Bronze Disease Advice Needed Please!

Thanks for all the input guys and sorry for the lack of replies - Been busy for about a week.

I have read, re-read and re-re-read most of it and its still not sinking in! Hopefully if I try again in the morning I'll have more luck.

Wish I'd spent more time in Chemistry class listening to the teacher rather than trying to chat up the girl with the great rack. I still blame her for my lack of Chemistry knowledge.

Great link! I'm going to contact Dr.Hamilton...thanks for that.

Thanks for the wax offer. I might take you up on it someday, but right now I'm buried in chemistry projects between my book and a new protective coin conditioner I'm working on.

What kind of chemisty did you do before you retired? It's cool to have another scientist around here.

I can't offer any opinions or advice on bronze disease but just wanted to thank everyone for the discussion. This really is one of the most educational forums. And it's great to see that problems over differences of opinions can be resolved. Would that the world's politicians had the same capacity.

To sfchemist: I hope your wife makes a full recovery. By the way, on your "extensive work studying and analyzing Aflatoxins on tree nuts", just how did you get the tree-huggers to let you to conduct your experiments on them?

COOL! I'm an analytical chemist too. I'm the head (senior) chemist for my companies analytical lab. We run a lot of instruments: SEM-EDXRF, X-Ray fluorescence spec, FTIR with DATR, HPLC DAD + ESA ELSD, CIA, KF Analyzer, UV spec, Auto VISC, Ion Chromatograph and an AA.

We manufacture metalworking fluids so we do a LOT of testing and studying metal-fluid interactions. Thanks why I'm able to bring a lot to the numismatic side of things....I study metals and fluids every day.

Brad,
Do you happen to know a fellow numismatist, Chris Pilliod? I met him years ago and he is a very intelligent and friendly guy who specializes in metallurgy and is well versed in US mint operations. Haven't heard from him in a while and if he happens to see this posting...Hi Chris!
Your mention of XRF brought back fond memories of my work using this technique to determine bromide levels (from Methyl Bromide fumigation) in a variety of stored food products. I've spent a great deal of time using HPLC reverse phase chromatography but have had little experience with diode array....most of my work used traditional UV/Vis and Fluorescence detectors. We did a lot of EPA 531.1 and 632 analyses using a Hewlett Packard HPLC/MS, which proved to be a powerful tool in the identification of these various pesticides. Oh, the memories, I haven't been in a lab in some time but it was always a lot of fun.
Thanks for writing,
Wayne

Holy Cow!! You're kidding ! I still have their book "Introduction to Modern Liquid Chromatography." It used to be on my desk at work for quick and ready reference and I've kept it with me all these years. And you've met these guys, and took a course from them, that is just so cool. BTW: to show my age my book is the 2nd Edition published in 1979 and I have it in my hands "as we speak." It just took me a second to find it.
Wow, you are really bringing back a lot of memories...This is awesome, I love these guys and have used their book so much the binding is falling apart. The cover page of my book says Snyder is from Tarrytown, NY and Kirkland from Wilmington, DE. What school did they teach at?
Thanks, Wayne

Outstanding....I too took several post graduate courses but never one taught by such distinguished authors. Let's see, positive peaks before t=o, I sort of remember seeing these, small peaks about 1/2 to 1cm in height and just thought they had something to do with a detector disturbance at the point of injection with our automatic sampling system. A lot of my work was with carbamates using a post column derivitization setup where the analytes were hydrolyzed with NaOH, o-phthalaldehyde(OPA), and a real foul smelling substance whose name eludes me right now, but we were looking for ppb levels with fluorescence detection and always seemed to have a little baseline disturbance with our setup. Nothing serious but these peaks you are mentioning do sound somewhat familiar to me. Fortunately all of our work was confirmed by LC/MS and I was always proud of the quality of our reports. We would get quarterly test samples to maintain our certification and always performed at the highest levels. Lot of fun and at times I do miss it...also miss troubleshooting and repairing analytical instruments. Heck, I'd have those instruments completely torn apart, our lab director would walk in, take one look at it and just shake his head and walk out. But I always managed to put everything back together without too many 'extra' pieces laying around. We were a private lab and when a customer wanted something done, he wanted something done, and we didn't have the luxury of waiting for a repair technician to show up---we did most of the repair work ourselves. Sorry for rambling here, just enjoying reminiscing about some very interesting and enjoyable times.
Wayne