Hi Doug! > Hanna's unofficial recommendation -- if they'll talk to you at all > -- is take the TDS-1 reading and divide by a factor of 4". And then > proceed to wave a headless plucked chicken over it!!
Welllll, what do you expect, Doug???! First off, Hanna Co. is quite impenetrable at times. I've only managed to have a good conversation with someone there once I found the right person. But you ought to understand they're a *scientific* instrumentation company used to dealing with folks working at universities and big companies and such. Now, in comes this rabble, waving plucked chickens all around, asking them if their cheapest product will measure ppm of something called Colloidal Silver, said material being made by a multitude of uncontrolled protocols by a bunch of grandmothers and retired engineers over their kitchen tables! <grin> Mostly, they're just shaking their heads and wishing we'd go away. I doubt that factor of four they gave you will get you very far... > Now what have you got? You have CS of maybe 4ppm and a TDS-1 reading > of maybe 14/16. I believe you are reading the amount of silver fluff > or treeing that actually dissolves into the water/CS solution. If > one brews for 4 hours, one has a TDS-1 reading of say 36 and who > knows what PPM!! Maybe 8/9 ppm. The brew has become much greyer i.e. > more fluff has dissolved into the solution. I'm pretty careful to remove most of the fluff along the way. Every once in a while I gently draw the electrodes out of the water and wipe them off, stir things a little, then take a "tds" reading. I do this until I reach a "tds" reading of about 10. I figure, not having calibrated *this* protocol by other methods, yet, that I'm getting a real reading within a factor of two either way. But what I *am* getting, is a similar product to what I made the last time. Read that again, folks! That's *ALL* that I'm getting, and I'm happy to have it! > Remember the $15 TDS-1 is designed to measure dissolved salts and > the like in water. That's all they claim it will do. And that's what > it's doing -- it measures the minute particles of silver fluff in > your solution and this fluff is not a colloid of silver -- please > correct me if I'm way off the mark!! It basically measures the ability of the sample to conduct electricity. Whether it's a true colloidal particle with a net charge on it, an individual ionized atom, or contamination from the distilled water, the TDS meter will dutifully report on their presence. What any of that means in relation to true ppm of silver in the sol is another thing entirely, and beyond the scope of any of us to quantify except in the case of one configuration of apparatus and one production recipe. You'll note that Bob mentions his tidy little 1 cm square conductivity probe? The TDS does the exact same thing, with the additional feature of temperature compensation over a fairly broad range. In fact, if you buy the calibration standards for Hanna's PWT (Pure Water Tester), you can use them to calibrate your TDS as a very decent conductivity probe reading out, not in some fabled "ppm", but rather the perfectly legitimate unit of conductivity, the microsiemens (uS). > ...One then adds some previously collected fluff/treeing, stirs and > dissolves liberally and Voila! -- the reading climbs and the more > you add, the more the reading increases! Heck! You could make a serviceable conductive *paint* with that stuff, if you stir it into a suitable oil base. Add more potential charge carriers to the water and you'll have more of 'em bumping into the probe pins. Up goes the reading. > I know, it's sort of reassuring -- dunking the TDS-1 in and taking a > reading -- and pretending -- as I did for almost 12 months that I > was taking a meaningful scientific reading. It just depends on *what* meaningful scientific reading you think you're making. <grin> As a simple, conductivity based reading of concentration versus past batches done by the same protocol, it's perfectly legitimate. But, you're right! It does not directly measure ppm, and anybody who thinks it does is fooling themselves. In all the FAQ's for the silver list, the controversy over the TDS-1 will deserve a chapter unto itself! <shakes head> [munch] > BeSilvered Streaker, enSlaved unscientific Tinkerer or is that > Thinkerer? -- > that's the trouble when silver get's into the pores of your skin and > now lingers and clogs the brain, causing me to go on Silavating! >From one happy punnster to another: "GROAAANNNN!!!!" > PS: Should I survive, I hope to do it all again with gold. AgHHH!! Shouldn't that be "AuGHHHHHH"? <GRINNN> Be well, Mike D. [Mike Devour, Citizen, Patriot, Libertarian] [[email protected] ] [Speaking only for myself... ] -- The silver-list is a moderated forum for discussion of colloidal silver. To join or quit silver-list or silver-digest send an e-mail message to: [email protected] -or- [email protected] with the word subscribe or unsubscribe in the SUBJECT line. To post, address your message to: [email protected] List maintainer: Mike Devour <[email protected]>
