RetroBright Plastic Restore on Arepachi

[luckydog]

[Cystic]

What compound is the crystals on old acetone bottles?
I use strong acetone to thin wood filler.
Are there any dangerous interactions between acetone and denatured alcohol or paint thinner ?

No, I don't think you have much to worry about and I am very sorry if I caused any concern to anyone. As long as you don't store acetone with anything marked Oxidizer you should be OK. Having said that,

Personally I now store my acetone away from everything else in its own inflammables cabinet. Now I never used to, nor my father, nor his father but, knowing the potential to have an ignited(or worst ruptured and ignited) container of volatile solvent at arms length I err on the side of caution.

Acetone and Hydrogen Peroxide can form Acetone Peroxide an explosive compound favored by those folks that the would die for Allah, also know by the sweet sounding name "Mother of Satan" due to its volatility.(if dry it may explode with a change in lighting alone or the touch of a feather falling on it, like tri potassium iodide) Often used in explosive vests for suicide bombers and also used by the shoe bomber Richard Reid. In much of Europe, acetone and hydrogen peroxide are considered controlled substances for that reason, either unavailable or needing a permit or other record of purchase.

Acetone is my favorite solvent(well next to the universal solvent - water) as if reasonably pure it evaporates completely and leaves no residue.

In most home shop applications you should be safe. The only real danger I can see would be storing acetone next to wood deck bleaching products(a two part system with one part, usually, being a container of 35% hydrogen peroxide) with loose caps on both. A greater danger comes from the use of acetone in a a reflux setting under vacuum, but that subject is beyond the scope of this board.


Still - Safety beats Sorrow...everytime.

[emmadog]

Just getting around to posting these pics. The piece pictured here is one of the original pieces from the start of this thread. It is the underside and outside edge of my latest Sammy's coin tray. It took a total of about 20 hours to whiten it-the yellowing was considerably worse than the other pieces. The flat bottom of this piece is the underside of the tray and cannot be seen once installed so I wasn't too concerned if this whitened at all. The edge in the second pic was what I was interested in. It's still not totally white and a very faint line can be seen in the second pic where the two shades meet. However it is night and day from how it was as evidenced by the first pic and the results are quite good.

[compirate]

Very slick!

[Moparformances]

amazing transformation

[Ikaria]

Looks really good! I need to have a retr0bright weekend.

[TilionMtl]

Humm I have a question.. since the promine is add to plastic as flame retardant, what happen to the bromine once we use the retrobright/zerobright technique? anyone have tryied to cut a plastic piece in two part, do the treatment on one piece, let dry for a month, and try to put a flame near each pieces to see what's happen? Does the treatment affect the flame retardant?

[emmadog]

From what I have read when UV rays hit the plastic, the bromine molecules detach and become free radicals. They then share an atom with oxygen molecules though this bond is weak. This weak bond is a good thing or else the retr0bright process would not work as well. Anyway, there's plenty of info online about it. The bottom line is that this process is a reversal of the process that starts the yellowing in the first place. As far as being flame retardant, it follows that if retr0right reverses the process then it should restore the flame retardance(sp?) to whatever level there was initially.BUT that's assuming the yellowing affected flammability in the first place.

[rubberratt]

I tried the retro bright (peroxide) process on a lot of different plastics. It worked GREAT on computer plastics, but not at all on most others.

I didn't get great results, but your mileage may vary

[emmadog]

As far as I know it only works on ABS plastic. So your first determination has to be the type of plastic you have.