100% Methylated Spirts for French Polishing

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Originally Posted by silentC

OK, that's my misunderstanding of the process. I assumed it was boiled off in the still at a temperature that evaporates ethanol only. The process you describe sounds very high-tech. I wonder how they made their 100% ethanol a hundred years ago :)

I must admit I've never understood what the 95% - 99% refers to. I understand that it's 95% ethanol, but I assumed that the other 5% was the denaturing chemical/s, not exclusively water. Yet that contradicts what I've read elsewhere where it is suggested that 95% methylated spirits contains 5% water.

Regarding stills, I found this:



http://www.dassa.sa.gov.au/site/page...124#production

That might be redundant though.

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Interesting isn't it, distillation. Yes, most of the other 5% is water, with just traces of the denaturing material.
Yes, I wonder how they ever did FP hundreds of years ago without 100% alcohol:wink: Well in truth they didn't, because it didn't exist and doesn't exist except in the lab. The stuff that these days sells as 100% methylated spirits is just denatured absolute alcohol, it will be something like 99-99.8% ethanol, the remainder water and denaturing agent (<0.1%). It's 100% methylated spirits in the same way as red cordial concentrate is 100% cordial.
I would say absolute ethanol would have easily been made for the last couple of hundred years, it's just a distillation process, anhydrous (100%) ethanol is a more recent beast.
Cheers
Michael

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Originally Posted by silentC

All I'm saying is that people who are having great difficulty locating the stuff will in all probability find that they'll get as good results from shellac with 95-99% as I have found, so maybe give it a go before busting a gut running all over town and paying top dollar for it.

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Agree, when I got mine I had to go to the other side of town but as I also bought turps, paintstripper, shellac flakes and a quantity of soap I still saved over $90 at the time. Worth the effort and made the polishing easier.

One thing to be aware of is that the generic stuff from Bunnings is often much less than 95 % often more closely to 60 %. So get a brand name like Diggers Rest or Haymes or similar.

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Originally Posted by silentC

And as this topic has come up before numerous times, people wanting more information might also, respectfully, do a search :)

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Also agree as that advice should be engraved on all members forehead.:D



Peter.