Thursday Trivia

Sugar content?

Does lemon juice get it off of your hands?

Re: Thursday Trivia

The acid test for maple is color.

CSI....Sap splatter analysis? ;-)

Not sure, will have to get back to you.

Tanins turn my hands black when I turn it

lemon juice gets rid of the stains...

S

not an acid

but

Color is involved ;-)

Re: Tanins turn my hands black when I turn it

I don't believe that it is the tannins that cause this, but admit that I am not totally sure about that. The chemical is not an acid or ammonia.

Re: but

silver maple treated with nitric acid gives different color than hard maple treated with the same acid.

Re: but

OK. We can give credit for that, but there is also another test that works also.

Do you know what the differences are for the colors with nitric acid? (just for my edification, I always like to learn something new)

Answer

I am not sure of the colors that nitric acid gives as posted above (I know that it is used as a test for protein and turns yellow with that ;-)), but another test is that a Ferrous sulfate solution turns soft maple blue-black and hard maple greenish gray.

Re: Tanins turn my hands black when I turn it

As I think more about it, it could very well be the tannins that cause the color change because the chemical I am thinking of has iron in it which reacts with tannins, although it is the ferrous solution I was looking for rather than the specific chemical reaction.

OK so where would we find iron sulfate?

Are there common compounds or do we mix it ourselves using what? It looks suspiciously like miracle gro when called up on the web. Also the color change could under cover or maybe florescent lights look similar. Have you tried this? Is the color change really discernable between the two or something closer to interpretation? I'd like to try this but you don't just ask to stain each board at the yard. A little end grain test might be worthwhile IF the color is definitive. It might also be of interest to the yard as I bet that they can't tell the difference between hard and soft much of the time.

Re: OK so where would we find iron sulfate?

I don't know what you get these days, but iron pills I used to take were ferrous sulfate. However, some others were ferrous gluconate. Plus, I'm sure they both contained other inert ingredients which might make a difference in the testing.

Re: but

Dan,

My memory fails, but I think that soft maple is blue and hard maple is green. It has to do with the underlying pigments ant their reaction to oxidation. Probably the same pigments that makes soft maple leaves turn yellow in the fall and hard turn red's and oranges.

John

Re: Seek & ye shall find  *LINK*


FESO4(?)

Thanks