Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison

[Koen1]

Hey cool, we've got a gem cutter with us 

@Sutra, all of the mixes I make contain water, some very little, some more.
And until now I haven't heated my mixes any hotter than 180 degrees.
But then again, quite a few of my mixes contain chemical compounds that
react with eachother and the water facilitates this. Then I boil off and evaporate
out the rest, either in an oven or on a stove/heater.

Interesting experiment you've got planned there!
I can't wait to hear how it worked out.

Hey, by the way, do you (or anyone else?) have any tips on how to crush
rocks into powder? I've been using powdered or granular ingredients, but I'd
like to try some agate and tourmalin in the mix and I don't really have a
rock grinding machine lying around... I've tried a few simple ways like a large
pair of plyers, or just slammingthem with a hammer, but that doesn't work well...
Hmmm... just thought of something... "Will it blend?"

cheers,
Koen

[ian middleton]

G'day all,

@Koen: I have a very efficient rock grinder..... me  ,  I use a large pestle and mortar that I used to powder herbs in.
It's a bit time consuming but the end result is a fine powder. 0.5 micron particle size is easily achievable. However be careful when crushing pyrites, it has a tendancy to shatter into sharp micro shards so eye protection is advised.

The harder rocks get the hammer treatment then I finish them off in the bowl. ...... Don't use a food mixer, they don't like it, well at least mine didn't.

@Sutra: Do you know of any mixes that are combined and set in the dry state or with any other liquid? As Koen said, a certain amount of water is usually needed.

@jeanna:   

see yer later

Ian

[jeanna]

@jeanna: As our cement expert  what do you think about Sutra's info?

Catch you all later.

Ian

Actually, I had 2 thoughts as I read this interesting post.
1- Sutra, Have you checked out the geopolymer.org site? If you have not, you may get some useful information, much ofwhich uses similar materials to what you are using. The main advantage to davidovits' methods (if you can work them out) is that they happen at the temperatures of a warm day.

2- Sutra has suggested something similar to what I mentioned a bit ago, but no one commented on which was that the use of a pulsed magnetic field (pulsed is important- not a permanent magnet) is capable of inducing electricity in something. I think this is a worthy thing to attempt, rather than to force the voltage directly into the material, why not try to induce it?

high voltage , short pulses.

jeanna

[Koen1]

@Ian: I was thinking of getting a pressure canner or something of the sort,
and just "squeezing" them into smaller fragments. Then, when it's granular,
I could indeed try the mortar.

@Jeanna: Indeed, I was also thinking that the mix in that link sounds very
similar to several geopolymers. And not too different from some of the mix
recipes I worked out...
As for the high voltage and/or magnetic field pulses... Wouldn't you know,
I happen to have a 1kV pule generator which I'm planning to hook up
soon...

[sutra]

Hi,
i think that the problem of a low amperage an voltage output should be due to a bad alignment of the conductive platlets.....crystallisation through evaporation garantee the structure but not the polarity's alignment.....That's the hard one.

400?C? the old, ancient method of heat up things.....fire...and a small bead of lead to check T....

will it work??  I'll see soon anough...

Ciao ;-)