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| Dissolving broken taps |
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| texta:
alum you should also be able to get from a chemist . i used to ( many years ago ) work in the factory that made the stuff . we made it mainly for the city council and it was used by them in water treatment . i used to eat the stuff every day and go home covered in it . it is made from mixing bauxite powder , water and sulphuric acid in the correct ratio and order ,then it generates a hell of a lot of heat and foams up to at least 10 times in volume ( we would sometimes throw liquid soap on it to knock it back down a bit if it looked like over flowing the huge mixing pot ) then when the reaction is finished it was poured out at a very high temerature onto into a bay ( looked like wet cement at this stage ) then left to cool and set , then smashed up with boncats and fed through the crusher and milld to the required size granule .oh yeah it used to eat the titanium mixing paddle in the mixing pot over a few months of production and stainless steel disapeared in a matter of seconds . johno oh and dad used to put it in a hollow tooth to kill the nerve when he had tooth ache , this i can not recommend though cos i tried it and it aint nice , he told me it was a common fix for a tooth ache while at sea in the merchant navy . |
| vtsteam:
The reason alum is available in grocery stores here is that it is used in making pickles crisp. I think it's found in the spices section of the store. |
| PJW:
I got some alum from flebay, I had it a couple of weeks so it was time to try it. I made a strong solution in a cup then dug out the electric slow cooker then stood the cup containing the solution of alum with the offending alloy manifold with broken tap, I then surounded the cup with boiling water and turned on the slow cooker. I took about 3 hours or more to desolve the tap but it did, a bit to my suprise & joy. :thumbup: I have a lot of alum left, lets hope I dont need it! |
| S. Heslop:
I've found alum in halal food stores. They're pretty good for finding some of the harder to get stuff, like citric acid and monosodium glutamate (the secret behind making pizza dough as good as the takeaway's). |
| AdeV:
Gosh, this topic brings back memories... Ned, if you're reading this - yeah, pretty sure it's the right acid (fumic nitric acid - it certainly fumed alright). It was having a go at the taps, I think the problem was, none of the acid was getting down past the shank, so the total surface area the acid was working on was only the top of the broken off piece. Hence the slowness to dissolve. As for EDM/spark erosion machines, oh yes, I want one of those. Having seen awemawson's machine in another post elsewhere... Definitely want one of those... Alum - interesting, I wish I'd known that, I'd have tried it as a solution. As I never really finished this thread off, here's what eventually happened: I got fed up with the acid, and ended up milling a rectangle around the offending taps. Once I'd got low enough past the broken off shanks, I was able to extract them with pliers. I then cleaned up the holes, used the broken-off ends of a couple of old HSS cutters as pins (to hold the circular plugs in place), milled out a rectangular bung to go in the hole I'd made (I made it about 0.002" bigger than the hole), stuck it in the freezer for a while, then whipped it out & banged it in with a big birmingham screwdriver (er, hammer). Then, when it was properly gripped, milled it flat. You have to go looking for the join these days, which is nice :) |
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