Dissolve and conquer
Dec. 16th, 2004 11:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morslaMorsla: 1
Stubborn decade-old glue residues on test specimens: 0
Moral of the story: do not fuck with someone armed with a lab full of strong organic solvents and acids...
Ten years ago, someone in my lab prepared a bunch of long-term test specimens... without thinking about how on earth anyone would treat the things. They have been wrapped in thick aluminium tape, bolted onto racks, and glued together with the Glue That Will Not Die. I think they've bounced around from desk to desk over the last few months, with no-one prepared to touch the things.
How do you seperate flat rectangular plates glued back-to-back across their whole surface area? I ended up soaking them in toluene, as even acetone wasn't breaking down the glue fast enough. A few droplets of the solvent melted my gloves, too... it seems to be fairly effective :)
Stubborn decade-old glue residues on test specimens: 0
Moral of the story: do not fuck with someone armed with a lab full of strong organic solvents and acids...
Ten years ago, someone in my lab prepared a bunch of long-term test specimens... without thinking about how on earth anyone would treat the things. They have been wrapped in thick aluminium tape, bolted onto racks, and glued together with the Glue That Will Not Die. I think they've bounced around from desk to desk over the last few months, with no-one prepared to touch the things.
How do you seperate flat rectangular plates glued back-to-back across their whole surface area? I ended up soaking them in toluene, as even acetone wasn't breaking down the glue fast enough. A few droplets of the solvent melted my gloves, too... it seems to be fairly effective :)
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 02:09 am (UTC)Geez, you"re lucky that you can actually disslve that glue. For some glue/polymers that are designed to set, once they do, nothing can dissolve the, no matter how strong due to the high level of cross-linking.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 02:19 am (UTC)They're corrosion specimens, set up to only expose a known area on a single surface - the glue and tape were there to stop water getting between the plates.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 05:42 am (UTC)