Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Back to smithing soon...

Work is starting to slow down and I had a chance to do a bit of prep work on some sconces I am making for gifts.  Specifically, I picked up some electrical coduit (essentially pipe) to use in making candle cups.  The emt is coated with zinc which can be extremely toxic when heated so today I gave the coduit a soak in an acid bath (swimming pool acid).  This removes the zinc from the emt to make it safe for me to work with.  This weekend, I should be able to finally get back to the smithing.

2 comments:

knitsteel said...

I did not know that the swimming pool acid would remove the zinc.  Do you have any links to that info?
I did know that the zinc was toxic.

Bomlin said...

I did not have a link per se, but got the advice from one of the smiths on www.anvilfire.com.  I did find a link at http://www.chaski.com/homemachinist/posting.php?mode=quote&p=83103&sid=04e47afb29c7f1424566f9b26c18023e that mentions it.  Another link at http://www.practicalmachinist.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=006746;p=0