Industrial Chemists, Please?

[John R Fortiner]

On Thu, 1 Jul 1999 14:18:54 -0400 Bill Ballard <yardbird@sover.net>
writes:
> At 9:22 AM -0600 7/1/99, John  R  Fortiner wrote:
> >Bill:  I got your response.  Please Do NOT be offended by this 
> question:
> >Do you know what a surfactant is?  If not, just say so and I'll 
> attempt
> >to answer in not-so-technical terms.
> 
> No sweat, John, we're all just boy scouts helping each other across 
> various
> busy streets.
Good, as I HATE sweat! :-)))

> Yep. A surfactant negates the water's surface tension, allowing said
> waterto be absorbed by a textile. 
More accurately a surfactant reduces/negates a liquid's surface tension (
not necessarily just water's ) ( the most common association with
surfactants most certainly is water) and not just for easier absorbtion
into a textile.
Case in point - people in agricultural business use surfactants to allow
sprays to be more easily absorbed by plant leaves - whether feeding them
( the plants ) or trying to get rid of them  by use of herbicides.

The real question is what is the 
> active
> ingredient which has a good (and highly respected) friend of mine 
> saying
> that this fabric softener is even better than steam at releasing 
> hard
> hammers. (Steam works grudgingly on reinforced hammers.)
> 
> The jug mentions only "cationics (softeners)", whereas if they are
> surfactants only, they would be performing a vehicular function. A 
> few
> rounds ago in the discussion (I've been through the archives 
> already),
> David Stanwood opined that fabric softener's active ingredient was 
> water
IMHO the water is simply the vehicle for the real ingrediant.  What this
may or may not be I haven't the slightest idea, but I'm sure that the
company making the stuff would reveal it to you - then again .........
:-(

> (at least as far as the work we'd like it to do on hammer felt). In 
> which
> case, we might as well employ a surfactant which is completely 
> volitile,
> say alcohol, as opposed the fabric softener which leaves its own 
> waxy
> solids. 
All the more evidence that water is only the surfactant's vehicle.

Wheresofurthermoreover (Jim Bryant,don't you just love the 
> way
> over-educated Yankees talk?),if the speed with which the surfactant
> finishes its job is the issue, isopropyl alc is far faster than the 
> farbric
> softener. But if we're talking speed, steam leaves eveyone in the 
> dust.
AND leaves NO residue - at least NEW residue.

> 
> All of this assumes that the water cure is the only way to reclaim
> over-reinforced hammers.
And, if I understand even slightly correctly, the water works by
"resizing" the felt - hopefully "fluffing" it a bit.

 I've also been toying with the idea of a 
> thin jet
> of acetone from an air brush, with just enough pressure so that 1.) 
> the
> acetone won't evaporate before doing its work 
Does acetone have any "sizing" effects on wool felt?????  I would doubt
it - BUT I do know that it would certainly move waxes, oils, and other
not-so-desirable things that are also found in wool.

(how 'bout spray-tip 
> directly
> to hammer crown) and 2.) the stream won't tear apart the fiber matt 
> at the
> crown. Whatshould happen is that the acetone should undo the gluing
> together of fibers,
Gluing together??  with what - the reiforcing additive, or what was
holding the felt together before it was reinforced?  I am under the
understanding that the felt is not held together via a "glue", but via
the "entanglement" of its own fibers.

 and the spray stream should blow small amounts 
> of air
> space back in the matt.
> 
> I should call Lever's 800 # to see if they'll tell me what's in this 
> stuff
> besides surfactants (therehas to be),and what it might be expected 
> to do on
> wool fibers.

Do it and let us know what you find out.

John R. Fortiner
Billings, MT.
> 
> Bill Ballard, RPT
> New Hampshire Chapter, PTG
> 
> "I gotta go ta woik...."
> Ian Shoales, Duck's Breath M. Theater

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