the sun (don't do it in your oven).
6) Collect the dried sludge and aluminum foil into a trash bag to dispose.

Gustaf

> At 12:41 AM 2/29/2004 -0500, you wrote:
> The other thing I hate about FeCl solutions hanging around is that they
> seem to breed rust on expensive machine tools and measuring equipment.
> Even when tightly sealed, the fumes during use get out and cause problems.
>
> Fine if you live in a place where you can do it outside all year around.

--
http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us!
email listserv@mitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body