[Favorite tips] Using Insulin bottles

As an insulin user and devotee to reusing “consumable”, how do
you use our wonderful needles and bottles?

Thanks in advance, efw

   As an insulin user and devotee to reusing "consumable", how
do you use our wonderful needles and bottles? 

The bottles… You can, with a pair of nippers, remove the metal
band that holds the rubber stopper in place. It then is a nice
rubber stopper to cap the little bottle. Use the bottle this way
however you like. I’ve used them for flux, stones, bits of this
and that, enamel, etc.

Syringes have fewer uses, but there are a few. Occasionally,
hard to clean items, such as bead set stones that have had some
gunk wedged up deeply in the hole under the stone will resist
steam or the ultrasonic quite stubbornly. It gets loosened, but
won’t come out. Fill a syringe with hot cleaning solutions,
stick the needle in the hole, and shove the plunger in quickly.
It’ll blast out the dirt very nicely. You can even bend the
needle a bit to one side to gain access to a hold on the inside
of a ring…

I’ve occasionally used a syringe to place precise small amounts
of flux or resists, or other chemicals. takes good control to
place a bit instead of squirting it all over, if it’s thin
liquids. Slightly thicker one’s work well. Gluing pearls with a
slow set epoxy can be done this way, with the older style of
slightly larger guage needles. (the new 29 guage size is just
too fine). But about a 22 guage needle (from your doctor’s
office, probably not an insulin syringe) can have the needle
sanded down to just about the length of the drill hole in a pearl
(so you are not forcing the epoxy through a longer tube than
needed), and then be filled with a bit of mixed epoxy. Makes it
easy to get glue into the drill hole without getting a bubble in
there instead.

And they make challenging darts, to throw at your coworkers…
(just kidding)

Peter Rowe