Grinding Al foil

[Trenchcoat]

Why does one have to grind the Al foil into nuggets for the MethylMan Al/Hg? Wouldn't it react better if the squares were just put in there flat?
Better loving through chemistry.

[Rhodium]

Eleusis said he used a document shredder.

[baalchemist]

Grinding into nuggetsmakes it easier to mag-stir and it also
'paces' the reaction by not exposing the entire surface area of the foil at once. Otherwise it would turn into an exothermic Al/Hg volcano, not too fun to bathe in that crap.
GODISNOWHERE

[Chromic]

SWIC has just crumped them up with his hands, can be done in 50g batches at once and in bigger runs than a bean grinder. It takes about 3-4hrs to rip up 250g of al foil into 1" pieces, but only maybe 15 minutes to crunch them into little balls (roll the pieces between your hands, and you get nice tight balls formed). It works very effectively. Also, I gotta point out... always, always dissolve the mercury salt in the methanol before adding the foil. That was a silly point of failure a while back, resulted in not much fun being produced.

[noj]

roll half with fingers and half with grinder... the hand processed ones will float and not bog down the stirrer.
Author unknown.

[KrZ]

Flashing.  It's the bomb Al source.  Nice and thick so you can submerse a kg of it per liter, and a sufficient surface area to assure the reaction doesn't get outta hand.  As far as grinding to regulate the reaction, it's exactly the opposite, lower surface area/mass is less violent.  Now while you can't stir magnetically with this stuff, you can do overhead, or just reflux the reaction with a circulating ice/water bath.  You will lose suprisingly little amine and the refluxing provides sufficient circulation.  Bon appetit.

[Chromic]

Definitely, refluxing is wonderful for larger batches if you don't have an overhead stirrer.

[Rhodium]

Could somebody explain the term "flashing" in this context for someone whose native language is not english?

[Buster_Hymen]

I think he's talking about aluminum flashing, which is used in construction of buildings and homes, on roofs, etc. Comes in pre-made shapes, or in roll form:

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[Chromic]

I've had bad experience using thick (~2-3mm) aluminum sheeting. I don't recommend it. Aluminum pie pans are about as thick as I can go before the aluminum amalgam doesn't seem to work well anymore. I wonder if it's just the mercury is getting sloughed off as the reaction proceeds. YMMV as I didn't test this out much after hitting a failure.

[KrZ]

Did you compensate for the reduced rates with increased reaction time chromic?  Aluminum flashing is about as thick as those pie plates but the rolls are cheaper and more manageable.  Also, when you use a very large excess of flashing chips without sufficient water for total Al(OH)3 conversion but with enough for the reduction, the Al(OH)3 will all be on the surface of the chips and you will have something that filters very quickly without trapping any goodies in the so-called Sludge (not present).

[Chromic]

I used small chunks of torn-up aluminum sheet (2-3mm thick is a lot more thick than pie plates which are less than 1mm thick). This stuff could not be rolled up as it's too thick. It sounds like we're talking about two different animals, I guess I misundersand. And yes, I used enough water, stirring, and time (>24h).

[KrZ]

You must be a womanly girly man who cannot shred the puny aluminum.

[Semtexium]

GiRLY MON YEAH!!!  
            Mean People Suck             

[RoundBottom]

a faster way than ripping, is to use a long framers level or long ruler, and an xacto knife/box cutter to cut into strips 1" wide, then use scissors to cut into 1" squares.  do this one strip at a time, otherwise they get stuck together.  just snip over a bowl to catch the squares.

[spric]

A large roll of reynolds heavy duty can be processed in about 10-15 minutes with a heavy duty pair of scissors and a cheap ass blender that you don't mind ruining..  Cut the foil off of the cardboard roll.  Cut that layer of about 100 sheets of foil into squares, about 1-2 inches, and throw them in a blender.  It makes thick chunks, but works quite well.
tweekers have speed weenie

[DiethylEtherMan]

Use a document shredder to shred the al foil....then put in a nice blender to ball (looks like rice) the shit up.

Takes 10-15 tops to bang out 250g of al.

DEM
If some of us were not so far ahead, the rest of you would not be so far behind!

[pimpmaster]

i have only seen flashing containing atleast a little bit of Sn is that bad for someones dreams .
just wondering

[Prdy2GO]

Yes this is the way!!!
Get the heavy duty (Must Be!) renyolds Al foil extra wide. 36" = 28 Grams isent that interesting>?
Rip it length wise and feed it into a cheep paper shreader.
With one hand grab one of the two bunches keep em somewhat stright and cut about every 4" or so into a bowel.
Use a Krups the best for this or a braun coffee grinder and grind lightly not too packed for about 8 seconds. You will see how uniform it looks this way. Doing several 75 sq. Ft rolls at a time this get's it done in a hurry. You dont want to bind or bogg down your equipment to take it easy dont smook the motor on your grinder heck someday you may want to drink some coffee again...
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Hum did you get that?

[Osmium]

1mm or thicker Al is too thick. Reaction will take several days.
0.1-0.3mm Al works very well, and can be cut with regular household scissors.