"Safety Pickle" Acid Salt... How to use it and loose it when working in Armature Fabrication.
The number one question I get asked when talking about ball and socket armatures is "how do I make a armature?" but the second most popular is "how do I make it clean?" well, thats when your introduced to Safety Pickle!
Vitex Safety Acid Pickle is a crystallized acid that is used in the jewelry profession for cleaning metals after they have been exposed to high temperatures.
Safety pickle isnt strong (so don't worry about it melting through your flesh and tables, its not Xenomorph blood) but it is harmful to organic, synthetic materials and the environment. I hope this blog post is going to inform you of the golden rules of using it and how to dispose of it safetly and professionally.
How to use it.
To start with you need to acquire you pickle, you need to go to a specialist for this, I purchase mine from cooksongold, and normally only need a 500g tub of the stuff. you must familiarize yourself with the units required to make the pickle effective; in this instance 50g of pickle salts is needed for every 1 litre of water to make it effective.
Safety pickle activates and works best in warm water so make sure you use a ceramic slow cooker to keep the water at a optimum temperature, personally I will leave the water in the pot for one hour to reach this ideal temperature but you can also use hot tap water to begin the disolving process of the salts as the slow cooker is heating up. I have also hears a few stories how the acid has eatten through the ceramic pot of some slow cookers, so be vigilant when in use.
Once the water is steaming add your steel parts gently into the water, dont drop them in as you may damage the ceramic bowl or cause droplets to splash out of the bowl, you DON'T want that to happen. you also need to set a timer for 30 minutes exactly, this is the "Goldilocks zone" of ideal pickle time, to little time does nothing to the steel skin, to long and the acid will eat away too much material.
once 30 minutes are up, take each part out using long plastic tweezers and put them into a coldwater bath, run this bath under cold water for about 5 minutes to ensure all pickle residue if off your parts.
This is where you would now clean your parts but thats for a future post.
How to dispose of it safety.
Disposal of pickle safetly is often a huge mystery to many students so hopefully this part of the blog will be enlightnein. You need to acquire Bicarbonate of soda, this will nutralise the acid when used propperly, for every 10g of pickle you use yu must also use 10g of equal weight of bicarbonate of soda, personally I always go with a little over just to be sure, so for 50g of pickle I use 60g of bicarbonate of soda. You need to allow the warm water to cool otherwise you'll end up with a uncontrollable acidic volcano science experiment and thats not a good thing. The hot water reacts with the Bicarbonate and causes a "violent" reaction, making its mass 3x the size of what it should be, the cold water does not do this as violently and is much more controled.
Once you have disposed of the nutralizes acid make sure to clean out the ceramic pot with soap and hot water, use gloves to prevent any potetial excess acid that may have dried to the upper potion of the pot, and dry thoroughly with paper towels.
Vitex Safety Acid Pickle is a crystallized acid that is used in the jewelry profession for cleaning metals after they have been exposed to high temperatures.
Safety pickle isnt strong (so don't worry about it melting through your flesh and tables, its not Xenomorph blood) but it is harmful to organic, synthetic materials and the environment. I hope this blog post is going to inform you of the golden rules of using it and how to dispose of it safetly and professionally.
How to use it.
To start with you need to acquire you pickle, you need to go to a specialist for this, I purchase mine from cooksongold, and normally only need a 500g tub of the stuff. you must familiarize yourself with the units required to make the pickle effective; in this instance 50g of pickle salts is needed for every 1 litre of water to make it effective.
Safety pickle activates and works best in warm water so make sure you use a ceramic slow cooker to keep the water at a optimum temperature, personally I will leave the water in the pot for one hour to reach this ideal temperature but you can also use hot tap water to begin the disolving process of the salts as the slow cooker is heating up. I have also hears a few stories how the acid has eatten through the ceramic pot of some slow cookers, so be vigilant when in use.
Once the water is steaming add your steel parts gently into the water, dont drop them in as you may damage the ceramic bowl or cause droplets to splash out of the bowl, you DON'T want that to happen. you also need to set a timer for 30 minutes exactly, this is the "Goldilocks zone" of ideal pickle time, to little time does nothing to the steel skin, to long and the acid will eat away too much material.
once 30 minutes are up, take each part out using long plastic tweezers and put them into a coldwater bath, run this bath under cold water for about 5 minutes to ensure all pickle residue if off your parts.
This is where you would now clean your parts but thats for a future post.
How to dispose of it safety.
Disposal of pickle safetly is often a huge mystery to many students so hopefully this part of the blog will be enlightnein. You need to acquire Bicarbonate of soda, this will nutralise the acid when used propperly, for every 10g of pickle you use yu must also use 10g of equal weight of bicarbonate of soda, personally I always go with a little over just to be sure, so for 50g of pickle I use 60g of bicarbonate of soda. You need to allow the warm water to cool otherwise you'll end up with a uncontrollable acidic volcano science experiment and thats not a good thing. The hot water reacts with the Bicarbonate and causes a "violent" reaction, making its mass 3x the size of what it should be, the cold water does not do this as violently and is much more controled.
Once you have disposed of the nutralizes acid make sure to clean out the ceramic pot with soap and hot water, use gloves to prevent any potetial excess acid that may have dried to the upper potion of the pot, and dry thoroughly with paper towels.
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