"similar principle to the oldschool miner's lamps for detecting flammable gas buildups within coal mines."

What is that?

Old miners' lamps, known as Davy lamps consisted of a properly-sized wire mesh surrounding an open flame. Prior to the invention of the Davy lamp, many miners died when open flames ignited underground pockets of methane gas.

The Davy lamp allows miners to work safely because of its mesh. The mesh surrounding the open flame is large enough for light to pass out and flammable gas to pass in, but small enough to prevent any flame from gas ignition to pass out. The wire mesh acts to absorb the heat of combustion from flammable gases being burnt in the presence of open flame, without causing a gas ignition which can spread to the rest of the mine.

Davy lamps have been obsolete in mines since the advent of the battery powered electric lamp, but they occasionally find use in other applications where flammable gas must be slowly burnt off.

All of AB2s lab accidents happened when he was messed up

1. Came home at 3pm on St Patricks day, smashed. Decide to vacuum isomerize 4l of safrole, in an great big Erlenmeyer. That lasted about 1 minute until the flask imploded and guess what? 4l of safrole all over everything. It took WEEKS to get rid of the smell. This was back in the day when you could order the stuff off the internet locally with no hassle.

2. Tripping on 2CB, decide to go in the lab and fuck around, don't ask why. End up spilling 5 grams of 2CB dissolved in HOAc all down the front of myself (not wearing a shirt) Immediately start thinking about the steep dose/response curve with this stuff and go into a 4 bell  panic thinking that I had OD'd and that the stuff would get me transdermally. You never saw anyone tear off the clothes and hit the shower so fast. I ended up destroying my lab during that trip. Safe to say it was  BAD trip. Started dumping all the chems down the sink, but when I dumped all the KMO4 down the drain it reacted with something else I had dumped down the drain earlier and a fucking GEYSER erupted out of the sink, and out of the manhole on the street outside. BIG MISTAKE.

2. Tripping on 2CB, decide to go in the lab and fuck around, don't ask why. End up spilling 5 grams of 2CB dissolved in HOAc all down the front of myself (not wearing a shirt) Immediately start thinking about the steep dose/response curve with this stuff and go into a 4 bell  panic thinking that I had OD'd and that the stuff would get me transdermally. You never saw anyone tear off the clothes and hit the shower so fast. I ended up destroying my lab during that trip. Safe to say it was  BAD trip. Started dumping all the chems down the sink, but when I dumped all the KMO4 down the drain it reacted with something else I had dumped down the drain earlier and a fucking GEYSER erupted out of the sink, and out of the manhole on the street outside. BIG MISTAKE.

holy shit, did neighbors not notice the manhole incident?

Two storys i was told about ---->

A dark dismal cloudy day where all the oh so nice "normal" citizens were going about their daily "lives" = lieing , cheating and stealing = a perfect day to do some dirty deeds in a 16 qm kitchen . On the electric plate a pan full of oil .....in the oil a 1.5 liter flask with an electric puke green water / chloraphil / alkaliod mixture in it . Next to that a sleepy stoned freak in his lab protection outfit = y-fronts with one hand inside scratching his balls . Then a lovely clear snap sound echoed round the room . Said freak wonders if the flask had broke so picks it up about 1 cm and then gets hit by a 1 femto second mental flash = "SHIT ! the flask bottom has broken off" and then a wordless vision of mental clarity of what was about to happen . Freak takes a step backwards and feels the wall and the cupboard behind him ........ to late for terror , solutions or any other thoughts . As his back and arse try to wedge themselves into the corner while tring to teleport to another planet to escape the comeing holocaust the flask makes a super dooper "WOOSH" sound and a puke green mixed with cooking hot oil lovely perfectly formed 15 cm wide gyser shoots up hits the ceeling and splatters over the whole room leaving .......guess what ? ....... yup loads and loads of shity oily puke green stains everywhere ...........except ....... as allah will ......on said freak ............

EPISODE 2 - Freak has a prety coloured liter of aceton / alkaloid solution in a dish with an electric fan blowing over it at three in the morning . Wind blowing through bog window , down hall , through bedroom and out of window . Freak watches TV and ........ smokes grass . After a bit freak hears some shouting and ignores it for 5 minutes not wanting to get involved at such a delicate point in his nocturnal experimenting binge . Then paranoia takes the upper hand and freak opens the balkony door to hear shouts from the apartment above from three neighbours hanging over their balkony "Stop it Stop It you are poisoning us" . Freak turns TV + all lights and the fan off and quietly closes all windows . Then shits his pants praying and trying to make deals with GOD = i promise i wont do it again . I am cured . I shall live like a normal brain dead social clone from now on .

Suddenly the night air is sliced through by a chorus of sirens and the blackness of the night turns flashing neon blue . Freak thinks "OH FUCK" and starts to try to get rid of every thing , wash things , hide things and think of excuses for the long and painfull death of his neigbours . While hes doing that the whole street fills with ambulances , fire engines and powleece cars whos ocupants then storm out and start wandering back and forth through the gardens looking for the source of the smell ....... wich is so much even they can smell it . Then they split into two groups the one starts knocking on doors asking the neighbours if they know whats happening . The other continues searching the gardens and bushes while talking ( shouting ) to poisoned neighbours still hanging of their balkony....... freak watches and listens through a crack in the curtains while knees shakeing haveing visions of said pigs storming apartment with drawn cocked guns ...... AGAIN ....... alternately mixed with pictures of victorian prisons and spending a life time cleaning the toilets with a tooth brush . Meenwhile in the garden one of the bastards stumbles over said freaks personal private stash = a plastic bag with about 1- 2 hundred grams of hash , 100 grams of grass , 100 grams of dry mushrooms , a few trips , some X , some TMA ......ya know ? Nothing big or nasty just the normal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfKBw3PHdBM  household emergency kit .......... While part of the herd of pigs gathers round and pokes the bag the other group carrys on knocking on doors and reaches the floor under freak a separate splinter group that had been haveing a doss in the bushes very pseudo energeticly trying to do nothing while hideing from their buisy collegues stumbles on some empty and open chemical barrels that the very nature friendly guys with an impecable social conscience who had been fixing the roof had so kindly and generously hidden there obviously to stop the dustbin container 10 meters away from being poluted .......... a cry went out "Its OK heres the cause" <------ = in polieece language "Fuck this for a lark lets sod off back to the station and watch TV and have a kip as usual and let them plebs murder eachother to death" . Freak breaths out ....... untill he hears that the group knocking on doors hadnt sussed that the terror threat level had oficialy been dropped from red = severe to green = low and was continueing to drag the neigbours out of bed . Freak went from floating a foot above the ground back to visions of alkatraz and stood by the apartment door with said dish full of aceton alkaloid mix now with several old n dirty paint brushes in it practicing ways of explaining that he had only been cleaning his paint brushes at three in the morning exactly because he didnt want to kill the neighbours . Three doors away after the most of the electric blue flashing neon light barage had set off direction TV and bed again the others woke up and about turned and followed them . Freak then crept off to second emergency emergency stash and spent the next hours filling his lungs with smoke while praying and thanking GOD .

Said freak now lives in paranoia thinking maybe GOD has something even more interesting prepared for him ....... and still years later takes the LONG route through the builders market so he doesnt even come near the aceton while at the same time demonstrably haveing his best "Me i dont even know what aceton is" grin on his face .......

Dear Jon ,

Just for you here it is short .

2 storys .

First one .

A flask full of a water / alkaloid mixture in an oil bath broke sending a plume of it all upwards . It hit the ceeling and splattered over the whole room except for on my friend = a miracle .

Second one .

He tried to evaporate 1 liter of aceton at three in the morning and the neighbours called the emergency services and 30 - 40 - 50 police men , fire men and ambulance men turned up and there was a street full of flashing blue lights . They then went from door to door asking the neighbours if they new where it was comeing from .Threy found his stash in the garden and also some empty chemical barrels in the bushes wich they thought was the source of the smell . He very narrowly missed a nasty prison sentance .




Wow that was fuckin boreing . I prefer the previous full colour stereo 3D version i wrote before .

Get wll soon .

Love

Strangeness


EDITED three times to take the unjustifyed sarcasm out .

Some useful information:

http://www.erowid.org/archive/rhodium/djvu/labfittings.djvu

http://www.erowid.org/archive/rhodium/djvu/labfumehoods.djvu

that was scanned long ago 

Lucky bastard getting away with that, TLS.

Shite that your story subject lost that stash though. The toad-guy that tells me so much of the goings on in his lab, beneath the earth, in blackest N'kai,  He would have been tempted to launch some concentrated, very hot HNO3 the way of those coppers:P



Then again he would anway

Owch what a thought.....KMnO4 there is bad enough....

Accident to remember that one was...scratching arse after working with finely powdered KMnO4...burnt for days and left dark MnO2 marks there, front and back.

Oddly, my tender, vital flesh doesn't seem to mind NaOH, never got KOH on me, but plenty of the former. Getting it on one's tongue stings though (actually its how I test to see if I cleaned my labware properly if NaOH solutions are involved, assuming there isn't anything unpleasant in there, if it stings when licked, it needs better cleaning...)

I have spilled conc. NaOH on my arm/hand before, washed it off later, and it never seemed to burn.

Get it in your eyes though, and oh boy is it trouble.

After the time I had boiling alcohol, a certain lactone and NaOH erupt in my face after it went beyond reflux and into 'boomff!fuckfuckfuckfuckingfuckedfuck'' territory my vision in one eye is now very poor. Little kids sometimes make mistakes learning the art, and that one, was one that really should have never been made, boiling stones should have been used.

15L flask? nice....could do with one of those for things such as the haloform, etc. that need vast overly large dilution or quantities of solvent/reactant.

On skin though it doesn't even burn. Probably would if left long enough, even spits of fused NaOH haven't been noticed until way, way later and washed off, after doing electrolysis.

Until you are damn sure you won't ever allow something like that to happen again, never work with HF......is all I can say. As that quite literally WILL go straight through your skin, and dissolve your bones from the inside out.

Oh, it sped it up, alright... about two minutes later, he saw the stuff start to climb up the condenser. Slowly at first, but inexorably. He knew the truth of what was happening even while the other part of his mind tried to deny it. He realized he had about 5 to 10 seconds to do anything he was going to do before getting the fuck out. He closed the nearby cabinets containing the landlady's china and what-not. That was about all he could do in the time he had. He ran out of the kitchen and watched in horror from the corner by the door leading out to the back yard. The grey bubbly geyser picked up speed climbing the condenser and then like a chemical Old Faithful, half the flask contents shot out of the condenser straight up and hit the ceiling, splat!!

In times like that, the well prepared chemist immerses the flask in some ice cold water and wraps the upper portion of the flask and the outside of the condenser with towels wetted with the same cooling liquid    The well prepared chemist also has a tube leading into a container for the overflow, and knows enough to have what's needed to chelate any mercury ingested when all else fails:

http://127.0.0.1/talk/index.php/topic,520.msg5666.html#msg5666

on hand to take as a supplement if needed    The end results from the effort applied 

The end results from the effort applied

Lugh, you have my full respect, i know you have been around since the war, (on drugs)

I dont disagree with this comment at all as i understand it, but i would love if you gave a full version of what you mean by this?