Lab glass

Gold Refining Forum

Help Support Gold Refining Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Darkthirty

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 21, 2016
Messages
191
Need some insight on lab glass. Seeing a wide range of prices. Borosilicate, heavy duty, brand names, et al. Don't want to over invest, yet I don't want problems either. Any advice?
 
I've used a variety, from name brand Pyrex and Kimax, to Home Science Tools, to Chinese no-names from eBay. They have all served pretty well. I've had breakage from them all. Treat them all gently. Bumping glassware into anything can cause minute fractures which ultimately lead to failure.

Dave
 
Scratches can lead to failures as well. Heating or cooling to quick (ie: adding ice to fast or going from cold to full heat to fast) can cause them to fail on the scratch marks.

Like Dave, I have used several brands and all have worked fairly well. I do lean toward the borosilicate 3.0 stuff as it does deal with hot and cold very well.
 
A friend bought 2 pallets of 200 ml Borosilicate lab glass from www.govplanet.com for $5 US, 1000 pcs. Don't know what size you are looking for, but they come across a lot of surplus lab ware. I don't know where you are located, but if near LV, Nevada, that is a localized site for a lot of military bases. I can't even begin to tell you what we got from Rocky Flats, when it got decommissioned.
 
Need some insight on lab glass. Seeing a wide range of prices. Borosilicate, heavy duty, brand names, et al. Don't want to over invest, yet I don't want problems either. Any advice?

Most of my lab glass was ordered from china, I only have a couple of issues.....long wait for delivery and some of the graduation markings are....well... an 'ish. Other than that they work just fine on a hobbyist level.

If you plan on getting anything with ground joints, I have found that 24/40 jointed glassware seems to have a wider selection of lab glass.... But I guess that depends on what region of the world you are in.

Never let your ground glass joint flasks cool with the stopper in. It will create a vacuum and it's a pain to get the stopper back out. Even after heating the flask back up, the stopper can get wedged in the joint.
 
Just from my (very) limited experience - a sweet variety (for hobbyists) that I stocked up on are beakers without the pour spout, with a domed watchglass cover in place there is near zero fumes or evaporation loses - and the clunk-clink noise of a cover burping works as a great alarm that something is getting too energetic and needs attention A MINUTE AGO : )
 
Borosilicate is sensitive to some acids and alkali, Soda Lime glass is basically Pyrex and is questionable for lab use. NaOH at higher temps wouldn't be viable in plastic? I have access to a scrap dumpster of a company that is loaded with SS tanks, tubs, tubing, et al. They typically handled HCL. Is the heavy duty glass worth the investment? I'm ADHD and self educated, so I'm not sure exactly where this journey will lead. I do appreciate all input and advice!
 
Thicker glass is more likely to break when heating and cooling. Boro 3.0 is thin and handles heat and cooling better. I use mainly three chemicals, sulfuric, nitric and HCl. The borosilicate glass handles these very well.

I have some vacuum flasks that are heavy walled and it needs to be to withstand the vacuum pressures.
 
Borosilicate is sensitive to some acids and alkali, Soda Lime glass is basically Pyrex and is questionable for lab use. NaOH at higher temps wouldn't be viable in plastic? I have access to a scrap dumpster of a company that is loaded with SS tanks, tubs, tubing, et al. They typically handled HCL. Is the heavy duty glass worth the investment? I'm ADHD and self educated, so I'm not sure exactly where this journey will lead. I do appreciate all input and advice!

NaOH at high temp/concentrations will etch most lab glass.

In my experience, stainless steel will hold up to Sulfuric and generally nitric acid, Hcl will destroy stainless steel.

As Shark mentioned..... vacuum flasks must be thick walled. There's not much difference between explosion and an implosion when it comes to a flask full of acid. All of my lab glass is borosilicate so I can't comment on Pyrex.
 
Borosilicate is sensitive to some acids and alkali, Soda Lime glass is basically Pyrex and is questionable for lab use. NaOH at higher temps wouldn't be viable in plastic? I have access to a scrap dumpster of a company that is loaded with SS tanks, tubs, tubing, et al. They typically handled HCL. Is the heavy duty glass worth the investment? I'm ADHD and self educated, so I'm not sure exactly where this journey will lead. I do appreciate all input and advice!
There is a reason "ALL" lab glass is Borosilicate.
Nothing can cope better with lab conditions.
There are of course situations that have to be dealt with by Zirconium, Platinum, Teflon and other special materials.
Boro is Cheap as chips comparing to those.
 
If I recall correctly, boro glassware is resistant to a bit over 425 deg F. Pyrex is formulated to have a low thermal expansion coefficient but it can break if too harshly treated.
 
How many beakers/flasks and sizes should be on hand to attempt recovery and refining of computer board scrap? Before I contract a job, the whole process is done mentally with any possible unknown problems considered and mitigated before the oshit moment occurs.
 
I have several of each size from 50ml to 4000ml. My most used are 50ml, 100ml, mainly for measuring small volumes. The most broken 2000ml and 3000ml and the most used. I usually buy 1000ml by half dozen box’s as they are used for most everything.

I like 2000ml vacuum flask but I have one 1000ml flask made of Nalgene polypropylene plastic that can with stand a vacuum stronger than my AC vacuum compressor can generate. More than enough to vacuum boil a solution.

When I first started I used 100ml, 1000ml and 600ml. The 1000ml was the most used at the time.
 
I have several of each size from 50ml to 4000ml. My most used are 50ml, 100ml, mainly for measuring small volumes. The most broken 2000ml and 3000ml and the most used. I usually buy 1000ml by half dozen box’s as they are used for most everything.

I like 2000ml vacuum flask but I have one 1000ml flask made of Nalgene polypropylene plastic that can with stand a vacuum stronger than my AC vacuum compressor can generate. More than enough to vacuum boil a solution.

When I first started I used 100ml, 1000ml and 600ml. The 1000ml was the most used at the time.
I have no accessory tools either, this is a complete start up...
 
A cheap Dollar Store hot plate or a used one from a thrift store or flea market/yard sale will work. I also use a griddle as well and it can hold two beakers and catch pans at the same time. A couple of pyrocram dish’s to keep your beakers off direct heat and work great as a catch pan if one does break. I use budget leather gloves over medium weight, high cuff nitrile gloves. These make a decent combination for heat resistance and acid resistance. Glass stir rods help but break fairly easily. I have a couple of real heavy glass spoons from a yard sale that work great, I have no idea what they were meant to be used for.

In all fairness you can get by with a good quality coffee pot and stir rods cut from plastic cloths hangers. My first several “units” were coffee makers with the top cut off with a hand saw. I used the pots for beakers and the bottoms as a hot plate. They won’t get as hot as a hot plate, but they also keep boil overs to a minimum until you gain some experience.

A funnel and knowledge of various filters are a great plus. Various way of making and using them can be found across the forum as well as many good discussions on various filter materials. You could easily buy various versions as well.

A fume hood is a great addition to the list and recommended even if working out side. They will keep fumes directly out of your face. There are many posts on making them on the forum, from budget versions to some very nice rigs that will last a long time.
 
If I recall correctly, boro glassware is resistant to a bit over 425 deg F. Pyrex is formulated to have a low thermal expansion coefficient but it can break if too harshly treated.
It is prudent to note that mostly in Europe the heat resistant household glassware that is marked "PYREX" is fairly standard borosilicate lab glass.

However mostly in the USA the heat resistant household glassware that is marked "pyrex" is a brand of tempered sodalime glass that has licenced the modified trademark.

Tempered sodalime glass is fine to quite high temperatures but it cannot handle localised or rapid thermal changes/shock, it is also a lot more vulnerable to scratches that weaken the 'case hardening' that is sometimes imparted to the glass by soaking it in molten salts.

Tempered glass breaks into lots of smaller 'cuboid' pieces when it breaks while untempered glass has a tendency to make more pointy shards.

Older well used coffee pots are probably the best source of jugs, having outlasted a coffee maker means it has no infant mortality left to wear out. You can see that sreetips uses at least one old "PYREX" brand glass coffee percolator jug, without the handle, that were made in the USA way back when, it is quite heavy walled and has a pour spout like a beaker. I have one and it is a capable percolator and it is the only one I have seen in Finland in 8 years so I would not be allowed to use it for chemistry even though we favour the French press for smaller batches of coffee these days.

A marking of "toughened" or brands that are marketed that way I would keep away from direct flame or avoid adding water if boiled dry and still hot. Commercial catering grade coffee pots might be more often made of borosilicate glass if I had to guess.
 
I have one of this glass Pyrex percolator pots, they make some excellent coffee and I would never use it for refining.
 
I have very little experience in this field. And have used a simple tall / narrow glass flower vase. For cold processing silver plated copper. And had no issues.
But now I too use glass coffee pots from coffee makers and French press beakers.
Something to keep in mind if you decide to use "Pyrex" dishes.
The new clear stuff is different than the original.
The new version is more prone to thermal breakage, than the older versions. If you do a Google search about "exploding pyrex" , there's plenty of info out there.
It's easy to tell the new stuff. As it has a different color.
If you look at it through the edge. It has a lite blue color.
 
Back
Top