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Dad's old copper plating stuff

Can someone please help me here. I found my dad's old copper plating stuff, I think he used it for baby shoes or other things. There is a large homemade power supply box with a couple of knobs on it and a gauge, and power leads. There is also a plastic tub of blue crystals, a large chunk of what appears to be copper, and liquid in the bottom of the crystals. The liquid smells acidic, something like the way I remember film processing, or x-ray developing at the doctor's office smelled. I used a steel screw driver to dig out the chunk of copper that was in the blue crystals, and I noticed that the screw driver got copper plating on it. My concern here is the liquid in the crystals. I need to know what it might be. I think my dad bought a kit from Popular Mechanic's or somewhere like it back in the 1960's. If someone could please help me out here that would be good.

Darrel Senften
mechanic, fabricator - Damascus, Oregon, USA
February 27, 2011

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Hi, Darrel

The box with the knobs will be a power supply or "rectifier". The crystals are copper sulphate ⇦ this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] hexahydrate, probably with some additional sulfuric acid mixed in. I would take the bucket to your county's hazardous waste collection event or facility. But it not inconceivable to simply add a bit at a time to your drains as root killer, because that's probably what it is.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
February 28, 2011