Re: Looking for Arm & Hammer washing soda


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Posted by David Sherman [24.32.202.83] on Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 15:47:41 :

In Reply to: Looking for Arm & Hammer washing soda posted by Jay Thompson [96.10.186.99] on Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 15:29:35 :

My chemist friend tells me than any weak alkali should work. I had to go to a few stores to find washing soda, but I got some. I ended up not finding it at Wal*Mart or the other big chain stores, but I got it at our local small-town grocery store that usually doesn't have much of anything. So, you might check the dreary old-fashioned small stores in the bad part of town.

With baking soda, you might need a little more, with lye, somewhat less. A stronger solution means more current for the same amount of voltage and surface area, so if I find I'm having to crank the voltage up real high, usually because the parts are small, I'll add some more soda. They key, apparently, is in keeping the solution slightly alkaline, not what you used to do that with. Presumably potash, pearl ash, or draino (potassium hydroxide) would also work. I think the original literature just said to use washing soda because it was cheap, easy to find, and fairly harmless to body parts even you make it up pretty strong. Now that it's getting hard to find, we might have to switch to other things. In a post-apocalyptic world, wood ashes mixed with water in a bucket and allowed to settle would probably work fine.



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