Chemical mixing woes...

Hi all,

I tried to mix some of my own FO last night instead of buying solution this
time. Was a bit of an adventure. I started with heating distilled water to
150F, I then poured 55ml into a dropper bottle and added 15g of FO and 2g of
Oxalic acid. I shook it repeatedly for a while, then put it away. Every
hour or so I released some of the gas that had built up in the bottle, and
shook again. I did this for two/three hours. This morning, the rubber on
the dropper had exploded and I had FO all over the place. :) Yay for me.

Should I just do this all in a flask and once the solution is made just add
it to the dropper bottle? If I keep the temp at 150F throughout, will I
need to add more water to compensate for the water lost due to evaporation
while bringing it to solution? What is the gas being released?

I also decided to make some Potassium Oxalate developer. I didn't have
Potassium Oxalate, so made it from 165g of Oxalic Acid, 165g of Potassium
carbonate and distilled water to 1000ml. I did it twice to make 2000ml, and
only remembered to test the pH afterwards. It was a wopping 11.5! (last
night, I haven't checked to see if it changed today). I did something very
wrong somewhere. I added some oxalic acid to bring it down, but after
adding about 50g, and not noticing a change in pH, I stopped.

For clearing agents I was using citric acid, but I have some EDTA
tetrasodium, and EDTA disodium now. Which should I try out first? I have
instructions detailing the mixing for EDTA imodium, is this another name for
one of these two?

Any help is appreciated...I can't afford to have another FO explosion!

Thanks a lot,
Gu
Received on 07/12/06-10:42:08 AM Z