If someone needed tin in small amounts (ounces likely, or maybe single digit pounds per year) and it was the apocalypse so that I can't just order the shit off of Amazon or where ever, is that even possible?
Like, if instead I needed copper, copper's easy. I can strip old wiring of its insulation, or find rolls of pennies minted before 1981, or a hundred other places you find the stuff. Plumbing sometimes, or the windings on some electric motors. It's visibly recognizable.
But tin?
One thing I'd like to be able to do, is re-tin old copper sauce pans... I've picked up more than a few over the years, the real deal not that cheap copper-plated shit, and the tin's worn off the insides of most of them. Since this would be in contact with food, the one consumer disposable I know of that would have tin might not be a good idea... most of the tin in circuit boards has been alloyed with lead. Even the new stuff that's supposedly 100% tin doesn't help, as I can't think of a way you'd be able to tell one from the other reliably.
My other uses for it probably don't have to be quite so food safe as that. But even for those, I'd be hesitant to attempt to remove lead from recovered solder, if only so I'm not poisoning myself with fumes or whatever. I feel like I was born 100 years too late, otherwise I could have just squirreled away used tin foil.
Is tin just out of the question?
Even copper is not even close to being economical. It’s destroys a few dollars for every cent some meth head gets back.
Copper recycling is an internet meme.
At least you can get 20 bucks fir a catalytic converter, instead of 2 cents for your copper ingot.
Tin is much less so.
1. I'm not a meth head.
2. I'm not stealing anything, nor would I buy anything if they're a tweaker or I think they're stealing.
3. I'm not trying to sell it to anyone. This is stuff I'd use for myself. If I had tin, I'd be using it to repait/maintain my own cookware... or to try to make tin octoate out of it (and probably failing, doesn't look like chemistry for a high school flunky).
My question has nothing to do with the ethics or economics, only where to find tin. Does it exist anymore in any consumer good outside of electronic circuit boards? Wikipedia mentions the anodes of current lithium batteries, but you can't exactly start cutting into those without them exploding into flames. Wouldn't even know what I'm looking for there... how would you tell them apart from whatever metal they used previously?
You could separate tin and lead chemically. If you add hydrochloric acid, you should get lead chloride which isn't soluble in water and you can just filter it with care to make sure you get it all out. The tin ions will be dissolved in the liquid and you can reduce them via electrolysis back into tin metal.
>You could separate tin and lead chemically. If you add hydrochloric acid, you should get lead chloride which isn't soluble in water a
Thank you. I can look into that. I think I'll have the ability to make HCl. Not sure how comfortable I am with it... but was looking to do chloralkali process for lye. Was going to use calcium carbonate to do with the chlorine gas, but the pathway to HCl is there.
Again, thank you for getting me sent off in a promising direction. No idea how I'll deal with lead chloride. Not something I want getting into the ground water exactly.
I don't know how civilians can dispose of toxic chemicals, sorry.
Lead chloride is soluble in hot water so you can solubilise it that way and then turn it into a metal via the same process of electrolysis. Then you could sell it to a scrapyard if they're into buying by the milligrams (or grams, I dunno how much you you need).
Oh god. Lead chloride is as bad as any of the other lead substances... starting to think this just isn't viable. Did find a youtube comment that suggests looking for pewter knickknacks at Goodwill and the like. But there's no way to know if those have lead in them or not, because you'll never know if they were made recently according to guidelines, or are from the early 20th and just unsafe.
I think I might need to look for circuit boards marked RoHS, but is there any guarantee that the Chinese aren't cranking stuff out with that silkmasked on, but still using lead solder? Whatever's cheapest usually happens and they just mislabel it.
i recommend you do electrochemically instead OP
but you need a preddy high tin content - 50/50 lead/tin didn't work for me, had to up the tin content to about eutectic for the lead remnant to get porous enough to let the tin diffuse through
h2so4 vat, solder bar on positive electrode, whatever on negative
tin dissolves from solder and deposits on the other side, making either tin foam or fricking huge crystals depending on your current density
the lead oxidises and stays as a brittle porous thing
you'll be releasing a tiny bit of hydrogen on the negative electrode so don't make the thing airtight and accidentally pipebomb yourself
once all the tin's gone(or if your lead oxide remnant is not porous enough) you'll start getting oxygen on the lead electrode, so keep it running for a bit longer after that and you have your h2so4
if you're careful and don't break the lead remnant you can even use it for water electrolysis instea of an expensive as frick platinum electrode
Thanks much. I will look into this. I'm not entirely sure what ratios most consumer electronics used/use. I thought it was always something like 70/30, but apparently it used to vary quite a bit.
I might have a reasonable source for sulfuric, so this is thinkable.
eutectic is 63% tin, higher than that should be no problem
and you won't need much sulfuric at all since it's not consumed in the process
Bruh, just dive into recycling bins on recycle day, you'll find a bunch of tin cans. Most are made of tin-plated steel. Free.
>you'll find a bunch of tin cans.
"Tin" cans haven't been tin since the 1930s or even earlier. Same with tin foil... was made out of tin at first (up until the 1920s), has been aluminum since before your grandparents were born.
> Most are made of tin-plated steel.
Most are plastic-lined today.
No! https://www.tincanpacking.com/tinboxpackaging/
The best way to get solder off a board is by using one of these. Braided wick will suck up the solder but you will not recover it. Note that even lead-free solder is not pure tin as it contains stuff like silver and antimony to improve on the eutectic properties of the solder.
If you’re going to remove a bunch of solder you should invest in a proper desoldering vacuum. A million times easier and more effective than those dumb things. But op salvaging solder for tin to use for cookware is a terrible idea that will lead to lead exposure
>re-tin old copper sauce pans
You what?
Don't frick with copper on pans, copper is what you want. Especially if you mean old copper clad stainless steel
I'm not sure I'm talking about the same thing. Good pans are copper, cheap shit now days is paper-thin aluminum. I've got old copper. But, copper pans are tinned on the inside, where the food makes contact. I do not know how long it takes for the tin to wear away, years or decades, but on mine, the tin is worn through, and you can see red copper in places. They need to be re-tinned. I live in a country that uses cheap garbage, so there's no place local that will re-tin these. I could mail the damn things in, and then have them get lost or stolen, to a place like this:
https://rockymountainretinning.com
By the way, they want $105 for the cost of one pan, plus shipping. That's like 8 pounds of tin at today's spot price. Wtf. I guess it's my fault, trying to act like I'm rich (new copper pans are about $500-1000 each, but I got mine at estate sales and whatnot for $20 each, at the most).
It's not the only thing I want tin for. I was hoping to synthesize tiny amount (grams or tens of grams) of tin octoate, which is a catalyst that turns lactic acid into PLA, the sort of plastic they use in 3d printers. There's a microbe that can ferment caprylic acid, so if I had a source of tin oxide it seems like it might be doable. I would make fricking plastic from potato starch broth. Tin's really the sticking point. I keep hoping to find an alternative catalyst, and some of the chemistry studies I've been reading hint there are others, but I wouldn't even know what.
>copper pans are tinned on the inside,
I didn't know that.
I knew copper pans were supposed to be the best, but this sounds really gay.
I refuse to cook on aluminum, I'm moving to stainless steel and I found some vintage stainless that was copper clad on the bottom for heat distribution.
I don't have anything to contribute or to help you, good luck
>I refuse to cook on aluminum, I'm moving to stainless steel
I'm mostly on cast iron, but I hear rolled steel is good too, should season up the same as cast. I've not had great experiences with stainless... the only good thing about it is that it's a little less cheapskate, so the pan tends to not be paper-thin. But everything always sticks. I don't know what you can cook in it that's not a problem.
If you see some used cast iron at goodwill or something like that, grab it just to check it out. Lodge sells their new stuff out of Walmart, and it's reasonably inexpensive.
Rolled is common on commercial plate griddles. Works fine and some welders make their own that way. I used a 3x3ft x1/2" thick plate for our shop griddle (pig cooker style) because we had it but I would have hated to pay for it new.
> But everything always sticks.
Had the same problem with stainless. Watch a couple videos on cooking with stainless and two things:
1. Pan needs to be shiny clean to prevent sticking
2. Get the pan hot before you put food in
Just find a tin supplier and order whatever alloy you want. You can use an spectrometer gun at a scrap metal business to determine your hobby pan alloy if unknown.
Tin bar is cheaper than the energy and effort to recover tin one cannot control the composition of.
https://www.metalshipper.com/tin-bars.html
Why do anons never think of direct, established, industrially proven solutions to their problems which are used because the rest suck? The people who tinned the pans in the first place used bar tin like everyone else (including soldering using bar solder and torch-heated soldering coppers.
>Why do anons never think of direct, established, industrially proven solutions
I can't speak for others, but for me? Because I'd like to never have to worrying about sourcing the stuff, and I want to get to a place where I don't have to pay cash for it.
If I pay cash for something, then I need a job. But I can't work a job just long enough to get the cash for something, they want 40 hours. Now there are other things I can't do because they're stealing my best daylight hours for me, and I need to buy things I didn't have to buy previously. Now I need a better job that pays more. And now I'm working more than 40 a week. Obsessing over details for that job, even when I'm away from the office. Now I have even less time again, need more money to buy things I didn't need to buy before. Now I need a better job.
In the process of unwinding all of that. A way to salvage tin, even if the world ends, and I can have several hundred pounds of plastic per year. I can grow a shitload of potatoes for the starch that uses. I can repair machines that use plastic parts. I might even be able to make freezer bags for food. Plastic would be a big win.
I will likely order some tin stock, just so I can learn to re-tin, but in the long term I want the ability to salvage the stuff, if at all possible. It seems like an absolutely critical metal.
The metal recycling industry would be the people to both study and ask.
I think these are tin. Maybe you can easily find some of these.
Anyway, I don't get it. You want to "unwind all that" and yet, you need to have plastic to do something. Doesn't sound like much unwinding
Unwinding means finding a way to live without plastic and all metals that aren't iron
Forgot pic
>Unwinding means finding a way to live without plastic a
For me, it just means finding a way to make my own plastics. Otherwise, then there are also necessities I need to give up, which lowers my standard of living but also means that I can do less, which means more things I need to give up. Pretty soon I'm living in a cave gnawing on raw rabbit meat or something.
I want to unwind my need to pay others for things I can't make myself, by making those things myself. Plastic means being able to butcher things larger than a chicken without most of it going to waste.
>picrel
I will need to become better at recognizing stuff like this. Will also be on the lookout for pewter too, I guess.
>Pretty soon I'm living in a cave gnawing on raw rabbit meat or something.
The ability of humans to engage in large-scale cooperation means that we can specialize.
One man on his own can only harvest so much wood, hunt so much deer, and gather so many berries. Three men working together can specialize, so that Dave gets very efficient at chopping wood, Sam can focus on hunting at prime hours, and Gary can travel far and wide to grab berries.
The result is that the 3 men working together have more wood, meat, and berries than 3 men attempting to do everything on their own.
At a certain point, it makes sense to just participate in the economy. You don't have to work a 9-5, just enough to be able to buy the things that are infeasible/impractical to make on your own.
Fell a tree, cut it into 6ft sections, and then hand hew it into a beam. People will spend hundreds, maybe even thousands on hand hewn oak beams. $400 will buy a lot of tin.
>At a certain point, it makes sense to just participate in the economy.
Until it doesn't. Then you all ape out like you couldn't see it coming. You don't even know how to make an economy... all the real jobs got shipped off, and now I have to listen to millennials nag about how they only get 20 hours a week at Starbucks.
If there is an economy that's not you, I wish to find it. I will buy myself out of slavery to it, and then you can all just go frick off. Only cash I'll need is for property tax.
Found an interesting video earlier today, man built a machine for about $2000, produces half a gallon of nitric acid every 12 hours. Only inputs are electricity and air. Doesn't help me with this chemistry problem, but I could easily produce enough for sodium nitrate for curing meats. Don't have to babysit the machine, just check in periodically.
I don't need another specialist on my team who votes against our interest, I just need the machine and enough electricity to power it.
If I don't succeed, I at least tried. And if I figure out anything particularly clever, I'll share the knowledge so someone else can hopefully build off it and succeed where I can't. Tin's a big deal, I might just be able to ferment Megaspheara and make the octoate substance, source for the culture I found has it for just $200. But it's an anaerobe, and I'm not yet sure what I'm doing with those.
Why do you require sodium nitrate for curing vs. other methods?
Since retinning sauce pans is not for function as having copper sauce pans is pointless (all cooking can be done on cast iron and steel) it's perfectly OK to admit it's all for fun. Do you have any USEFUL hobbies like welding, machining, repairing vehicles and building structures or is the goal (which is fine but own it) just to do the oddest options available for a given not particularly useful task you have talked yourself into?
>Plastic means being able to butcher things larger than a chicken without most of it going to waste.
You mean "glass canning jars". This is a solved problem over a century go and you can certainly blow your own glass and make your own wire bails and seal the lids with wax instead of plastic seals. Consider learning how these things were done by humans who needed to to them efficiently. A glass or glazed pottery vessel can last a thousand years.
Minimalism requires very little metal and most of that common steels. Admit your goal is the use of particular autspergic processes (which is valid if you own it like any art done for arts sake) and not to make functional aspects of your life better for all those problems were solved long before you were born and usually in multiple ways easily available to you.
Consider smithing (incredibly cheap) and other foundational civilization skills which expand your abilities if you REALLY want to make things for yourself rather than choosing high effort nil reward methods. Consider that a pioneer with a grub hoe could feed himself and build shelter with that hoe (sod homes). Learn the foundational hand tools (which you can make from scrap to the highest standard you wish) then wood, metal, glass and pottery are your b***hes for life even in a real apocalypse.
>Since retinning sauce pans is not for function as having copper sauce pans is pointless (all cooking can be done on cast iron and steel) i
You boil water in your cast iron?
> it's perfectly OK to admit it's all for fun.
Ok, it's fun too. Does that make it better for you? Seems kind of frustrating though, to be honest. If instead of tin, I needed copper... I can salvage the shit out of that. The universe seems designed by a perverse butthole if you ask me.
I need tin, and it's been difficult for everyone to get going all the way back to the fricking ancient Greeks apparently. They sailed to god-knows-where just to get the shit.
> Do you have any USEFUL hobbies like welding, machining, repairing vehicles
Yes to some. I've never worked on diesel engines, but I need to learn. I'm a so-so welder.
> You mean "glass canning jars". T
Yeh. I like those. Working on the rubber gasket problem. But I don't much like them for meat. About the only way I've discovered is to pack everything in tallow, but even though it's not spoiled it's pretty nasty shit. Have you ever tried it?
Have you, for instance, ever gotten one of those "chickens in a can" they sell at the store? Yours might or might not have them, down on a bottom shelf somewhere. Big quart-sized can. Oh god are those nasty as frick.
These aren't good options. And honestly, I don't know why you're so discouraging... it occurred to me that maybe I don't have to give up plastic entirely. Maybe I can have some plastic. Just enough for its most important uses.
And I'm pretty close. I think that, but for the lack of tin, this could be something I could learn to do. Not only learn it, but teach it to my kids. Teach it to my grandkids.
> This is a solved problem over a century go and you can certainly blow your own glass
That I can't do. It's fricked up, right? Wish I could. Glass is mostly infinitely recyclable. You just remelt the shit and reuse. But no fuel for the furnace.