Anybody Ever Drilled And Tapped A Ball Bering?

Anyone with silver or gold fillings has mercury in their mouth. Back in the seventies, improved detection techniques made it possible to detect mercury at parts per billion levels and there was a rash of investigations looking for mercury everywhere. I worked for a battery company then and because we used mercury in our batteries, we were required to monitor our waste water to these levels. I took some fresh amalgam from my dentist in to be analyzed and we couldn't detect any mercury vapor from the amalgam.

Elemental mercury has a vapor pressure of .002 mm Hg @ 25ºC according to the CDC. This in itself is interesting since the measurement is technically measuring against itself. This leads to a concentration of 18mg/m3 which is above permissible limits. However, to reach this level in a room would take a fairly long exposure of a large surface area or heating the mercury to vaporize it. Mercury's toxicity first gained notoriety in the millinery industry as it was use in the process of making felt for hats. This gave us the term"mad as a hatter".

Another interesting tidbit is that more mercury is released into the environment in the burning of coal than all other sources combined.
 
Bill Gruby said:
It was banned primarily because of the probability children getting into it.
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I suspect that you are thinking of lead. Regulation of industrial and commercial use of mercury are, as far as I know, aimed primarily at reducing chronic occupational exposure and reducing environmental release.
RJSakowski said:
Mercury's toxicity first gained notoriety in the millinery industry as it was use in the process of making felt for hats. This gave us the term"mad as a hatter".
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Yes. They removed it from the felt by heating it. In unventilated shops. Lots of things are toxic if you breathe enough of them over a long enough period of time.
 
4gsr said:
I bet you are on the radar scope with the EPA, too! That is one element I would not have in my possession, ever!
Guys, please be careful with that stuff!
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Ya, When you work on secrete gov. stuff it's OK to do this. Yes it is legal but dangerous for hobbyist.
 
I have a 100 year old book by popular mechanics titled "700 things for boys to do"

You'd be surprised at how many projects involve mercury or lead. At least 200 projects in the book.

Heavy metals like lead and mercury are hardly toxic in their metalic form. It's the oxides that are very toxic, as they are absorbed into the bloodstream much quicker.

Believe it or not, aluminum is actually pretty toxic as well. So are the oxides from copper and brass. It's not about the danger of the chemical, it's how much you manage to get into yourself.

Sent from my XT1053 using Tapatalk
 
I love that book, its amazing how anyone survived to produce offspring.
You would be locked up today if you tried half the things in it.
Have you see the "Boys book of Atomic experiments"?
 
as long as we are off topic...back in the 70-80s we used a glass beaker with an inch or so of mecury , covered with an inch or two of motor oil...to weld thermocouple junctions from 18-22 gauge tc extension wire... simply twist both ends ,, the junction end should just be one twist,,, connect the non junction end to one side of a small variac, connect the other side of the variac to a conductor that is inserted into the beaker of hg, so it will not move...now simply insert the junction end into beaker for a few seconds as it just touches the hg ... you will see/hear it sparking and when reomoved will have a nice round ball juction...note that the voltage can be varied as needed.. we usually started of at 25-50...also note that 110 vac variac have both hot and neutral connections at 110 vac to ground when open circuited,,,
rich
 
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