Happy Pi Day

[yogi]

Polished stone amazes me when it comes to the size of kitchen counters. Jewelry seems like it would be less of a challenge and can be done with something like a Dremel Tool. I bought a special vice for sharpening knives. It came with four grades of diamond grit bars. I think the first one is 200, or possibly 100 grit, but the last one is 600. That last one doesn't seem like it would do anything at all, but as you say you can even go to a finer grit than that. It sort of makes sense on mental. It's just hard for me to wrap my head around the fact rocks can be polished the same way.

I never worked with Terrazzo, but apparently it's mostly rocks of one kind or another. At the old house we had a walk-in shower installed. They used some kind of poured walls to build it. Might have been Terrazzo. It looked amazing in any case.

[Kellemora]

Many stores and schools had Terrazzo floors in them. Telltale was the aluminum dividers between the sections.

I had a couple of Thumlers Tumblers over the years, an AR-1 and an AR-2, it think they were, but ended up making a couple of my own much larger from old steel steam mainline pipes we had laying around the greenhouses junk areas.
I feel they worked better than the store bought units, and definitely lasted much longer, hi hi.
I used to pick up interesting rocks all the time, usually they were some type of quartz, but sometimes I ended up with some really neat ones after they were polished.
The final polish was usually done with aluminum oxide, and worked quite well for that lustrous shine.

[yogi]

The only thing I now about aluminum oxide is that it is impossible to remove from pots and pans. LOL What I have seen is black and ugly, and there probably are a few other elements mixed in with it. Aluminum is crazy stuff. It can be made bight and shiny, but once it oxidizes, the game is over. I haven't found a way to get it clean and shiny again.

[Kellemora]

I'm sitting here chuckling over your aluminum fiasco's.

Aluminum Oxide is only used for polishing stones and a few other aggregate surfaces.
Here's a little article from a store who sells it, and better grade things.
https://rocktumbler.com/polish/aluminum-oxide/

About the best thing to remove oxidation from aluminum is Vinegar, then rinse and polish.
I normally use Wenol as the polish, but Silvo (not Brasso) does an excellent job.
If you want that mirror finish, you can buff aluminum with Jewelers Rouge, then clean and wax.
Alternately, you can buy products like Star Brite, which is often used on aluminum tank trucks.

When using Vinegar, work in an area, then rinse, else the Vinegar will also cause more oxidation.
Keep it wet with clean water until ready to polish.

[yogi]

I've not heard of Wenol until you mentioned it. Apparently it's popular stuff in the restaurant business. I don't have a lot of aluminum or stainless cookware, but a couple of the items could use a good polishing. There is a drip pan that I use in the air fryer which seems to be aluminum and I never was able to clean it properly from day #1. I use vinegar and baking soda all the time, but all it did to this drip pan was spread the gunk around to make it look even uglier. Fortunately, nothing edible ever sits on it so that being ugly and oxidized isn't a problem. The fry pans, however, are different. I am putting all my faith and confidence into your good judgement and purchased a couple 100g tubes for $24. It was the best price I could find but not sure it is the cheapest. I ended up getting it from E-bay which promised to deliver it 'free" by the end of the month. Amazon, who had it for the same price and free delivery, could not get it here before December 14th. Interesting how that happens.

[Kellemora]

Were you in the service? Wenol is what we used on all our brass buttons, hi hi.
I always have a couple of tubes of Wenol around the house and in my office.
All I have right now is the Wenol Red their normal one.
But they do make Wenol Blue as well. I forget if it is the one with abrasives or the one for silver.
Regular Red Wenol does not have abrasives, which is why it is suitable even for hi-tech lab equipment.

I'll guarantee you won't be disappointed in the Wenol Product.
I get the 100 ml tubes distributed by Rickitt Benckiser from a religious group called Arise & Shine.
Unlike Brasso which can scratch mirror finishes, Wenol does not. You'll love it!

[yogi]

No, I never had to polish any brass, but I did make copper clad pots shine at one time. We had a set of Revereware pots that basically were stainless steel with a copper plated outer bottom. Any heat applied to that copper during normal cooking would discolor it. I don't think it affected the ability to cook in any way, but it did look less than attractive when the pots were hanging on the wall. There were a lot of remedies suggested; I think lemon juice and baking soda was one. Those that did work required a lot of elbow grease, and the original shine was hard to duplicate. Then one day mom found some copper cleaner at the store. It looks a lot like kitchen cleanser but was specifically made for copper. It was amazing stuff whatever it was. Just dust the bottom and spread it around with a damp sponge and it all looked like new.

The Wenol I ordered comes in a red box, and I did in fact see one or two ads for the blue version. Red is by far the most popular. LOL The two tubes will probably be a lifetime supply in my case, but the satisfaction of having bright shiny pots will be the best payback.

[Kellemora]

At one time, the Original Bar Keepers Friend did an excellent job on Copper.
I also had one, don't remember the name of it anymore, that said Copper Cleaner and Polish, with a warning that it was ONLY FOR COPPER.

I have a tube of Wenol in my office, and another in my night stand at home.
After like 5 years they are both still half full. But these replaced the two tubes I bought when I first moved down here.

When Debi's mom was alive, she had all kinds of nickel lined copper molds hanging on her kitchen wall. She would clean them, but they would tarnish again fairly fast. After I did them with Wenol, they looked new and stayed that way for years.
After she passed away, all the copper wall items went to Debi's sister, and then to her niece.

I didn't discover Wenol until I was in the service. It was one of the only items allowed that were not government issue.
Heck, we couldn't use our own black shoe polishes either, we had to use what was issued to us, period, no exceptions.
But they never said we couldn't use a drop or two of kerosene with it, hi hi.

[yogi]

I have some Bar Keepers Friend. I know you told me it's missing some key ingredients now, but it is the simplest solution to a difficult problem. The electric stove I cook on is my nemesis. Back on the gas stove any crud on the bottom of the pots and pans could be scrubbed off with something like a Brillo pad. That is not possible with electric. It builds up some kind of carbon compound on the bottom of the pots and fuses it to the metal. Some of it could be scraped off, but a lot of it seems to be fused into the aluminum or steel. Abrasives are useless so that the only way to get the gunk off is to dissolve it. That's where Bar Keepers Friend shines. It does not clean things perfectly but it does remove more of the carbon deposits than anything else does. Well, I've not tried a wire brush yet, but that might damage the finish.

I'll probably keep the Wenol in the kitchen cabinet next to the vinegar, ammonia, oxalic acid, and stove top cleaner (the gods only know what's in that stuff). I don't use oven cleaner but my wife does for certain things. I believe it has diluted hydrochloric acid as its main ingredient, and I don't like messing with things that corrosive, the baking soda I stock notwithstanding.

[Kellemora]

Sounds like you have all the necessary chemicals you need to keep things sparkling clean.

Bar Keepers Friend makes a full-strength version, comes in a silver can with the word Cookware on it.
But I don't think it works as well as a product called Carbon-OFF, which is way more expensive.

I cheat sometimes, using an old skillet that is not seasoned.
I pour some vinegar in the skillet and let it boil for a few minutes, then turn it down.
Add some baking soda and stir, then I will set a saucepan with carbon on the bottom in that and let it sit till cool.
Then hit it with the Bar Keepers Friend and some elbow grease.

I have a silver baby size drinking cup with my name engraved in the front.
I cleaned that sucker until it was spotless and looked like new again.
Put it on a shelf where other things got set in front of it for like 15 years now.
Touched that sucker and got black soot all over my hands. So set it right back where it was and hid it again, hi hi.

[yogi]

I do indeed have a chemistry lab under my kitchen counter, and that bothers me quite a bit. It should not be necessary. A need to clean the pots and pans is the byproduct of cooking. That part I can understand and am prepared for chemical warfare in that field. The stove itself should be a convenience and not a challenge to keep clean. Most of that chem lab I have is for the stove and not the pots. Even my complete arsenal isn't enough at times. There are times, such as when entertaining for Thanksgiving, when I manage to get the surface mirror clean. But as soon as I do as much as boil a pot of water on it, the marks begin to show. The burners where actual cooking takes place builds up the same kind of crud as do the metal pots. But, amazing as it might seem, the hardened ceramic seems to absorb more of the carbon than does the metal cookware. They physics of it says no, but the stove is way harder to clean than are the pots and pans. I blame it on the electric burners.

I've seen silver cleaning solution that does its magic simply by dunking the object into a container full of fluid. No rubbing or scrubbing necessary. That's MY kind of cleaning. LOL Now all I need to do is stock up on silverware.

I've read about the boiling vinegar and baking soda technique. When that fails there is a last resort. Fill a pan with ammonia, then place the greasy object to be cleaned in the pan. Bake it all on low heat for a few hours and let it sit over night. The grease peals off easily after that. This also works for cleaning the oven itself, but mine never got that dirty ... yet.

[Kellemora]

I LOVE the Dip and Clean, when it works, hi hi.

Be very careful if you use ammonia. It reacts with many cleaners and puts out toxic fumes.
That being said, I'm a BIG USER of ammonia myself, hi hi!

I hope you had a great Turkey Day! WITH PI, hi hi.

[yogi]

Yes, I know the potential dangers of using ammonia. In fact I often wondered why they allow it to be sold to the general public. It's great stuff, but like anything else that works well it needs to be used cautiously.

Which brings me to the Wenol I purchased. This morning I thought I would try it out on one of the stainless steel pans that I've been working on for months. It's everything you told me and more. That stuff really worked well on the pan in spite of it needing some elbow grease for an assist. I wasn't too interested in getting the whole pot down to the bare metal at this time, but I can tell Wenol will do it. It's truly amazing stuff and I can't thank you enough for bringing it to my attention.

I was in a bit of a hurry because the house was full of relatives left over from yesterday's Thanksgiving. The two granddaughters who live in NYC came over as did their mom who recently moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan. The one gal from NYC brought Lox and Bagels; that is traditional Thanksgiving food, right? She has a genuine New York Jewish deli within walking distance from her apartment. It all got past TSA at the airport and she used some frozen bags of fruit, being vegan, to keep things cool during the flight. We all feasted on this for Thanksgiving breakfast. Oh, and the turkey we had for dinner was good too. LOL

[Kellemora]

When I did home renovations, we used a lot of things like Ammonia and Sodium Hydroxide or Potassium Hydroxide.
Ammonia by itself does now work as good as when diluted with water, I think it produces more hydroxide ions when mixed with water is why.
Basically here is how and why we used these two products. Potassium Hydroxide would remove soot quite easily, and Ammonia would then remove stains like smoke stains, whether from fire or smoking for years in the house.

We also had a special industrial grade of Odo-Ban we used to saturate charred studs, rafters, and etc. Once it was dry, we then used a few coats of a primer/sealer designed for charred wood.
Back when ABS solvent sealer for ABS pipes was popular, we would coat all the charred areas with that first, then the primer/sealer.
Also, old cast iron pipes can sometimes start getting wormholes in it. If the pipe was still sound, with only a few wormholes, we would poke them an ice pick, fill with body putty, and then recoat the entire pipe with the ABS solvent/sealer. Made it look new again and helped to prevent more wormholes.
Before we did that, we would tap on the pipe with a hammer up and down its lower side, or around it on vertical vents, and if it gave way anywhere at all, we replaced the entire pipe with ABS back then, later with PVC. ABS was still best for vent piping though, but not for normal waste piping where PVC shined.
I only did supply lines using copper, no ifs and's or buts, hi hi.

[yogi]

Well, I think hydrogen is the key element in all three of those mixes; ammonia being Nitrogen Hydroxide. Apparently the hydrogen part of water added to whatever good the hydroxides did, and I can assure you that I don't understand why ions would have any significance in the cleaning process. It's possible that it bleached whatever those ions came into contact with, which to me is not the same as cleaning. The bleach process just changes the dirt to make it look better and doesn't really remove it. I suppose in some cases that is acceptable.

You certainly are the expert at this but leaving charred timbers in place doesn't seem like a structurally sound practice. I suppose it's expedient to do it that way when repair or replacement would be difficult and/or expensive. Regardless, you never told me about any of your projects imploding upon themselves so that I guess recycling charred wood isn't that bad of an idea after all.

[ocelotl]

Most of the glass grinding I've done has been done with Aluminum oxide as an abrasive... Silicon Carbide is harder and harsher, and Aluminum oxide is better to get smooth surfaces. I still have the jars with the abrasives I got 23 years ago from Rosber when they sold small quantities to general public, and recently as part of the 5 inch telescope mirror kit I got almost 8 years ago from First Hand Discovery.

For stone grinding and polishing, loose abrasive works well, up to a limit. The smallest loose grain commercially available is 5 micron, roughly 1000 grit. Fandeli and surely 3M sells paper backed silicon carbide sandpaper with a 2000 grit claim, it feels and looks very fine, but it is difficult to feel much of a difference beyond 500 grit sandpaper. For polishing, there are more compounds, as White Titanium Oxide or Cerium Oxide. That stuff really leaves glass shining.

[yogi]

2000 grit sandpaper is something only a lens crafter would know about or have a need to use.
I have used waterproof sandpaper in my varied past and that stuff is amazing. I'd do the required sanding and then run the block of paper though a stream of running water to clean it and reuse it. Admittedly that can only be done a dozen times or so. It's an amazing product nonetheless.

[Kellemora]

When I say charred wood, I didn't mean burned so it lost its structural integrity.
However, due to the way some codes are written, you cannot remove a truss member and replace it, because that is called stick built, which is against the code in most areas now.
Even an originally stick built truss, if it needs replaced, you have to use a factory made truss.
But there is one thing you are allowed to do. You leave the existing stick built truss in place, saw out the burned section of the ceiling joist, and sister in a new ceiling joist. But you don't want to remove more than 3 feet of the existing truss or you cannot do the sister. So, if 6 feet of the truss is burned bad, you coat the back side with thick resin, then sister the new joist in place, then coat the original several times so there is no smoke smell left to seep out.
It would be next to impossible to remove an existing rafter and replace it without removing the roof in that area all the way to the eaves.
The sad thing is, there really is nothing wrong with stick built rafters, especially when you are building hip roofs. But I'm sure some poly-TICK-ian somewhere had an interest in the rafter making companies and managed to get the codes changed.

I don't remember what grits I had to use, but there are a few times I had to get a scratch out of glass display cases. If the scratch is deep, you always end up with a ripple look in the glass.
But with today's epoxies, you can fill a bad scratch, then polish it back down again and it is almost invisible.

[yogi]

Somewhere about thirty years ago in that last Chicago suburb I lived in, our ranch style home didn't have a hipped roof. The architect gave us a choice of stick built or trusses for the roof. We chose trusses because ... well ... what did I know? Trusses just sounded better than sticks. LOL My neighbor did have a hip roof on his two story home and it was stick built. So, I guess the times have changed and certainly the locations are different.

I don't know what to say about structural integrity. It seems if you poke a hole in a plank it loses its load bearing properties at that point. But, that is exactly what they did when they installed vents and sump pump exit piping. I questioned them about it and they said the spacing was the key. There were at least three pipes coming out and they had to be, mmm, I forgot but I think six inches apart or more was the code. Well, it all looked funky to me but it did in fact keep the wall in place all the years we lived there. Not so with the floor joist they notched out to run some PVC drain pipe out of the bathroom. It was probably a 2x10 and the part above the notch cracked. We had to have that fixed before we could sell the house. The drain had to be moved and they piggy backed in an entire joist onto the broken one. I did not see how they did it. The width of the house was 30 feet and I'm told they had one hella time getting that long board down into the basement. LOL

Our ceramic electric stove top has a scratch in it. Does that get repaired the same way as plate glass? Will epoxy and buffing fix that hardened surface?

[Kellemora]

They now make hip roof trusses that just bolt into place, which makes the hip boards twice as thick.

When you have to make a hole in a floor joist larger than 3/4 inch, there must be a backing board or steel plate added to the joist. A backing board must span at least 48 inches, but a steel plate only has to span 16 inches and only has to be 6 inches wide. Another alternative is a notch on the lower side of the joist, with a steel plate 1 inch wide by 18 inches long. Or at least that is what code was in St. Louis city and county when I was doing work there.
1/2 inch holes had to be at least 6 inches apart, and 3/4 inch holes at least a foot apart.
But there were exceptions to this. If code allowed 2x10 floor joists, and you had 2x12 floor joists, you could drill as many holes as you wanted below the 10 inch mark.

No you cannot use epoxy on a heated surface, it would burn or melt right off, turn to carbon eventually.
But you may be able to find a refractory powder you mix with water that will fill the crack, but it won't be clear.
I've never seen a clear refractory powder, but that don't mean it's not out there somewhere.