Yesterday I miscomputed the time needed to preheat a Petromax500 and my attempt to light the lamp unfortunately resulted in an inferno. I turned it off and retried. Worked like a charm. Today I wanted to clean the lamp. I use the frosted glass that has a vertical clear strip with the Petromax logo. The clear strip was easily cleaned. But the frosted part looks stained gray although I rubbed it with dishwasher soap and water. Is the stain permanent or there is some procedure/chemical that will clean it better?
Hopefully this will work. https://blog.cmog.org/2019/11/18/under-the-soot-cleaning-smoke-damaged-glass/
Great link and information. Thank you. I was lucky... hot water, clear dish soap and an electric toothbrush did the job. Did not need to look for NaOH.
Sodium hydroxide is amazing stuff but if you're not careful it will etch the surface of glass and vitreous enamel as I've found out, thankfully on a non-essential piece of kitchen equipment. I use it for cleaning drains and making our own soap. Why make my own? My skin is allergic to so many things - shop bought soap being just one - so it's more cost effective to make my own. Even so called simple soaps and non-allergenic makes still contains various things that my skin takes issue with, plus I get to make soap every few months.
Ha ha ha ha ha.... not paraffin soap, no, just regular, human washing soap. It has three ingredients sodium hydroxide, water and an oil, usually regular vegetable oil or coconut oil.
I remember making it at school in organic chemistry. Don't you need to neutralise/balance any 'leftover' alakali with some sort of acid ?
I can’t get my head round how using sodium hydroxide gets to be soap?? I was crap at chemistry .. not an academic bone in my body.. Actually that’s not true as I love English and History and the Arts
The Babylonians started it apparently... Its use in making Bagels, Pretzels and Lutefisk (albeit a very weak solution) should also spin those headwheels..
