[Sca-cooks] On Acid etching

[Phlip]

Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...

> To Phlip, strong acids and bases look very much on paper as you said.  The
> same sort of thing only coming from two different directions.  In
practice,
> however, they are not at all similar in the materials they will react with
> and how they react.

I'm quite well aware of that- but, if you use the appropriate materials for
the acid or the base, the end result is the same- a dissolved spot,
hopefully controlled, in the solid.

 Strong bases (alkali, caustic, however you call it) do
> not etch metals like the acids do.  Think about it.  Metals(+) and acids
> (H+) vs metals (+) and bases (OH-).  Totally different reactions, totally
> diferent products.

Yep, but to a non-scientificly trained observer, pretty much the same sort
of process- put it on stuff, and it eats holes in it. And Stefan had
written:

Was
> vinegar
> > the only acid solution they had available and used?

Vinegar is well known as a caustic (general, not scientific meaning- it eats
holes in stuff) substance, and fairly easily derived from a fermentation
process. Lye is equally easily derived from water and wood ashes. Would
hafta check on the exact processes, but the other acids you mentioned were
also fairly easily obtained through various alchemical formulae that were
available in period- understanding, different times and places for different
formulae.

That's why I said I wanted to read De Re Metallica and the Pyrotechnica- I
wanted to find specific, period information for Stefan. Modern folk use a
chemical process to derive vinegar from minerals, and alcohol can be derived
the same way, but the fact that Medieval folk had vinegar and alcohol does
not make white (petroleum distillate) vinegar, or Everclear, period.

> Class dismissed :-P
> Rhiannon Cathaoir-mor


Phlip

 If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably not a
cat.

Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....