Can RED GUM go BAD?

[Livingston]

I found sum RG I bought a back and doesnt have that RG smell so I wonder if it can goo bad??

 

PS I would i turn sum chunky RG with out putting it in my ball mill

[OldMarine]

I've read it will oxidize over time. I'll bet if you grind it a bit you'll get that smell again. For my chunky red gum I put it in a cotton sack and bask it up with my mallet then run it through my coffee grinder to get it fine enough for use. I only break up enough of the chunky stuff to use in a month or two at a time to keep it from oxidizing further. I haven't noticed any lessening of the binding ability or effectiveness in comps as a fuel in my gun and some of it was bought years ago by the fellow who lured me into the hobby!

[lloyd]

"...bask it up with my mallet..."

----------------

And YOU were going to BASH me about choice of words? <heh! GOTCHA! >

 

Lloyd

[OldMarine]

The gum, mallet and I are enjoying some sun!

 

On this subject: I'm using a sack I made from an old pair of jeans for crushing the gum chunks. I get quite a bit of dust poofing out of it while pounding and was wondering what a more tightly woven fabric might be. I don't have the dust problem while reducing phenolic resin for some reason.

Edited February 4, 2017 by OldMarine

[Livingston]

Hey thanks guys!

[Limpy]

I have some of that chunky RG I bough from skylighter years ago. I recently ran it through the coffee mill. But some of the chunks were pretty big, so I just whacked it with my dead blow hammer right in the plastic bag it came in. No mess...

 

It is now pretty light and fluffy, but you can still feel the grains between your fingers. Like sugar, or maybe a little smaller. How fine SHOULD it be?

Edited February 5, 2017 by Limpy

[Mumbles]

Red gum will often have contaminants like sand, dirt, and sticks in it. This wont always grind down. I haven't dealt with clumpy stuff in a while, but passing through a 60 mesh screen did a pretty good job of separating the good red gum and coarser contaminants. I know it's cheaper, but it gets old having to process one component or another for every single composition I want to make.

[lloyd]

Even 'from the bag' from Service Chemical, a lot of that foreign material is present. That's because it's a natural vegetable gum from a plant grown in dirt!

 

Eh... the bulk of it would pass 60-mesh. What didn't was just thrown out, not re-processed.

 

Mumbles, we used a couple of bags a month. It IS a pain to have to pre-screen things... but it's the nature of the job. <shrug>

 

Lloyd

[Mumbles]

I was talking about the straight from the bag Service Chems stuff with the sticks, sand, and dirt. That stuff never bothered me much actually. It was the product clumped to rocks that got me a bit agitated. I think Skylighter and some other suppliers would run sales on it, or try to give it away with orders. I had a pretty good idea how much of the Service stuff was going to get "stuck", and would just add extra at the end to compensate. Given that this was generally colored stars, I already had to screen out parlon clumps. I never really got brave enough to try to add extra from the beginning. My luck, that'd be the time I only scooped fine material.

 

I lucked out and got in on a group buy from a fellow on passfire directly from Kangaroo Island. That stuff is nice, and 100% passes my finest screen.

[lloyd]

Mumb, what we did was to separately screen the SC red gum (and similarly, the parlon) onto a paper, and weigh after screening. If we were a bit short, we just scooped a bit more into the screen, if long, anything on the paper went back into the bag. "Six of one...", etc.

 

It was probably to our benefit that we had LARGE screening tables (5'x9'). So a single operator could have multiple work positions on the same surface.

 

Lloyd

Edited February 5, 2017 by lloyd