Vinegar as a rust remover

Um, ok. I won't ask.

Paul Kierstead

>

But if he'd collected the bubbles, (OT)

Bill Houghton, sunny Sebastopol, CA

>he'd have had the beginning of his very own dirigible.

I'm currently reading through the 1909 Popular Mechanics "Shopnotes" (a buy from Lee Valley), and they've got a two-part, dead serious article series on building your own dirigible, which includes how to generate hydrogen gas, touted as the most efficient lifting gas, to fill the bag.

It all sounds rather over the top until I remember that Lindbergh got his start as an aviator barnstorming biplanes around southern Texas, complete with several crash-landings on sandbars in the middle of nowhere. He would repair the plane's wooden struts with what his autobiography calls "box splices" and take off again. I realized after about the third reference that what he meant was gluing and maybe nailing splints on each face and edge of the strut both sides of the break and then treating it as if it were a solid piece of wood. No parachutes, of course. So maybe Pop Mechanics' apparent vision of weekend dirigible pilots roaming the skies over Iowa weren't so unlikely, at the time.

I'm willing to bet, by the way, that the article would not have appeared in the 1938 "Shopnotes."

Re: But if he'd collected the bubbles, (OT)

Paul Kierstead

>What is considered acceptable risk has changed somewhat. Heh.

Speaking of Hydrogen

Stephen Shepherd in the State of Deseret

>I am in need of a traditional method of producing hydrogen gas in sufficient quantities to power a limelight.

The technology needs to be prior to 1860's and I have some porous limestone and we have a Social Hall with theatrical performances and I would like to have a real limelight.

Stephen

a traditional method

Bill Tindall, E.TN

>I don't know anything about lime light. However, an acid like hydrochloric on many metals such as zinc would be one traditional way to make hydrogen. Another would be the electrolysis of water, Both would have been available in your time frame. In the late 1800's or maybe earlier, it would have been made from gasifying coal. I think lighting was with coal gas, a mix of hydrogen and carbon monoxide.

I can not strongly enough emphasize the danger of what you propose. Hydrogen has an explosive range of almost none to almost 100% and the flame propagation rate is such that propagating ignition to a storage source must be accounted for in design of anything that burns it. There is good reason that it is not used to lift balloons, light lights or be the basis for a "hydrogen economy" as some dream.

Re: Speaking of Hydrogen

Dave Anderson NH

>Hi Stephen, You don't need a method of producing hydrogen. The reason they are called limelights is that they use Lime and water. Lime (calcium carbonate) dropped in water produces acetylene gas in a closed container. Spelunkers(cavers) and miners have used them for headlamps for centuries. Many outdoor stores will sell small cans of calcium carbonate of the right size and even the lamps themselves.

Re: Speaking of Hydrogen

Warren in Lancaster, Pa

>Dave, I think you mean calcium carbide. Calcium carbonate (lime) is used in cement and alka seltzer and such. It might give off heat when dissolved or carbon dioxide in acids, but no flammable gas.

For some clarification. *LINK*

Paul Kierstead

>You'll see why stephen wants some hydrogen.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limelight

Re: Speaking of Hydrogen

Dave Anderson NH

>Warren, You are absolutely right. I really need to learn to proof read what I write before hitting the post button. That's why they are called carbide lamps. I was still correct though about limelights. It's just that they used calcium carbide which is also a lime.

not so

Bill Tindall, E.TN

>I became curious and researched lime lights. They are most similar to a Coleman lantern in terms of how light is produced. Intense heat from a hydrogen/oxygen flame causes calcium oxide to emit a bright white light, much like naptha burning in a Coleman lantern mantel. Calcium oxide will be made from limestone when it is heated by the hydrogen/oxygen flame. One would get a similar light from a natural gas, or historically coal gas, light burning in a mantel.

So a source of pressurized hydrogen and oxygen would be needed and I have no idea how it would have been made in 1850. Probably by electrolysis as it was known by then that electrolysis of water produced hydrogen and oxygen, but no idea how it was pressurized. But I'll wager what ever the means it would be considered way unsafe by the local fire Marshall.

Re: a traditional method

Stephen Shepherd in the State of Deseret

>Thanks Bill,

I appreciate the inherent dangers in what I do and take proper precautions. However my motto is 'caution to the wind' and I will endevour. I can get bottled hydrogen and oxygen from the nearby and very cooperative University, they gave me mercury for my barometers. But I want to do this the old way, a volta pile would work but I feel that I need more gas so the zinc/acid retort sounds like a good method. I presume the gas production will stop when the metal is removed?

Speaking of dangers, I just started working some niters out of some chicken poop in an effort to manufacture surpentine powder from local ingredients. I have made some nice alder charcoal and have a source of vegetable surfur, so the niters is the last component. I have already achieved deflagration with modern nitrate.

And I have made paints with lead and made real ormolu. This winter I am going to build a dagurreotype developer and that uses vaporized mercury. Although I will not be using it, but I will have my likeness taken in the earliest style.

Stephen

Re: not so

Dave Anderson NH

>OK Bill, I'll bw to your research. I've been wrong before and will be again. So much for going on what someone told me.

a "ditty" for your amusement

Bill Tindall, E.TN

>When you hear the explosion the danger has passed

for the means and the cause went up with the blast!