[Jewelry making - Article 00260] - Re: [Orchid] Twenty MuleTeam Borax

[John Burgess]

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Gday;  Somebody rattled my cage. 

    In the dead distant days of long ago when there weren't many more
    than 92 chemical elements, youngsters  like I was learned chemistry
    at a bench doing 'wet chemistry' -  analysis.     We were given a
    mix of two or more chemicals and told to provide evidence proving
    what we thought the mix might be.   So the first thing was to get
    the stuff into water solution. If a part or none would dissolve, we
    had to try various acids.  If is still wouldn't dissolve we has to
    heat it on a charcoal block (using a mouth blowpipe)  and note the
    results.    Then we had to heat the insoluble mix strongly in a
    crucible with borax powder.  We finally ground the solid and treated
    it with water and acids, and it was then usually soluble in
    something.   Another test was to strongly heat a little of the solid
    mix with borax, in a little loop of platinum wire (six pence an
    inch!)  The molten borax and mix formed  a little bead and one had
    to note the colour and appearance of the bead.  (The Borax Bead
    test, would you believe!)  Blue for cupric salts, green for cuprous,
    purple for manganese, etc etc. Then the mix was subjected to a whole
    series of tests using solutions of various chemicals in a certain
    sequence..  Quite a laborious business, but doing all this certainly
    taught us some elementary chemistry!!   Of course we had lectures as
    well, and when it came to exam time, we found we could answer most
    of the questions. I used to get 80 - 90% !!!  (And came bottom in
    arithmetic)     Thus we learnt  that borax strongly heated dissolves
    almost all metal oxides   And now you know why borax is used as a
    flux to dissolve metal oxides when soldering. by converting metal
    oxides to soluble borates. Everyone hates chemistry these days I am
    told, because they have to learn the theory, mainly.  And it's
    boring boring boring.   Messing with chemicals was interesting and
    could occasionally get exciting! 

Cheers for now,
JohnB of Mapua, Nelson NZ

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