Knowledge You Can Build On — Est. 1998
Alcohol drying
Don D
>Ok, this is probably naive, but here goes. Is there any reason why using paint thinner instead of denatured alcohol wouldn't work for drying turning blanks? Paint thinner is $2 a gallon, where DN-Alcolhol is $10+ a gallon. Wouldn't it still displace the trapped water and evaporate nearly as fast?
Don D
Nope
John Trant (Baltimore/WashDC)
>Mineral spirits (paint thinner) and water are not miscible so I would suspect that they would remain segregated in the wood fibers. Of course, that is assuming that the ethanol is working by a presumed mechanism. It certainly would not hurt to try an experiment.
Solvent like acetone, acetonitrile, and methanol should work as well as ethanol but they are either more expensive and/or more dangerous.
John
Re: Alcohol drying - Organic chemistry reply
J L
>Organic Chemistry 201.
Like dissolves like.
Mineral spirits and similar solvents are hydrophobic (they don't like water). Typically they are immiscible (won't mix) with water.
Methanol, ethanol, isopropanol (all of the short chain alcohols) have a polar hydroxyl group (-OH) which makes them solvents for water. Other compounds with a reasonable dipole moment (acetonitrile, acetone) are also reasonable solvents for water because of their dipole moment.
Ethanol is relatively inexpensive, relatively non-toxic, relatively safe and will evaporate from the wood relatively quickly. Methanol might work a little better, but is somewhat more toxic. Acetone would work, but it is more flammable.
Re: Alcohol drying - Organic chemistry reply
Hovey Moore
>Hey that is what I was going to say. Good explanation. I think that acetone might vapor off too quickly to get much moisture below the surface though, plus I think it smells far worse.
Hovey
