The mercuric acetate i used was from the bottle, i used slightly more because it has a higher molar mass than the chloride. The nitro I used i am assuming is good for two reasons
1) The label and the nice man in the hobby shop assurred me it was100%
2) It blew the socks off a larger batch I attempted using thick foil, basically what happened was I mixed some foil (2kg, 0.3mm)(used a drill press to stir it) and methanol (14L) and mercuric (4g) salt, then added 700mL of the same nitro, well about 30secs later all the methanol was vapour and i had a headache. So I assume it can react (luckily i had not added any ketone).
OK more questions, do aluminum alloys exsist that can poison the amalagum, i have now tried two types with ordinary results, when i was having my succeses I was using a different kind of 100micron sheet, just stabbing in the dark really.
Also Osmium to better clarify my vac distill, I took the first cut from 115-120 (about 5% vol), then the temperature steady rose to 130 and sat there for quite some time (60-70%total vol) it then began to climb steadily again however the colour did not really appear to drastically darken, nor smell different, until about 155-160 so that's why I combined all the cuts from this period. I will now use different mercury, also i might try to distill the nitro, can one distill the nitro safely? will adequate seperation occur with vacuun to reduce the explosion risk?
The reason I am so perplexed is that I have checked everything, so the ketone is my only scapegoat.
No, now that i think about it has to be the nitro because if it was right the thing should still reflux. Any tests for nitro purity?
Thanks for your help.
wacka wacka wacka