ART
BEAUTY & WELLNESS
CRAFT
CULTURE & HISTORY
ENTERTAINMENT
ENVIRONMENT
FOOD & DRINKS
REVERSE ENGINEERING
SCIENCES
SPORTS
TECHNOLOGY
WEARABLES
Camphor Balls: Camphor Wood Steamed under Straw, Sublimed Clean, Ure 1839
Andrew Ure (1839) says camphor lies ready-formed between the wood and the bark of the camphor laurel. Boil chips of the wood under a straw-lined earthen dome and pick the grey crude camphor off the straw, then sublime it with a little quicklime in thin glass over sand into a clear white cake. Camphor catches fire easily: keep flames away from it.
The picture: pressed blocks of camphor.
Advanced
Three days
Instructions
1
1
Chip the wood
Chip the wood
Cut camphor laurel wood into small pieces.
Materials for this step:
Camphor Laurel Wood5 kgTools needed:
Axe2
2
Steam under straw
Steam under straw
Put the chips in an iron cauldron with plenty of water. Line the inside of an earthen pot with rice straw and set it upside down over the cauldron as a dome. Boil: the camphor rises with the steam and settles on the straw as grey grains. Let it cool and pick them off.
Tools needed:
Large Cast Iron Cauldron
Unglazed Earthenware Pot - Large
Rice Straw
Water
Charcoal3
3
Mix for refining
Mix for refining
Mix the crude camphor as closely as you can with 2 parts in 100 of quicklime, and as much bone black in fine powder for a whiter cake (step 6).
Tools needed:
Quicklime
Bone Black
Mortar and Pestle
Balance Scale
Rubber Gloves4
4
Sublime
Sublime
Put the mix in a thin glass flask sunk in a sand bath. Raise the fire slowly until the whole flask is hot, then bare its upper part little by little as the camphor sublimes. Too slow and the neck chokes; too fast and the flask may burst. Too cool at the top gives a snowy cake, not a clear one. Let it cool and break the flask to free the cake (ours).
Tools needed:
Round-Bottom Flask
Sand BathCharcoal
Welding Gloves
Safety Glasses5
5
Press into balls
Press into balls
Crush the white cake with a few drops of alcohol, which turns it to powder. Press the powder firmly into small balls between gloved palms (ours) and keep them in a closed jar.
Tools needed:
Ethanol - Lab Grade, 95%Mortar and PestleRubber Gloves
Glass Jar6
6
Refining charge
Refining charge
Loading Jupyter Notebook...
Materials
1- Placeholder
Tools Required
17- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
- Placeholder
This blueprint makes
Related Blueprints
These blueprints share knowledge with this one — techniques, materials, or principles that connect them in the learning graph.
Making Bone Black Pigment — Calcining Animal Bones into the Warm Black of Old Master Painters
by Charlie
ART
145
0
0
0
3
0
Sand Bath in a Sunk Iron Pan
by Forge
Metalworking
2
0
0
0
0
0
Ethanol 95 %: Wine Distilled, Rectified and Dried over Potash
by Charlie
Organic
1
0
0
0
0
0
Round-Bottom and Florence Flasks Blown from Glass Tube
by Bubbles
Glassworking
3
0
0
0
0
0
CC0 Public Domain
This blueprint is released under CC0. You are free to copy, modify, distribute, and use this work for any purpose, without asking permission.
Support the Maker by purchasing products through their Blueprint where they earn a Maker Commission set by Vendors, or create a new iteration of this Blueprint and include it as a connection in your own Blueprint to share revenue.