One of the great things about ebay and international shipping platforms is that you can get really odd stuff at fairly good prices; it just shows up in your box at the post office.
You would be correct to think that the postmaster at Morrisdale PO thinks I am kind of odd. I made a point once of opening up one of my boxes that contained some wrought iron stock, and a chunk of railroad track, so they could see that I’m not kidding. I am not actually shipping plutonium or fentanyl; it’s just stuff like steel, bismuth, and carbide powder. The nasty reagents all come via FEDEX ground.
So, that’s what 5lb of bismuth (cost: $13) look like, direct from China. I believe the melting temperature is around 500F, which is very low. Next step is to make a mold for wax, using a pencil in silicone, then make a plaster mold and melt the wax out. I could probably do a sand mold, but I want the casting to be as clean as possible so I don’t have to sand it, because I don’t want to have to worry about what bismuth dust is like to deal with.
I do imagine that the FBI has occasionally opened my mail. Imagine them sifting through bags of silicon carbide only to discover that hidden inside the silicon carbide is: more silicon carbide.
Back when I was doing wet plate photography, I needed concentrated nitric acid for my collodion (collodion is nitrocellulose dissolved in ether and alcohol!) and I spent a month and a half getting the necessary clearances from Fisher Scientific to purchase such things. Amazingly, in Pennsylvania, it’s harder to get process ethanol than it is to get concentrated nitric acid, because of Pennsylvania’s absurd puritan alcohol laws (which have been filtered through the legislative aftermath of The Whiskey Rebellion, which happened out here). The state authority denied my request for 2L/year of process ethanol, so I had to buy a case of Everclear when I was down in Maryland a few months later. Meanwhile, I ordered 3L of concentrated nitric acid and it never showed up. I finally called Fisher Scientific, and they were fairly unhappy and said they would look into it. The next day, FEDEX dropped off 3L of concentrated nitric acid – Fisher had decided to ship me more, so I would have it. And the next week, FEDEX dropped off another 3L of concentrated nitric acid. The FEDEX driver said “Sorry about the upset. Your box had intimidating warning labels so we left it on the loading dock and forgot about it for a week.”
Ohhhkay, I did some reading on Bismuth. That doesn’t sound like anything I want to have floating around in powdered form. I usually wear gloves when I work with mystery metals. Ugh. I may not want to smelt and cast and polish that stuff.
Yeah, some of the stuff you do, I think you might want to invest in a proper fume hood, not just PPE.
Huh. That chunk looks like it was hammered out of an ancient temple door, where the *WHOLE TEMPLE WAS MADE OUT OF PURE BISMUTH*.
Who would do such a thing?
(Either thing…)
Whether a drawing tool is smooth or not makes little difference for practical purposes—either way it is possible to draw with it.
I didn’t carefully research bismuth toxicity. I mean, I looked at it, saw phrases like “non-radioactive for practical purposes” and “not as toxic as other heavy metals,” and assumed that could be good enough. Now I’m starting to suspect that I probably didn’t think this through. I know there are artists who use lead for metalpoint drawings. A book on metalpoint art recommended bismuth as a possibility. So I just bought some pieces of bismuth on eBay and concluded that it looks pretty on a metalpoint ground—it’s dark and shiny. Yet the fact that I know other artists who use toxic art materials doesn’t mean that I should do that as well. Maybe using bismuth was a stupid idea after all—the drawing process produces a small amount of metal dust and I make art in the same room where I sleep and eat.
If you concluded that this stuff is too toxic to work with, I guess I should treat that as a clue that I’d better reconsider the whole idea.
2) @ xohjoh2n: I was thinking it looked like it had been hacked off a tomb marker or the Chinese equivalent.
I remember buying a pint bottle of collodion when I was in high school. No idea what I needed it for, but I sure remember the smell of the ether. I would not be surprised to discover that I still have it, or rather a bottle internally coated with nitrocellulose.
Do you make your own? Because…? Both flexible and non-flexible seem to be readily commercially available. Is it cheaper to make your own in the quantities you need?
@Andreas Avester: well, it sounds better than cadmium…
Collodion uses a teeny bit of cadmium bromide to sensitize it. That shit is scary. Not plutonium scary, though. I guess I’ll know if I got any uranium dust in my lungs when I was in Chernobyl…
Youtube is full of people melting bismuth on their kitchen stoves.
Back in the 70s we used to melt car wheel weights and fishing weights. No wonder IQ scores are going up.
Artist paint containing cadmium is safe to use. (I own and use it.) The pigment powder is inside the paint. Therefore no dust is generated. As long as I don’t lick my paintbrushes (I don’t do that) and abstain from sanding surfaces painted with cadmium-containing paint, I’m safe.
When it comes to toxic art materials, my attitude is that I should try to be reasonable. “Don’t ever use in any way anything even remotely toxic” seems like a silly attitude to me. (Yes, I know plenty of artists who choose this option, they also tend to immensely exaggerate any potential risks.) On the other hand, I don’t want to be careless and do something harmful for my health either.
I don’t use lead for metalpoint, I don’t use any lead-containing paints. No lead-containing art materials for me. Period.
I only use cadmium-based paints, I don’t use cadmium pigment powders. When a pigment is inside the paint, I cannot possibly inhale it. I don’t eat my paints either, so I’m safe.
As for cobalt, I use both cobalt-containing paints and also pigment powders. I try to be careful with them. Blue is my favorite color, and some of the cobalt blue pigments are amazingly pretty shades of blue.
I’m not certain about whether my attempt to balance my own safety versus having access to a wide range of artists’ materials is reasonable. I try not to be either too paranoid or too careless.
Anyway, if you think that bismuth sounds too toxic, I’ll take that as a clue that I shouldn’t use it after all. In a metalpoint drawing bismuth is very dark and shiny, I liked the look of it, but it’s definitely not vastly superior to perfectly safe alternatives like aluminum or silver. It looks pretty similar to aluminum, but is more shiny and a little bit darker on some grounds. Thus I don’t really need to use bismuth. Instead it was just that it seemed nice and I thought “why not use it.”
[anectote, sorta OT]
Back when I was a lad (mid 70s), I was assigned as a, um, companion to a recent immigrant from Uruguay, since I was the only Spanish speaker in the school and we were of an age. Became friends. His father was an MD.
Visiting one day (invited), the activity led (heh) by this doctor was creating sinkers (fishing weights), the modus was using a pot over an open flame in the backyard, melting old lead batteries and pouring the molten lead into molds. No PPE, obs.
(Different sensibilites)
—
Also, his Spanish was archaic (e.g. ‘vos’ instead of ‘tu’)
Reading this post, I had two thoughts: 1) what on earth does one use bismuth for? and 2) what the hell even is bismuth?
I think that if I can’t immediately call to mind what an element is like, that’s probably a sign it’s unhealthy.
Ketil Tveiten @#9
This https://andreasavester.com/metalpoint-drawings/
Here https://andreasavester.com/category/metalpoint-art/ I wrote more about how exactly I make these drawings.
Different metals look differently in metalpoint artworks. I had seen other artists who use this technique recommending bismuth, so I ordered a piece of in on eBay, and I liked how it looks in a metalpoint drawing. Hence I asked Marcus about whether he could make a bismuth stylus for me.
Andreas Avester, I’m pretty sure cadmium is a whole lot more toxic than lead. (Both can be used safely if you know what you’re doing.)
Ketil Tveiten, bismuth is a non-toxic replacement for lead when used for its high density, for example in fish lures or “lead” shot. It’s safe enough that a bismuth compound is used as an antacid in the US (Pepto-Bismol).
Before using molten bismuth, watch YouTube videos of it crystallizing almost instantly. You need to be ready for it to solidify fast.
While technically toxic, recall that the dose makes the poison. So eating bismuth stomach tablets is not much of a risk. Don’t eat it while hot, of course.
Well, the people at the customs office think the same of me and it’s entirely your fault.
Yeah, but we make their lives interesting, so that should make up for it.
cvoinescu @#11
I have read material safety data sheets for both lead and cadmium pigments, and lead pigments looked much worse.
Anyway, artists’ paints don’t use lead or cadmium in their pure forms.
Cadmium pigments are cadmium zinc sulphide, and cadmium sulfoselenide.
Lead pigments are lead(II,IV) oxide for red lead aka minium, lead(II) carbonate for lead white pigment aka flake white, and lead(II) chromate for “chrome yellow” paint.
Pretty much every artist paint manufacturer makes paint with cadmium pigments. I can just enter a store and buy some, and nobody will ask me any questions. Obtaining paint containing lead is an entirely different matter, at least in the EU I couldn’t get any without first filling out a mountain of paperwork. Moreover, only a tiny number of specialized art supply stores even sell lead paint.
Cadmium is very, very toxic. But cadmium in paint – in yellows and reds – is in the form of a salt (Cadmium Sulfide) which is significantly less toxic because it is insoluble in water. It should not be ingested or breathed in, but it is quite safe in oil paint and regularly sold in art supplies.
That is the case with multiple heavy metals. For example, mercury is highly toxic as metal, highly toxic in HgCl2, but significantly less-toxic in Hg2Cl2 for the same reason – the first is highly soluble and the second is nearly insoluble in water.
Andreas Avester, I’m pretty sure the difference in availability comes from the fact that there are practical replacements for most uses of lead pigments, so they were easy to ban. Minium is not spectacular as a color and there are safer and more effective anti-rust compounds, and titanium dioxide is way whiter and more stable than white lead (although doesn’t stick to things as well as lead(II) carbonate, so some artists miss the latter), but cadmium red is one of the few truly colorfast red pigments (when protected from air), so it’s still used widely in things like warning signs and traffic signs.
And yes, Charly is right, it’s the toxicity of the compound that matters, so cadmium pigments may well be safer than lead oxides and carbonates.
When I was a kid, we used to mix red lead oxide and aluminium powder, add a couple of rocks (flint, ideally), wrap the powder in newspaper, secure with electrical tape, and throw the package at a wall. Nice bang, and it left interesting streaks of red, white and black on the wall radiating from the explosion. You could just buy the minium to make your own rust-proofing oil paint ground, and aluminium powder is also used in paint (sold as “aluminium bronze”). Or people just stole them from whatever factory they worked in — a standard way to obtain items not available for sale in communist Eastern Europe. Also, adult supervision? Pwah.
Re: lead(II) chromate, woo, lead and hexavalent chromium! But, as Charly points out, insoluble, so no biggie as long as you don’t breathe it in as powder.
One thing that bismuth is excellent for is high fidelity white metal casting.
That’s because bismuth expands as it cools whereas all the other castable metals that I’m aware of shrink as they cool.
Therefore adding ~30% bismuth to your tin/antimony/lead casting alloy will give crisp details from gravity moulding whereas without bismuth in the alloy you would need a centrifugal (spin-cast) mould.
See: https://shop.princeaugust.ie/pa2048-3-bars-of-model-metal/
I’m also curious as to what that chunk of bismuth was before it got mailed to you.
That looks like the Japanese kanji for “water”, and since the kanji were descended from Chinese writing, I assume the meaning is the same?
I remember as a kid, collecting discarded wheel balancing weights off the side of the road, and melting them with a propane torch to make ammunition for a slingshot…
lochaber@#18:
I’m also curious as to what that chunk of bismuth was before it got mailed to you.
It’s as xojoh2n said at #2: it’s a chunk of the door-frame from the Temple of Bismuth. Legend has it that if you run fast enough, with a hammer, you can whack pieces off and flee back down the narrow stone path down the mountain, before the guardians awake.
But the youngest guardians know how to use the internet…..
永
eternity
in both Chinese and Japanese
cvoinescu @#16
Here https://www.kremer-pigmente.com/media/pdf/21130_SDS.pdf is a material safety data sheet for red cadmium pigment. Here https://www.kremer-pigmente.com/media/pdf/46000_SDS.pdf is the MSDS for white lead pigment.
One of those appears a lot worse than the other. Which was my point.
But yes, regulations also make some difference. EU is trying to get rid of lead everywhere, hence it’s subject to extra regulation.
Red and yellow lead pigments were easy to replace, because they don’t really have any unique desirable properties.
White lead is a different matter. “Whiter is better” is a very simplistic and incorrect way how to judge how good some white pigment is. That’s not how painting works. Replacements for white lead are either titanium dioxide or zinc oxide. Titanium dioxide is bright white and very opaque. Zinc oxide is more transparent. If you want to paint clouds, “opaque” will be a desirable property for your white paint. If you want to paint human skin, then an opaque white paint for mixing skin colors is problematic. For acrylic painting, zinc white is a good enough replacement for lead white.
Oil paints are a different matter. Zinc white pigment causes delamination in oil paint. Hence you cannot use it. But titanium dioxide is very opaque. Many portrait painters who work with oil paint insists that titanium dioxide is ill suited for portrait paintings and prefer to stick to lead white, which isn’t as opaque as titanium dioxide.
I’m assuming that you meant light fastness with “cororfast.” (“Colorfast” is a term that is used in the dyeing of textile materials that characterizes a material’s color’s resistance. Light fastness, wash fastness, and rub fastness are the main forms of color fastness. Among those, only light fastness is applicable to artists’ paint pigments.)
Anyway, light fastness isn’t the main reason why artists still use cadmium red and yellow pigments.
Here https://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/waterr.html is a list of red pigments available for artists, their light fastness is also mentioned. Here https://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/watery.html is a similar list for yellow pigments.
Personally, I use pyrrole red and benzimidazolone yellow, both of which are cadmium-free light fast pigments. If you only cared about light fastness, these two could be excellent replacements for cadmium pigments. Nickel azomethine yellow, isoindolinone yellow, and perylene maroon are also really nice pigments that I like.
The reason why I still use cadmium pigments is their opacity. All alternatives for cadmium pigments are much more transparent. In some situations, for example glazing, I like a more transparent pigment. Transparency is often desirable also in watercolor technique. In other situations, especially when painting with acrylics, I do want my paint to be opaque.
chigau @21
thanks for the correction
Andreas Avester, thank you for taking the time to write that. It’s very interesting.
The difference between the two MSDSs is stark — like “meh” and “whoa”. I did not know those cadmium salts were that insoluble. Just for fun, check this one out: https://www.espimetals.com/index.php/945-msds/cadmium-powder/964-cadmium-powder — first time I see “H330 Fatal if inhaled” in an MSDS. That’s what I was thinking of when you said cadmium. (For comparison, this one: https://www.espimetals.com/index.php/msds/936-lead-powder is relatively tame.)
cvoinescu@#24:
“H330 Fatal if inhaled”
They should just put “NOPE” in big red letters. That sounds like something from Things I won’t Work With only a lot tamer.
After reading a bit more about bismuth and bismuth alloys, it doesn’t sound like it’s really that bad, so long as I avoid the fumes, which I am pretty sure I can do since it’s not going to take a lot of heat (I won’t be putting it in my forge, I’ll just play a propane torch on it with a breath mask and the wind at my back,) I’m thinking I may add a small amount of silver to it to strengthen it.
Marcus @#25
Yes, I read the MSDS for bismuth, and it didn’t seem particularly bad. A friend of mine who is a chemist also confirmed that it’s safe for my intended use.
Alloying bismuth with something that would make it less brittle sounds good. My own piece of bismuth snapped in half after I accidentally dropped it and it fell on the floor.
I only wonder about whether silver could influence how bismuth tarnishes. Silver itself tarnishes to a brown hue in a metalpoint drawing. Most metalpoint artists like the look of tarnished silver, but I actually prefer metals that stay grey.
Yes, Bismuth is the friendly heavy metal. Look at these beautiful crystal structures. Makes me want to order some.
I only paint cheap acryl (every now and then) and so never thought about the interaction of dyes with the stabilizers and oils. This sounds very interesting … now I really want to read more about the changes in paints and dyes over time (from a chemists point of view). Thank you for opening this up to us Andreas! :)
@ Marcus: You might want to see if someone has written about alloying these two. I would not put it past such an alloy to harden … .
I imagine the new badger-harmonized labeling system: H1: NOPE! H2: YOU DIE! H3: BREATHABLE CANCER! H4: DEATH IN A BOTTLE! … . With labels in friendly/eye-scorching/bright/garish colours!
And conc. nitric acid via mail but you can’t make your own alcohol? That’s crazy. I’ve seen the marks it leaves on people … .
“Sorry about the upset. Your box had intimidating warning labels so we left it on the loading dock and forgot about it for a week.”
My first thought: should one not deliver that thing first, so the box with all the scary labels does not sit in the dock any more?
Tangent: Lead and Cadmium have stable/unsoluable forms, but there is always the possibility that they get transformed to bio-available molecules. Getting rid of them in general use is a good think in my opinion. As with regulations, I have a ton of paperwork because our lab is getting rid of some old Thalium and Lead compounds we have in storage from old PHD Students. Every grain needs to be documented and accounted for. At least all the skulls grin to cheer me up. (I hope no one ever has to make any of this stuff).
avalus @#27
Acrylic paints contain pigments not dyes.
By the way, if you want to save money on paint, the best option is to buy pigments and binder separately and make your own paint. For example, 1kg of titanium white pigment costs about €12 (and 100 grams will be sold for about €4). A 1 liter bottle of an acrylic binder can be purchased for as low as €10. Yet a 60 ml tube of titanium white acrylic paint will be about €6 if you go with some well-known brand. When the ingredients for artists’ paints are purchased separately, they are pretty cheap. Ready-made paints are so expensive because of the marketing. Generic ingredients are much cheaper. By the way, my own observation about cheap ready-made paint is that it often is inferior to the expensive stuff, because it contains less pigment and more unnecessary fillers. If I make my own paint, I can get quality on par with the most expensive paints and price that’s even cheaper than the student grade paints. Of course, making your own paint is extra work. Watercolor and acrylic paints are easy to make. Oil paint is where things get more complicated. And if you thought that acrylic paint can be expensive, watercolors are the real rip-off. A 5 ml tube containing only a few grams of paint will be sold for over €5. And keep in mind that pigments are the same as in any other paint, and the binder, gum arabic, is really cheap—1kg of gum arabic powder costs only €16.
Yep, this is super interesting.
Pigments themselves are fascinating. They don’t just differ in color. They can be lightfast or fugitive, opaque or transparent, with high or low tinting strength, granulating or uniform. Even pigment particle size can influence their handling properties. For example, some artists’ pigments are produced by grinding rocks. Here https://www.kremer-pigmente.com/en/pigments/iwa-enogu-mineral-pigments/ you can buy pigments that are produced from the same mineral but differ in particle size. Having pigments with different particle sizes can be used to create interesting effects with watercolors or fluid acrylics, because smaller pigment particles spread around more on the paper.
When it comes to binders and how they interact with pigments, watercolors and acrylics are more straightforward, with fewer variables. Oil paints are where things get really fun. Different pigments behave differently when mixed with linseed oil. Drying time can be longer or shorter. The kind of film the paint forms differs. Some pigments work better with some oils than others. This is why manufacturers of oil paints also use poppy, walnut, and safflower oils for specific pigments. And, of course, some pigments are just incompatible with some binders.
In case anybody is interested, here https://andreasavester.com/silverpoint-art-beyond-silver-what-other-metals-artists-can-use-for-their-metalpoint-drawings/ I recently published an article about how different metals look like in a metalpoint drawing.