AIM                  Use of Acetone                        May 2008

I am surprised that it is still possible to buy acetone from a local pharmacy.  The way that Health and Safety has gone in recent years, I would have expected it to be only available with a letter from The Queen.  By the way, the spelling of the word suggest it should be pronounced as "ace tone", but being familiar with the stuff, I can assert that is is pronounced as "assetone".  I first met the stuff during the war when I worked at a small radio shop in Bexhill.  They used the stuff to make a glue for labels to stick on the side of radio accumulators.  If you get some sheet celluloid (not common these days) and cut it into shreds and put the pieces into a bottle of acetone, the spirit dissolves the celluloid and makes an excellent glue.  The acetone is highly flammable and evaporates rapidly, so it needs a good screw top on a glass bottle.  I strongly recommend that the bottle that one gets the spirit in from the chemist is the one that you keep it in.

I was told by my first wife (long may she rest in peace) that acetone was used as a test liquid for urine.  I don't know the details and I expect that a modern test would use a quite different method.  The advances in technology since the war have largely been due to clever chemical techniques.  For example. motor engines will run for several hundreds of thousands of miles due to modern oils.  In my day, a car engine was clapped out at thirty thousand miles, even using the best oil then available. 

But back to acetone.  You can buy it in tiny bottles for about a fiver.  It is sold to remove nail varnish.  But I bought half a litre for the same price from my local Co-op pharmacy.  Quite understandably, they didn't keep the stuff in stock, but they got this 500ml bottle from their supplier.  I use it for all sorts of odd jobs like:

a    Removing spirit marker pen marks (things like white spirit just ignore the marks)
b    Thinning out things that one is told "do not thin".  Things like PVC cement that is used to glue PVC
      piping to an elbow or tee piece.

     I don't think it is particularly dangerous on the skin, but I suggest not trying it out as if you do
     not have skin like mine, you might be allergic to the stuff.  Remember allergies can cause anaphylactic
     shock.  And that can be lethal within minutes.

  I think that if you tried sniffing the stuff,
      you'd deserve all you got:  "a fool and his lungs are soon parted".  I would think that it should be
      treated very cautiously as not only is it a highly volatile spirit, it is highly flammable too.