ok- swim switched to Al flashing thats about half as thick as Abacus' reccomendation. MUCH gentler rxn... 400mm condensor took care of things just fine, plus a vigreux with cold assed air beeing fanned from an open window.
Of course, now there is a new set of problems/questions
-first off, swim forgot to take into account that there would bee more surface area considering the fact that his Al is half as thick. He used the same ratio of HgCl2 as called for. He added Al, dumped in his Hg salt, then added the methanol. While that was sitting, he measured out his nitro/DH2O and also separated the initial part of that mix from the addition funnel. He took his time (10-15 minutes), looked down at the flask and saw that the Al had dulled, and there where little bubbles coming up. He figured all was well, so he started the rxn. He noticed that it appeared as if only one side of the Al amalgamated- when peices where floating around, one side would bee brown-near black, and the other side would bee shiney Al. This was pretty consistant with almost every peice that he saw (some had little blotches on the shiney side) -is this because swim shoulda waited a little longer to start his addition, or is it a sighn that his flashing may not bee the right stuff? (sorry, this is a newbee question, but I have one or two more related to this procedure)
-Swim noticed that unlike when he used foil in the past, everything seemed to settle on the bottom more (all the crap) whereas with the foil, he would often find that the crud seemed to float. He had left stirring on for the greater part of the rxn figuring he didnt want to hand swirl so much seeing as how he didnt know how vigarous of a rxn to expect. When he did swirl, he saw quite a bit of unreacted Al on the bottom (lots o shiney stuff even past an hour into the rxn, MUCH more unreacted stuff than what he was used to with foil). He also noticed that even as the floating peices that appeared to bee near used up moved around, they seemed to remain in tact, and it was as if the flashing had retained its shape, but grown in thickness from the dark side, and it looked like its shape was beeing held together by the shiney, unreacted side(s) of the square -once again, is this normal, or is it an indication that there might bee some kind of coating on the flashing?
-Last question, upon addition (swim did it slowly with his addition funnel) of NaOH solution, what kind of color changes (if any) are expected to occur? Swims solution turned a lighter shade of grey with light green-tan swirlies in it to a darker tan-green-grey to a dark, brownish color.
Im not the bearded man upstairs, Im a bald guy with a healthy penis. So open yer pie-hole!