Mr muscle window and glass cleaner is great!

Hi Tony i know its a long shot but it will have a chemical in it trust me ive got the same bottle. To prove im wrong get potassium permanganate from the chemist and put some glycerine in it. if it goes up in smoke it is pure. if not then boil it up and try it then.See its the law in the uk to put a fire retardant in it, as you can make bombs with it, if its pure. phil
 
Phil, If I added potassium permanganate to a solution of Glycerol I would get a bang anyway :)
Potassium Permanganate + Glycerol = Fire! - YouTube
If I added two other solutions I would have nitroglycerine :)
The question about graded glycerine is doies it have Lye or soap in it.
fantastic discussion point though :)
 
Phil, If I added potassium permanganate to a solution of Glycerol I would get a bang anyway :)
Potassium Permanganate + Glycerol = Fire! - YouTube
If I added two other solutions I would have nitroglycerine :)
The question about graded glycerine is doies it have Lye or soap in it.
fantastic discussion point though :)

Just checked that vid out, a little disturbing, one guy who makes a comment, called believe it or not "Twisted fire starter" WTF?, wants to know what ratios are needed to make use of this fine process, lol, I hope he doesn't live next door to me.
 
Hi tony ive just tryed it and nothing happened no bang!! so it must have soap or lye in it. phil
 
HI there Tony

well the point to all of this is? does the glycerine have to be pure to be a good reducer. or will it be an ok addition to the reducer.if its not pure. what say you Tony phil
 
Hi Phil, I suppose the point is to discuss the individual merits of homebrew reducer using glycerine.
However, The Boots Glycerine B.P is pure. Firstly BP = British Pharmacopoeia which means it's pharmaceutical grade (pure). Secondly it is 100% by volume which means that it contains nothing other than glycerine. So there is no need to boil it to get out any impurities.
Having said that if you wish to do so because you have found it to produce a better result for your homebrew then that's grand too.

The subject is a really interesting one, but what would be more beneficial is a Homebrew Airbrush Cleaner to rival any propriety product.
 
This is just my humble opinion, but many different companies make many different products so that we ourselves don't have to, it doesn't matter to me what those products are, if I had to go to the lengths I've been reading here to make something I would use myself, I wouldn't waste my time, further, I have a very understanding wife, but I think even she might just have something to say if I just wander into her kitchen and start boiling up chemical concoctions and brews and at the same time risking blowing huge holes in the ceiling or burning holes in the floor.

Having said that, I don't airbrush for profit or gain, it is merely a hobby, but if I was doing something for a customer I would want to be able to guarantee my work and I think this would only be possible by using manufacturers recommended materials, doing this would also give the me piece of mind if those materials were of poor quality through a manufacturing fault.

I want to airbrush or fly my model planes, so I would rather waste no time trying to create something that already exists, I'm not saying it's wrong to do so, it just isn't for me.

I am fortunate enough to be using a paint that is pre-thinned and I can thin more if necessary with a little water, there are mediums for this paint but for what i do I don't need any of them, the only other medium I use is Golden trans airbrush medium, this also thins and gives my transparent colors as well as almost eliminating tip dry.

In a nutshell I would rather pay an extra couple of bucks for something if it saves me some time.

This is not to criticize or offend, just a personal view.
 
I tried Glassex window cleaner as an airbrush cleaner but didn't find it worked any better than warm water does. I also heard that the clear car window cleaner has no ammonia and will have it written on the bottle. Never tried it after Glassex failed.

I do however use a homebrew airbrush cleaner which works very well, it's a mix of denaturised alcohol, car windscreen washer liquid (pink, no ammonia I think), distilled water and a few drops of glycerine. There is absolutely NO boiling of anything. I buy the different bottles of stuff and pour what I need into a bottle marked with the amounts of each liquid. It takes a few minutes and I only mix 125ml at a time. Costs about 3 euros for over a litre of cleaner. The bought airbrush cleaner is still better than my mix and I do use it occasionally if my mix can't get the job done. I also use warm water for cleaning.

I have tried my own mix of paint thinner/reducer but it didn't work very well and I now use bottled water and/or a bought reducer, trans.base and/or airbrush medium that goes with the paint I have bought.
Cheers Mel
 
That sounds interesting Mel, Ive never seen pink car windscreen washer liquid though. I will look for it.
What is the mix that you use please?
 
That sounds interesting Mel, Ive never seen pink car windscreen washer liquid though. I will look for it.
What is the mix that you use please?

Tony I'm in Holland so I don't know where you might get Denaturised Alcohol except somewhere like Boots or Superdrug. In the USA they use Rubbing Alcohol which is apparently very cheap. Here I buy Bio-Ethanol which is highly flammable but doesn't smell and is 2 euros for a litre. I have also used Denaturised Alcohol from a drugstore, it's 2 euros for 110ml but is only slightly flammable and therefore much safer. Would be better for people with young kids.

I divide a 125ml bottle into 3rds, 1/3rd is 96% Denaturised Alcohol, 1/3rd is Distilled Water. The last 3rd is divided into 2 (= 2/6ths) 1/6th is Halfords Windscreen Wiper Fluid Concentrate (pink) and 1/6th Distilled Water then add 3 drops of Glycerine (also from Boots or the like).

You could fill the last 1/3rd with normal Windscreen Wiper Fluid but I didn't want to carry a 5 litre bottle of the stuff home so bought the concentrate. Check it doesn't contain ammonia, if it's blue it probably does.

I mix smaller amounts because the alcohol might become less effective if left too long in a bigger bottle.

cheers Mel
 
Hi again people:02.47-tranquillity: well ive been in and out to day. been to boots and got the glycerine. and made the recipe up as said with out boiling it didnt clean anything really. so while in my work shop i boiled the glycerine up. after i got it to the boil. I then let it stand till very cool and took the top layer off the top and put it in the new recipe and that worked alot better. now the thing that puzzled me the most is when i boiled it after it cooled i looked at the glycerine in my glass pot and i could see that there was a oil about 3 to 4 mm thick on the top of the liquid in the pot the glycerine hand split into two parts. if its pure why and how can it split into 2 parts if its only got glycerine in there?? well ive said enuff on this sorry if i go on it just sticks in my mind. thanks for reading phil
 
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I find the encouragement to boil Glycerine very disturbing and not very wise.

You can buy paint Retarder, it is not expensive and you don't need to use much so it will last a long time. The recipe I put above is for CLEANING only and is a tried and tested one which I got off the internet. You don't even need to add any drops of Glycerine, it is only in the mix to help with the flow and to soften the solution. Mixing any chemicals can be dangerous so please, please people be very careful.
 
Hi again people:02.47-tranquillity: well ive been in and out to day. been to boots and got the glycerine. and made the recipe up as said with out boiling it didnt clean anything really. so i while in my work shop i boiled the glycerine up. after i got it to the boil i then let it stand till very cool and took the top layer off the top and put it in the new recipe and that worked. now the thing that puzzled me the most is when i boiled it after it cooled i looked at the glycerine in my glass pot and i could see that there was a oil about 3 to 4 mm thick on the top of the liquid in the pot the glycerine hand split into two parts. if its pure why and how can it split into 2 parts if its only got glycerine in there?? well ive said enuff on this sorry if i go on it just sticks in my mind. thanks for reading phil

Phil, if you are talking about the mix I put in this thread, the Glycerine does not do anything to clean your airbrush it only softens the water surface tension. So boiling it will make no difference to cleaning your airbrush. The main cleaning agent is the Alcohol. The Car Windscreen Wiper fluid is just a form of soap which also helps with cleaning. I only use this mixture with Acrylic Water Based paints so don't expect it to work for other paints. If you do NOT put any Glycerine in this mix it will still work for Acrylic Water Based paints, so it is NOT an important element for a cleaning solution.
 
Okay I bought some pure glycerin from my local CVS pharmacy and the bottle said put glycerin however on the back it said glycerin 99.5% anhydrous. Not sure if this means it is not pure and I need to boil it down.
 
Okay I bought some pure glycerin from my local CVS pharmacy and the bottle said put glycerin however on the back it said glycerin 99.5% anhydrous. Not sure if this means it is not pure and I need to boil it down.

Fred, I personally don't understand why people have it in their head that they have to boil glycerin down to seperate it from it's carrier and then mix it with water !!!!
Heres a quote from the interweb "I believe when you see 99.5 % anhydrous glycerin on the label, you're looking at an assay. The product is 100% in everything present (glycerin and water), but when tested, the product is tested for anhydrous glycerin, and that assay comes out to 99.5%, the other 0.5% is water.

To look at it another way, say there was a USP grade glycerin at 50%. The label would say "Active Ingredient: glycerin anhydrous 50%". The inactive ingredient would be water 50%. The overall mix would not be anhydrous.

So when you buy USP glycerin anhydrous 99.5%, you are not buying anhydrous glycerin. You are buying 99.5% glycerin and 0.5% water."


Thus boiling off the water to add the glycerin to water is a waste of your energy, and the money in your pocket.
 
That makes perfect sense to me. I mixed a small batch and have tested it and it takes the paint right out. I did not boil it. The main reason I mixed some up is a few of my airbrushes have the chrome wearing off and I believe it was from a Windex and water mix I was using at the end of my day not I between colors. Thanks

I also read a thing on homage reducer which was the same accept they use denatured alcohol and distiller water. The denatured alcohol was used because the iso. alcohol would cause adhesion problems for the paint.

Thanks for the tip.
 
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