Jeff Wisnia wrote:

Peter Fairbrother wrote:

Joe wrote:


SNIPPED


Hydrofluoric acid. Don't go near it.

It's highly poisonous as well as ultra-corrosive, used to etch glass.

It can get absorbed through the skin and the lungs, and if you get too
much
in your system then you will die - it usually takes many hours to kill
you,
and it is an unpleasant way to go, especially at the end. Neutralising
the
acid does little, and the calcium ion antidote only works for small
doses.

SNIPPED


Have I scared you enough yet?


Not only did that scare me but you made me realize that I was probably
pretty lucky to escape unscathed 50 or so years ago when as a youngster
I used to help out at my dad's jewelry manufacturing plant in San
Francisco. (OSHA wasn't invented yet.)

We used hydroflouric acid every day. We had a few pint sized jars of the
stuff sitting on a shelf behing a wash sink. The jars were made of a
white wax molded over a fibre base and had lift off wax lids.

We used the stuff when making platinum jewelry by lost wax casting. The
melting temperature of platinum is so high that it glassified the
investment "plaster" it contacted. After we broke up and washed off most
of the investment the castings were covered with a layer of "glass"
about twenty thousandths thick. Ploppiug those pieces in a hydroflouric
acid pot for a few hours disolved off that glassy stuff without doing
any damage to the platinum.

I do remember being warned to be ultra careful with that acid, and still
have memories of erie white fumes wafting up out of those acid pots
whenever I lifted a lid off one of them.

Thanks for the mammaries,

Jeff

That stuff will dissolve the finger and arm joints! - Many a Semiconductor type
has rough or scratchy joints. A bit painful. Glad I heard and read the docs
long before the hasmat stuff became popular or mandatory.

It is used to dissolve glass or silicon.. And other uses.

Martin

--
Martin Eastburn, Barbara Eastburn
@ home at Lion's Lair with our computer
NRA LOH, NRA Life
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder