Denatured Alcohol

[Esser]

I am having a hard time finding denatured alcohol. Will Isopropyl alcohol work?

[inzersv]

Esser, I got my denatured alcohol at the hardware store (Home Depot). I don't know if Isopropyl Alcohol will work.

[Dave S]

Josh,

Isopropyl is a poor substitute for denatured alcohol - is is not as effective a solvent a denatured.

I bought gallons of the stuff from the paint department at Menards - don't know if you have them where you live. Another possibility if you have a fleet or farm store - check there, but as Stan said - the large chain hardware stores should have it.

Good luck,

Dave S
St Paul MN

[szicree]

It sounds like Canada is a tough place to find denatured alcohol. One place you should try is dedicated woodworking stores or anybody who makes or repairs classical guitars/violins. Many fine instruments are finished with shellac and this requires denatured alcohol. Good luck.

[Esser]

Thanks for the replies. I'll try some specialty stores. Home Depot and Lowe's didn't have it.

[mr bill]

Ace Hardware has it.

[ackselle]

Lee Valley has it if you want to pay!

[jtpitkin06]

Esser,


Go to the Sarnia Home Depot on Quinn Drive to buy Methyl Hydrate. You’ll find it in the paint section in 978 ml bottles for about $4.19 or a 3.78L jug for about $10.29


In the US, methyl hydrate, CH4O, is sold as a solvent under the name denatured alcohol. The US revenuers don’t want folks drinking ethanol without paying taxes so they exempt industrial ethanol users if they add a "denaturing" agent, methanol, making the brew poisonous. Methyl hydrate is also called wood alcohol, methyl alcohol, methyl hydroxide, and methanol. Regardless of the name you wouldn't want to drink it as it will cause blindness with as little as one shot. Three shots is fatal.



In Canada, you will find methanol sold as methyl hydrate. In the UK it's called methylated spirits.



Do not confuse methanol, CH4O with ethanol, C2H6O, which should be filtered through charcoal and aged in oak barrels for 12 years to make Gentleman Jack. Also do not confuse it with iso-propyl or rubbing alcohol, C3H8O, which is sold in pharmacies for sterilizing.


John Pitkin
Greenville, Texas

[ackselle]

Thanks John!

[Esser]

Thanks John! I knew it had to be somewhere. We use metholhydrate a lot at work. I just never knew it was the same stuff.

[szicree]

They are not the same stuff. One is grain alcohol with a bit of wood alcohol, the other is straight wood alcohol. The wood alcohol evaporates very quickly and I think has a lower flash point. Again, not the same.

[Dave S]

Good morning,

Whoever thought that one of the skills we needed as builders was to be chemists;).

There certainly is room for confusion with this deal, more so because of all the intermingled common names used for chemicals and names used for marketing purposes than anything that has to do with us as builders......

Let's try this.

1) Alcohol is a class of compounds, not a particular single compound but the term is commonly abused in trade.

All of the compounds we have been talking about in this thread are "alcohol" but they are quite different from one another. Also, some are mixtures rather than pure compounds.

2) Wood alcohol = methanol (wood alcohol being a historic common name for the stuff) Methanol is a simple short chain alcohol with a very rapid evaporation rate. It does not need to be denatured because it is unfit for beverage purposes anyway.

3) Grain Alcohol = ethanol (grain alcohol being a historic common name for the stuff) Ethanol is a longer chain alcohol than methanol with a slower evaporation rate which makes a better washing solvent for that reason. Stuff sold as "Grain alcohol" would better be described as denatured alcohol - it's not going out to the hardware store unless it is denatured but the use of the additional term in the market place is a bit confusing.

4) Denatured alcohol (marketing term or industry standard term) is ethanol (90-95% ethanol) with 5% -10% methanol and or isopropyl added to make the stuff unfit for beverage purposes (Denatured)

5) Beverage alcohol contains ethanol - hopefully not any other alcohols...

6) "Oxygenated gasoline" contains ethanol; where the ethanol starts out pure however when it is released from the production facility, a small amount of gasoline is added to make it unfit for beverage purposes (Denatured) then the denatured ethanol is mixed with large amounts of gasoline at the petroleum refineries before shipping to gas stations.

This might be TMI for our purposes...the cut to the chase is a web search for an MSDS for "Methanol", Denatured alcohol. etc to get a practical description.

Sounds like Denatured alcohol might not be available in consumer channels in canada; but, there have been many Kitfox builders in Canada and they are using something - either a substitute such as methanol or denatured alcohol available through specific channels like professional paint supply houses.

BTW - drinking methanol is not the only way to poison oneself....it absorbs through the skin pretty easily and inhaling too much of it is bad.

Sincerely,

Dave S

[Dave Holl]

I didn't know it was so complicated! So what is IPA?

[Dave S]

IPA = IsoPropyl Alcohol