jim wightman on mon 30 nov 09
Hello Everyone,
I made up a test batch of Bringle slip and forgot to put the borax in but i=
t
worked just fine. I caught my error when I made up a big batch of it and
added the borax. Something very odd happened to the large batch - it turne=
d
a light brown. The water on top was dark brown after it sat for awhile so I
siphoned it off and added distilled water. The distilled turned brown too.
The water I had siphoned off into a separate container evaporated and I was
left with these big brown crystals. I can't figure out what happened. Wha=
t
are the crystals?
Thanks
Karen Nakakihara
Alpine, Texas
Snail Scott on mon 30 nov 09
On Nov 30, 2009, at 12:18 PM, jim wightman wrote:
> ...I made up a test batch of Bringle slip and forgot to put the borax
> in but it
> worked just fine. I caught my error when I made up a big batch of it
> and
> added the borax. Something very odd happened to the large batch - it
> turned
> a light brown...
Yep, that's the borax! Borax is a highly soluble
material; that means it's not just in suspension
like most of our powered minerals; it actually
dissolves and changes in water. There are other
materials that do this, too, just not as badly.
When you skimmed off that brown liquid and
replaced it with distilled water, you threw away
some of your recipe!
Old, dissolved batches still work, but often
rather differently than they did when fresh.
This is why few commercial products contain
borax anymore, nor its related compounds or
other soluble minerals. It is also the reason why
most people just don't mix up more of these
recipes than they can use in a short time.
-Snail
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