So the kids are all doing ‘whip-its’ - that is, inhaling Nitrous Oxide for recreational purposes (decanting first into a balloon from small metal canisters intended to fit whipped cream dispensers)
They are made of steel, bright zinc plated, about 3 inches long. I could just take them for recycling, but I can’t help feeling there is something I could make out of them - there must be 200 of them in this box.
The zinc plating makes them problematic to weld (metal fume fever is a risk). What can I make from these?
With resin, or other materials, cast a flat bottom with a socket to accomodate the bottle, so you can stand them upright. Find a large ball bearing (25mm?) or small metal sphere. Congratulations, you now have most of a mini bowling alley!
If you have some sort of disposable base or box to contain them upright, could you solder or glue them together to make a base or pedestal to support warm or hot objects that you don’t want touching your floor or wooden workbench?
What are a cannister’s dimensions, its diameter and cylindrical length (not counting tapered ends)? An electric 'ukulele builder uses a .50 caliber M60 cartridge as the bridge on their instruments. (Now they make sure the slug is gone and no powder remains inside - that was after an early surprise. :eek:) A right-sized cannister would make a kewl bridge on a cigar-box bass or Hawai’ian guitar.
There’s just something about these things that feels too finely engineered for them to be thrown away, and yet, everything I can think of to do with them would only use one or two
Many recyclers will not take the NOS cartridges to recycle, because they have to be crushed to be recycled and if there is a non-empty cartridge in the bunch, the crushing will create an explosion. So they typically push the cartridges to the landfill.]
I’m gonna chew on this one. I love MacGyver-ing things to solve a problem with the materials at hand … this is the reverse, a potential solution that is simply in need of a problem to address!
Let’s see. Packed tightly, there would be some insulating properties. Combined with the shiny surface, which reflects sunlight … they be used as a surface lining or cladding, to keep some (admittedly quite small) enclosed area cooler.
They’re opened via a small hole poked into one end … uh, so I heard. You could use them to store small amounts of liquid - injected via syringe would be simplest, but you could submerge them in a vat and let it seep/bubble in - and cap off the hole with silicon caulk, paraffin or other wax, or a really tiny plug.
When I was a stupid pyro teenager, me and my stupid pyro teenaged friends would fill spent CO2 cartridges (probably very similar to the nitrous oxide carts) with blackpowder and glue cannon wick into the bottom to seal. It was rare to find even a fragment after blowing one up.
I will confess to doing something quite similar - different load inside them - indeed, we used chemistry that would definitely attract attention on the basis of anti-terrorism laws nowadays)
Needless to say, I don’t want to try to repeat my mis-spent youth with these.
I suppose if I cut them in half (with some consistency and precision) they could be packed into some sort of frame - blunt end upwards, and used as a trivet in that way
I have a related problem: I have a few dozen FILLED NO2 containers, and I have no idea what to do with them, safely.
I ordered a whipped cream charger along with a lifetime supply of NO2, but it was very messy and the trigger very fussy, so I returned it. Amazon wouldn’t allow me to ship the canisters back to them, even though they refunded the charge.
So I’m stuck with these filled canisters. Legal and sane advice appreciated.
Offer them to your local bakery? If they don’t want them, you can always put them in a vise and use a nail and hammer to puncture the seal, thus reducing the problem to the same as Mangetouts. (The greenhouse gas impact will be the same in both cases).
