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"Faraday Wax" - recreating old school high-vacuum epoxy!

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ChristofferB:

--- Quote from: LaserSteve on May 31, 2021, 12:27:13 am ---I made two small test batches. One with red oxide, one with ultra-fine alumina powder. I'M very happy with the product.

Adding a tiny amount of Orange Oil to the melt made a flexible sealing material  that while not useful for vacuum, is an otherwise interesting  sticky  compound.  I'm waiting to see if the natural solvents diffuse out.

Steve

--- End quote ---

Orange oil is mainly limonene; a terpene. hard rosin is resin that has its terpene content boiled off (turpentine) - you've basically just made a softer grade of natural rosin!  ;D

Very interested in the alumina version! Maybe I should try that. Plenty of "ceramic" epoxies has alumina loading.

CatalinaWOW:
Older versions of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics have a section called "Laboratory Arts and Recipes" with many things like this. For vacuum wax it recommends equal parts by weight of beeswax and rosin.  No coloring agent.

Many of these old recipes laugh at modern safety standards.  One for cleaning mercury, for example, calls for spraying the mercury in fine droplets into nitric acid, then heating to 110 C to dry.  Many of the ingredients are difficult to buy for safety reasons (several call for asbestos).  But they worked then, will work now, and didn't kill anyone quickly.  Probably no one at all if care is taken.

T3sl4co1l:
And we have a lot of substitutes for those today, like ceramic wool instead of asbestos. :-+

Tim

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