safety warning "denatured alcohol" read the MSDS!

[Hu Lowery]

Lost my bowl blanks one way or another so decided to try to shortcut and soak some in denatured alcohol to dry them faster.

Reading some issues with high methanol content in the denatured alcohol which was once grain alcohol with one or two percent gasoline or methanol added to make it unsafe to drink I checked the MSDS of the brand of denatured alcohol I have purchased and started soaking bowls in.

75% methanol, 15% to 25% ethanol!! Might as well have bought pump gas for three dollars a gallon to soak my bowls in.

I am refraining from posting the brand of the alcohol for several reasons including harassing lawsuits and the fact that things like this are usually marketed under multiple brand names.

Moral of the story is check the MSDS. The Material Safety Data Sheet may be a bit vague and not answer your questions but it can't lie and often reveals things unexpected about a product. I would never have guessed that methanol could be marketed as denatured alcohol.

Hu

 

[Charlie Knighton]

thanks Hu.......glad you did not try to boil them

 

[Richard Coers]

What's the danger? Methanol is alcohol made from natural gas, ethanol is alcohol made from corn. I'm no chemical guy, maybe my memory isn't right about this.

 

[Hu Lowery]

the difference is in the make-up of byproducts, or that is what I fear

What's the danger? Methanol is alcohol made from natural gas, ethanol is alcohol made from corn. I'm no chemical guy, maybe my memory isn't right about this.

Richard,

Your memory is the same as mine. Ethanol I deliberately ingest and rub on sore joints and aching muscles. Methanol I try to avoid breathing the fumes and don't want on my skin at all. Ingesting it can cause blindness and death. I have to consider if I want to try to finish turn these thick blanks or toss them in the fire since I don't have a fresh air system and with a beard I have never found anything but a pressurized air system to be effective to avoid breathing things I didn't want to. My first time using the alcohol drying system so I don't have any idea how much will be left in the wood when I am turning it.

Just a "for your information" thread regardless. We are all adults and can decide if we are happy with methanol. I'm not and I'm kicking my own tail to be the owner of seventeen gallons of it. Adding insult to injury, I paid fifteen dollars a gallon for the "denatured alcohol" when I can buy methanol around four dollars a gallon. yet another issue to address, I have to figure out how to dispose of most of it, no doubt hazardous waste.

Hu Lowery

 

[Raul McCai]

The OSHA 8 hour time weighted average for exposure is 200 PPM
Of course that’s not one day or even a handful of days that’s every day


But then maybe the greatest environmental danger in the shop is the very thing we create in great quantities: Saw dust.

Wood fines release silica. Silica tears the lungs up and the damage does not heal. It is cumulative.

In my industry there is a saying: "Silica is the Next Asbestos."

Richard,

I have never found anything but a pressurized air system to be effective to avoid breathing things I didn't want to.

I'd like to get a Felder RL 160. It produces air cleaner than the freshest mountain spring breezes or, stated in the vernacular, less dust fines than 0.1 mg/m³ which is AQHI category H3.

Right now my shop might be considered lethal.

 

[Ed Street]

I am refraining from posting the brand of the alcohol for several reasons including harassing lawsuits and the fact that things like this are usually marketed under multiple brand names.

I do not understand why you would be getting harassing lawsuits or the like simply by stating what is. MSDS is public info and there is the truth in labeling act..

However, from that I use the DNA from home depot/lowes. I pulled the MSDS from those products.

Home Depot DNA
http://www.co.vermilion.il.us/MSDS/EMA/85- Kleanstrip Denatured Alcohol.pdf

Ethyl Alcohol 45 - 50%
Methanol 45 - 50%
Methyl Isobutyl Ketone 1 - 4%

Lowes DNA
http://www.jasco-help.com/uploads/documents/GJDA300_SDS-1625.6D.pdf

Ethyl alcohol (ethanol) 30-50%
Methanol (Methyl alcohol, carbinol, wood alcohol) 40-60%

Even further still I pulled the wiki info on DNA.

Denatured alcohol, also called methylated spirits, is ethanol that has additives to make it poisonous, extremely bad tasting, foul smelling or nauseating, to discourage recreational consumption. In some cases it is also dyed.

Denatured alcohol is used as a solvent and as fuel for alcohol burners and camping stoves. Because of the diversity of industrial uses for denatured alcohol, hundreds of additives and denaturing methods have been used. The main additive has traditionally been 10% methanol, giving rise to the term "methylated spirits". Other typical additives include isopropyl alcohol, acetone, methyl ethyl ketone, methyl isobutyl ketone, and denatonium.[1]

 

[Bill Boehme]

Lost my bowl blanks one way or another so decided to try to shortcut and soak some in denatured alcohol to dry them faster.

Reading some issues with high methanol content in the denatured alcohol which was once grain alcohol with one or two percent gasoline or methanol added to make it unsafe to drink I checked the MSDS of the brand of denatured alcohol I have purchased and started soaking bowls in.

75% methanol, 15% to 25% ethanol!! Might as well have bought pump gas for three dollars a gallon to soak my bowls in.

I am refraining from posting the brand of the alcohol for several reasons including harassing lawsuits and the fact that things like this are usually marketed under multiple brand names.

Moral of the story is check the MSDS. The Material Safety Data Sheet may be a bit vague and not answer your questions but it can't lie and often reveals things unexpected about a product. I would never have guessed that methanol could be marketed as denatured alcohol.

Hu

That wouldn't be denatured alcohol ... that's just plain rank poison with a tiny bit of good stuff added so that you will die a bit slower, but WOW are you sure that you read the MSDS correctly? Breathing just a little of it can kill enough brain cells so that you probably won't be too concerned about future exposure.

I don't understand your references to gasoline ... not saying that it hasn't been used, but I don't recall ever seeing any alkanes in gasoline (such as octane, heptane, hexane, and any of the other C[SUB]N[/SUB]H[SUB]2N+2[/SUB] compounds) listed as ingredients on the MSDS. Well, I guess that the 10% ethanol in gas contains some methanol so that you won't drink gasoline. I occasionally check before buying a brand of DNA that I haven't tried before to see what stuff it might contain that I don't want to mix with my dyes (as well as my immediate personal biosphere). But, like you indicate, the retail shelf brand doesn't mean that the supplier doesn't change.

You can post a link to the MSDS. Expressing concerns about your safety is hardly a reason to worry. If the Internet were to suddenly by some miracle be cleansed of all brand bashing it might create a vacuum that could lead to an implosion. Go to any retail site and read customer reviews on any product that you are thinking of buying. You'll probably never buy anything again.

 

[Bill Boehme]

After reading Ed's post, I started thinking that the smell of DNA has changed from what it was several years ago when I remember it having much more of a fermented fruit smell. I could be mistaken, but I believe that the ethanol content used to be about 85%.

 

[John Torchick]

I use approximately a gallon of DNA a year as a solvent for uncured two part epoxy. Plus I also use 91% isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) as a solvent.

 

[Jamie Straw]

So when people talk about soaking wood in alcohol to stabilize it, what kind do they mean?

 

[Hu Lowery]

ingredients

After reading Ed's post, I started thinking that the smell of DNA has changed from what it was several years ago when I remember it having much more of a fermented fruit smell. I could be mistaken, but I believe that the ethanol content used to be about 85%.

Bill,

When I was a pup denatured alcohol was supposed to be 1% to 2% gasoline or something else you couldn't drink but 98% to 99% grain alcohol. Then the percentage of other things was raised to 5%. Then I heard of 10% and 15% denaturing ingredients but with the primary ingredient in denatured alcohol always being grain alcohol. I have never heard of it being methanol.

Merit or not, I do fear lawsuits from public statements about a product, true or not. Have seen it happen, have even seen somebody lose when their true statements were judged to be malicious!

Check a MSDS for Crown denatured alcohol. What percentage methanol do you see? While entertaining yourself take a look at the two brands of denatured alcohol Sherwin Williams sells. Both labeled denatured alcohol. Would you happily interchange the two?

They just killed over forty people in eastern Europe with tainted alcohol which is usually methanol but granted not always. Killed over a hundred and twenty people in Africa with tainted alcohol, again a single incident. They kill large numbers of people in Africa yearly with bad alcohol. I don't want to breathe it or absorb it.

I suspended a bowl blank above the alcohol in my container and waited 24 hours. The outside seemed just as wet as five minutes after I had put it up there. Not a good sign.

Hu

 

[Bill Boehme]

Bill,

When I was a pup denatured alcohol was supposed to be 1% to 2% gasoline or something else you couldn't drink but 98% to 99% grain alcohol. Then the percentage of other things was raised to 5%. Then I heard of 10% and 15% denaturing ingredients but with the primary ingredient in denatured alcohol always being grain alcohol. I have never heard of it being methanol.

Merit or not, I do fear lawsuits from public statements about a product, true or not. Have seen it happen, have even seen somebody lose when their true statements were judged to be malicious!

Check a MSDS for Crown denatured alcohol. What percentage methanol do you see? While entertaining yourself take a look at the two brands of denatured alcohol Sherwin Williams sells. Both labeled denatured alcohol. Would you happily interchange the two?

They just killed over forty people in eastern Europe with tainted alcohol which is usually methanol but granted not always. Killed over a hundred and twenty people in Africa with tainted alcohol, again a single incident. They kill large numbers of people in Africa yearly with bad alcohol. I don't want to breathe it or absorb it.

I suspended a bowl blank above the alcohol in my container and waited 24 hours. The outside seemed just as wet as five minutes after I had put it up there. Not a good sign.

Hu

I understand your position ... and, it is easy to tell somebody else not to worry about getting in hot water, so I won't encourage you to do something that you don't want to do. I understand bungee jumping is safe, but I'm sort of conservative when it comes to my own hide and you won't see me jumping off a perfectly good bridge just to demonstrate how safe it is purported to be.

Yes, I did some searching yesterday and saw the percentages of methanol in various brands. This led me to wonder if most ethanol production has been diverted to motor fuel use leaving a short supply for other purposes or perhaps an accelerated distillation process results is a mixture of methanol and ethanol. You've probably heard of moonshiners not properly distilling their "shine" resulting in a toxic methanol content. Of course, methanol is not a good thing to have in motor fuel for several reasons such as increased detonation and vapor lock.

I was told in high school chemistry that methyl alcohol was extremely poisonous so we had to take minimal precautions when using it like wearing heavy black long cuff rubber gloves and wearing goggles and trying to not breathe too much of the fumes (whatever that meant). We also got to play around with fun stuff like formalin (37% aqueous solution of formaldehyde), trichloroethane (AKA methyl chloroform), trichlorethylene, and carbon tetrachloride (the best degreaser ever and also degreased your hide if you didn't wear gloves ... not to mention its effect on your liver). I walked to the neighborhood drug store across from the school campus and bought all sorts of fun chemicals back in the early sixties. I wonder how many brain cells I killed. I got interested in amateur taxidermy after reading an article in Texas Game & Fish magazine (now is named Texas Parks and Wildlife). They don't publish fun articles like that now.

 

[Gerald Lawrence]

I think maybe toxicities have been mixed up in this discussion. Methyl alcohol is toxic if ingested and can cause blindness. During prohibition the use of methyl (or wood alcohol) in small amounts to make denatured alcohol (DNA) was began to discourage the use of rubbing alcohol (ethanol type) as a beverage. Please note that rubbing alcohol comes in both ethyl alcohol (more expensive) and methyl (much cheaper) varieties and strengths from 70 % to 98%. Both are safe and only toxic when taken internally, except exposure to concentrated fumes from either.
Also note that rubbing alcohol was once available with wintergreen added and can be distinguished by its green color. Oh and by the way for preinjection application in cleansing injection sites it is best to use 98% ethyl (although swabs are preferred now).
Now can we go back to TURNING? Oh by the way by profession I have been a licensed Pharmacist for 45 years.

 

[Bill Boehme]

I think maybe toxicities have been mixed up in this discussion. Methyl alcohol is toxic if ingested and can cause blindness. During prohibition the use of methyl (or wood alcohol) in small amounts to make denatured alcohol (DNA) was began to discourage the use of rubbing alcohol (ethanol type) as a beverage. Please note that rubbing alcohol comes in both ethyl alcohol (more expensive) and methyl (much cheaper) varieties and strengths from 70 % to 98%. Both are safe and only toxic when taken internally, except exposure to concentrated fumes from either.
Also note that rubbing alcohol was once available with wintergreen added and can be distinguished by its green color. Oh and by the way for preinjection application in cleansing injection sites it is best to use 98% ethyl (although swabs are preferred now).
Now can we go back to TURNING? Oh by the way by profession I have been a licensed Pharmacist for 45 years.

Gerald, I hate to say that you are mistaken since you are a pharmacist, but rubbing alcohol comes in ethyl and isopropyl, but not methyl alcohol. The isopropyl rubbing alcohol is available in 70% and 91%. It used to also be available in 99% for antiseptic use, but I haven't seen it in any drug store in years. The isopropyl 70% rubbing alcohol is available plain and with wintergreen. I can't imagine using methanol (methyl alcohol) as a rubbing alcohol.

 

[Raul McCai]

According to the below source
The minimal lethal dose of methanol in adults is believed to be 1mg/kg of body weight.
So , if I have my math right ( there's no guarantees there), for a 180 pound person you'd need to consume 0.0028 of an ounce by weight. That's not much.

source
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1174890-overview

 

[John Torchick]

Back to turning? OK by me.

 

[Ron Rutter]

Anything that is informative with respect to products we may use is OK with me!!

 

[Hu Lowery]

working with blanks

I think maybe toxicities have been mixed up in this discussion. Methyl alcohol is toxic if ingested and can cause blindness. During prohibition the use of methyl (or wood alcohol) in small amounts to make denatured alcohol (DNA) was began to discourage the use of rubbing alcohol (ethanol type) as a beverage. Please note that rubbing alcohol comes in both ethyl alcohol (more expensive) and methyl (much cheaper) varieties and strengths from 70 % to 98%. Both are safe and only toxic when taken internally, except exposure to concentrated fumes from either.
Also note that rubbing alcohol was once available with wintergreen added and can be distinguished by its green color. Oh and by the way for preinjection application in cleansing injection sites it is best to use 98% ethyl (although swabs are preferred now).
Now can we go back to TURNING? Oh by the way by profession I have been a licensed Pharmacist for 45 years.

Gerald,

This thread did come about due to the practice of using alcohol to displace the water in turning blanks and then drying the alcohol at a faster rate than the water can be dried without cracking.

Looks like they are attaching an extra molecule or something to make isopropyl alcohol so while it might be classified as methanol it looks like all methanol isn't isopropyl alcohol. Is that statement correct? Never took even high school chemistry myself.

What I really posted to ask you about was salting the alcohol. Are the proper salts readily available and can I convert to a safer product by salting the alcohol to sort some of the things apart? Can I add dye that will make the stratification clearer? I like 99% alcohol for several things but buy 90% because it can be purchased cheaply at wallyworld so the same question for it, can I use the salting process to up it's purity closer to 99%?

Ever since the DMSO fad I have been much more careful about absorption through the skin. Of course no way to avoid inhaling a large amount of the vapors when working around the open vat of alcohol too. I'm uncomfortable about the methanol, more uncomfortable about the trace ingredients that might be in it. I did spend fifteen years bouncing in and out of petro-chem plants and a lot of the dangers were dangerous when they were just a few or few hundred parts per million in the air.

hu

 

[Bill Boehme]

... Looks like they are attaching an extra molecule or something to make isopropyl alcohol so while it might be classified as methanol it looks like all methanol isn't isopropyl alcohol. Is that statement correct? Never took even high school chemistry myself. ..

No, the nomenclature is probably confusing you. Isopropanol is a branched propanol where instead of the prefix "iso", the term methylpropanol could be used to indicate branching for the hydroxyl radical, but because there are only three carbon atoms in the chain, it would be a trivial use. Anyway, it is a mistaken assumption to think that isopropyl alcohol consists of methyl and propyl alcohol. First of all the equation doesn't balance ... Unaccounted for hydroxyl radical.

... What I really posted to ask you about was salting the alcohol. Are the proper salts readily available and can I convert to a safer product by salting the alcohol to sort some of the things apart? Can I add dye that will make the stratification clearer? I like 99% alcohol for several things but buy 90% because it can be purchased cheaply at wallyworld so the same question for it, can I use the salting process to up it's purity closer to 99%? . . . .

For your second question, "salting out" is the name for separating the water from the alcohol using ordinary sodium chloride but it isn't exactly a process that can easily be done at home because you still won't have anhydrous isopropanol, plus I think that you will wind up with some salt contaminating your "higher proof" isopropanol (this is not really a legitimate use of the term proof, but it gets the point across). I think that if you didn't mind sacrificing a lot of alcohol for the sake of purity, you could just siphon a bit off the top.

For your first question, I'm not sure what you are asking for unless you are assuming that there is methanol in isopropyl alcohol and you somehow ought to be able to wring it out by adding some special ingredient. But, it is just as likely that I don't understand the question. I should point out that isopropyl alcohol consists of just three elements: hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen ... chemical formula is C[SUB]3[/SUB]H[SUB]7[/SUB]-OH. It is an isomer of the straight molecular chain propanol. The "iso" part of the name just means in this case that the molecule has a Y shape rather than being a straight chain. The OH at the end of the formula used to be called a hydroxyl radical when I was in college, but I understand that there have been some some terminology changes and it is now something like hydroxyl functional group. Anyway, it's the hydroxyl radical that makes this an alcohol (the chemical names for alcohols ends in "ol"). The following infixes gives the number of carbon atoms in an alcohol molecule chain:

1. meth 1
2. eth 2
3. prop 3
4. but 4
5. pent 5
6. hex 6
7. hep 7
8. oct 8, etc.

But, this video does a much better job of describing the terminology: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0GeSMAF3cs.

I suspect that with the right fancy equipment you could probably create some other hydrocarbons from isopropanol ... acetone is one that I know for certain, but seriously you would be better off just buying what you want unless you have a few extra million stashed away in the sock drawer to spend on this project.

... Ever since the DMSO fad I have been much more careful about absorption through the skin.

I remember it well. That was a terrible con job that preyed on a lot of desperate people.

 

[Alan Trout]

I understand your position ... and, it is easy to tell somebody else not to worry about getting in hot water, so I won't encourage you to do something that you don't want to do. I understand bungee jumping is safe, but I'm sort of conservative when it comes to my own hide and you won't see me jumping off a perfectly good bridge just to demonstrate how safe it is purported to be.

Yes, I did some searching yesterday and saw the percentages of methanol in various brands. This led me to wonder if most ethanol production has been diverted to motor fuel use leaving a short supply for other purposes or perhaps an accelerated distillation process results is a mixture of methanol and ethanol. You've probably heard of moonshiners not properly distilling their "shine" resulting in a toxic methanol content. Of course, methanol is not a good thing to have in motor fuel for several reasons such as increased detonation and vapor lock.

I was told in high school chemistry that methyl alcohol was extremely poisonous so we had to take minimal precautions when using it like wearing heavy black long cuff rubber gloves and wearing goggles and trying to not breathe too much of the fumes (whatever that meant). We also got to play around with fun stuff like formalin (37% aqueous solution of formaldehyde), trichloroethane (AKA methyl chloroform), trichlorethylene, and carbon tetrachloride (the best degreaser ever and also degreased your hide if you didn't wear gloves ... not to mention its effect on your liver). I walked to the neighborhood drug store across from the school campus and bought all sorts of fun chemicals back in the early sixties. I wonder how many brain cells I killed. I got interested in amateur taxidermy after reading an article in Texas Game & Fish magazine (now is named Texas Parks and Wildlife). They don't publish fun articles like that now.

Bill, I was a drag racer for many years and 100% methanol is used in the alcohol classes. It is commonly refereed to as "Racing Alcohol" Cars run very well on methanol. If I recall it was rated at about 110 to 112 octane, detonation is rarely a problem. Most solvents are bad for you and should be used with respect. I have done many stupid things in my life. When I owned my machine shop I literally had my unprotected arms and hands in Naphtha for many hours a day. Probably not the best thing for my health but I also suspect I did not shorten my life expectancy dramatically. Of course now I am much smarter and wear gloves with any extended solvent exposure. Just the smart thing to do. I also use solvents in a well ventilated area when ever possible. This is just common sense. Just be smart with the solvents you use. I am not planning on ingesting denatured alcohol and when I do ingest alcohol I prefer it in the form of a high quality high proof bourbon.

 

[Mark Mandell]

Parks DNA

I look for "Parks" brand DNA as its methanol content is the lowest I've found at 5%

http://householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/household/brands?tbl=brands&id=16009025

Link is the most recent verified MSDS I could find

 

[Gretch Flo]

I look for "Parks" brand DNA as its methanol content is the lowest I've found at 5%

http://householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/household/brands?tbl=brands&id=16009025

Link is the most recent verified MSDS I could find

Is Parks sold in the common big box/paint stores??Gretch

 

[Hu Lowery]

Thank You!

I look for "Parks" brand DNA as its methanol content is the lowest I've found at 5%

http://householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/household/brands?tbl=brands&id=16009025

Link is the most recent verified MSDS I could find

Mark,

That is handy to know! I found some "specially formulated" denatured alcohol at a super premium price but other than that I hadn't found a low methanol content denatured alcohol.



Bill,

Thanks! I did follow most of what you said. Where things get confusing for me is these days they are making ethanol and methanol from the same gases now. At one time I thought ethanol referred only to grain alcohol now it is used to refer to many things including some alcohols from crude oil or natural gas. Seems like when there is a market for something all of a sudden that is the name you can hang on anything close. I'm still baffled by people being able to market something as tung oil that has zero tung oil in it! Oil can be labeled as synthetic when it is highly refined too, whatever "highly refined" means!


Alan,

I fooled with race cars a bit when I was younger too. I seem to remember some of the sprint car mechanics getting methanol poisoning but I don't remember how to be able to swear to it. I washed auto parts in regular leaded gasoline as a kid, quit doing it as much when a neighbor's mechanic working for him came down with heavy metal poisoning from that practice. My exposures to heavy metals, asbestos, and cyanates are probably all off of the charts so now I try to be a little more careful.

Hu

 

[Owen Lowe]

Is Parks sold in the common big box/paint stores??Gretch

Gretch, I think of Parks as a fairly widely available product line. I’m pretty sure my local Ace Hardware carries it – heck, I’m even thinking I’ve seen it at Fred Meyer stores (grocery mega-store for those unfamiliar with FM).

 

[John Torchick]

I thought the government hype for ethanol in gasoline was to create a bigger market for corn.

 

[Gretch Flo]

Mark,




Hu

"I washed auto parts in regular leaded gasoline as a kid, quit doing it as much when a neighbor's mechanic working for him came down with heavy metal poisoning from that practice. My exposures to heavy metals, asbestos, and cyanates are probably all off of the charts so now I try to be a little more careful."
Any way to economically check yourself antemortem??????. But them, maybe you don't want to know!!!! Gretch

 

[Ed Street]

This does bring up some rather interesting questions.

I.e. you have TWO products. ....


100% Ethanol

- vs -

100% Methanol

1) Is there some advantage that one has over the other? They are technically both alcohol and work the same yes?

2) Will either of these products damage, destroy or degrade the wood that is soaking in it?

Someone please correct me if I am wrong but it is my understanding that this method works by displacing water inside the wood then allowing the alcohol to evaporate which yields a much shorter drying time period.

 

[Richard Coers]

I thought the government hype for ethanol in gasoline was to create a bigger market for corn.

It was to reduce dependency on foriegn oil. Then fracking came along and made cheap oil. Don't get me started on fracking!