Old metal screwdrivers

I have small kits of all color and they use the black handles that the nut drivers or screw drivers slip in. All of them black blue yellow....

Might be a polycarbonate or something. My shop is 80% if the outside is.

Mart> Mart>> I've found the plastic in X-lite tends to get oxide or is attacked with

I believe that is silica - same stuff sand and glass is made of.

Cedar tends to have a fair amount of it too. One of the things that makes both a little tricky to glue.

Early craftsman drivers had the same problem. I believe they were either tenite or acetate based plastic (made from cellulose)

From Eastman Kodak information:

You will find the "deterioration" is caused by ultraviolet exposure (and I suspect also from ozone)

Kwik-Poly.

It's a water thin two part epoxy. Scuff the wood with some 220 or so to open the pores and brush on a few coats, it will absorb into the wood. Let it cure for a few hours and lightly scuff it to even out the finish. The wood will last a LONG time.

This stuff works great to seal fuel tanks as well as a host of other things.

On Friday, February 19, 2016 at 5:14:59 PM UTC-8, Lloyd E. Sponenburgh wrote: [about white blush on plastic handles]

Tripoli and a buffing wheel. Or a rag and some metal polish. It comes right off.

snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

That might be the case with the Craftsman handles. I can assure you it never was the case with my Xcelite tools, because they were only used indoors, and kept in the dark all the time they were not in the active position on a fastener. (tool roll, inside a closed briefcase-style toolkit.

If _never_ handled, they keep for years without any discoloration. Once touched, if used frequently, the blush never appears. Store one in the dark for a few months without use, and it's almost white all over.

Besides, we looked at some under the microscope... just out of curiosity. It's clearly a fungal growth.

LLoyd

I still suspect they are either Tenite or Acetate - modified celulose

- whether it is ultraviolet/ozone oxidation or actual fungus

Bamboo is also full of silicon and is thus hard on tooling.

Yeah, what he said. :)

Did you say cellulose?

Martin Eastburn fired this volley in news:X_

8yy.6729$ snipped-for-privacy@fx04.iad:

Yes... We knew that.

'Do chemistry as a part of my 'fun' Elemental silicon is actually a useful material in some of what I do.

LLoyd

I used it, SiGe GaAs and another in diodes. :-)

Mart> Martin Eastburn fired this volley in news:X_

Martin Eastburn fired this volley in news:9Duyy.17828$ snipped-for-privacy@fx06.iad:

Hah! That, too, in my former life as a digital circuit designer.

Now, I use elemental Si as a 'heat' additive to pyrotechnic compositions! Military apps use quite a bit of it.

Lloyd

I've heard stories that you can get sparks cutting large pieces of rosewood. How do all these minerals even get into the wood in the first place? It doesn't seem like silica/sand get be absorbed by plants and end up in the wood.

They're formed internally from the dissolved minerals in the water taken in and then crystalize.

Ash are another altho again it's "silca" and "silicates", various oxides of silicon the element.

That's exactly how it gets in there. The whole process is a bit mysterious, but the idea is that silica is absorbed as silicic acid and silica is deposited on the cell walls. Some plants absorb more than others. Grasses, like bamboo, absorb a lot. FWIW, rosewood is related to the sweet pea. I don't know if that has anything to do with its silica absorption, but it's a curious aside.

[Courtesy of the Master Gardener program I almost finished at Rutgers, before I got too sick to finish it.]

The rosewoods might be just from a region with a lot of ash and decomposing granite. Maybe if the tree grew 1000 miles from it domain it might be different. Might not even grow.

I always thought something along that line with Madrone. In some places they are medium trees. In other places they are more horizontal than vertical. They were growing with the Redwood forest. Further up the coast, they break out into viable trees but small. It might be the coastal redwoods rob chemicals out of the soil and makes the tree more vine like. Without the Redwoods it has strength and is a vertical tree.

I can't say the tree is like that, but it might be the environmental effects that causes the purple, green, brown heart(s) full of rock.

Mart> >