Two lime path

I start to work with lime in this moment.



What you think about the two possible paths (both from art of dist.):
- the one that will use the solvent distilled off 7 times from the mass mixed with lime… raising the power of the liquid

ANOTHER DISSOLVING MENSTRUUM
"Take of the best rectified spirit of wine with which imbibe the strongest unslaked lime until they be made into a paste. Then put them into a glass gourd and distill off the spirit in ashes. This spirit pour on more fresh lime, and do as before. Do this three or four times and you will have a very subtle spirit able to dissolve most things and to extract the virtue out of them".

- the one that raises the power of the lime using the feces and the salt of tartar (method that I found with some more explanations in “Theatro Farmaceutico” d’Antonio De Sgobbis - Venezia 1682 – pag 457)

SPIRIT OF UNSLAKED LIME IS MADE THUS
"Take of unslaked lime as much as you please. Reduce it into a subtle powder. Imbibe it with spirit of wine most highly rectified (which must be pure from all its phlegm, or else you labor in vain) as much as it can imbibe. Draw off the spirit of wine with a gentle heat, cohobate it eight or ten times, so will the fiery virtue of the lime be fortified. Take of this levigated lime ten ounces, pure salt of tartar one ounce, the feces of tartar after the salt is extracted eleven ounces. Mix these well together and put them into a glass retort coated. See that two parts of three be empty, distill them into two receivers, the phlegm into one, the spirit into the other which must have a little of rectified spirit of wine in it to receive the spirit.
If you will separate the spirit of wine, then put fire to it, and the spirit of wine will burn away, and the spirit of the lime stay behind which is a kind of a fixed spirit.
This is a very secret for the consuming of the stone in the bladder and the curing of the gout".

Thank you

Zosimo

Well, I started remembering that, somewhere, I read a complete path for the alkahest with lime, and that all the lime paths start with a distillation.
Now I found Paracelso's text that is a synteshis of the two I send in the last post. It's the one in Hartmanns's book: a distillation of the unslaked lime with the strongest alccol of wine, reunion and distillation again fo ten times.
And then the use of the potash to complete the path etc....
Did you, Sisters and Brothers, work with unslaked lime using this path or others?

Zosimo

I keep the temp on 104-125° C and I put again the alcool distilled on the mass of unslaked lime.
During the beginning of the third distillation a terrible stench (sweet-plastic/resinous) invaded my house.
At this moment the stinky stuff is well sealed in a flask.
First of all my mistake was to believe that the explanation from the Hartmann's book was enough.
As a matter of fact is very easy to find all the words and the arguments in the RAMS collection: but I found this new possibility only yesterday.
I found in Basil Valentine that the temp. was too high, and this probably has been the mistake.
There are more processes that are usefull to study.

I'll start again.
In the mean time I study this matter and I let you know.

Zosimo

Quote :

I keep the temp on 104-125° C scratch and I put again the alcool distilled on the mass of unslaked lime.
During the beginning of the third distillation a terrible stench (sweet-plastic/resinous) invaded my house.
At this moment the stinky stuff is well sealed in a flask.
First of all my mistake was to believe that the explanation from the Hartmann's book was enough.
As a matter of fact is very easy to find all the words and the arguments in the RAMS collection: but I found this new possibility only yesterday.
I found in Basil Valentine that the temp. was too high, and this probably has been the mistake.

I have worked a similar recipe by cohobating alcohol on potassium carbonate (not lime) for 7 times and then I have distilled off the "spirit" by raising the fire very high (above 200° C). A white smoke appeared which smelled sweet but awful. I think you raised the fire a lot in your experiment. Raise the fire only at the final distillation, not inbetween because then the "spirit" leaves. Usually, if the spirit leaves you can find a yellow thin coating or droplets in your condenser.
I have obtained a small amount of yellow oil out of this path but of its usefuleness I don't know (very little quantity to run tests).

We've already gone over this path way back in January under the thread "Spirit of Tartar". Am I the only one who remembers?
Click here for the link
and scroll down to my name, and you will see the link to Paracelsus' method.

I found in other texts (B. Valentine in RAMS and Lefevre in my collection) that the temp should be BM and so 40-50°C.
No, I hadn't any yellow product, only a stinky transparent liquid distilled out like a common alcool.
I let the void receiver on the lawn near my house, and I was at fourty mt. from there when I smell that stink, so I smell the fingers... but was the receiver over there!
Washing the glsses, of course, some very little quantity of this substance went in the bathroom pipes: for some hours the stench retourned up until I put some sodium carbonate in the toilet.
You think that distilling at 40-50°C, in the Paracelsus way, in an outa place can be enough?
I mean, this stench comes anyway from this process?

Zosimo

Quote :

You think that distilling at 40-50°C, in the Paracelsus way, in an outa place can be enough?
I mean, this stench comes anyway from this process?

I think if you use BM bath the "stink" should not appear. In my case an electric stove was not able to give enough temperature for the "spirit" to distill off, I had to use propane flame. So if you get this stink at BM temp, then sth different is going on. Anyway, you could check also the thread given by Nick. There, I document my relevant experiments with more detail. Have in mind that I haven't used lime (as the Paracelsus Alkahest require).

Thank you Nick and The Fool.
There in the tartar topic are a quantity of hints that I considered during these sunny days.
If I understand well the calx-viva path is troublemaking or more difficult than the tartaric one. But (like in the Paracelsus’s alkahest path that I start) we can sum the two paths together with some more tactics or tricks?

Please, The Fool, explain to me. Still I don’t understand what comes out of distilling potash: you thought that it was, as if distilling “oil of tartar” would be the same as distilling tartar? I understood well your idea? Or did you find other sources?

When I saw the words “Distill off the spirit in ashes” (from J.French’s book) it convinced me to try to heat a little more than BM the matter, but as I was in a hurry I heated it in a sandbath temp.. And here’s to you the stench! I hope it will never manifests in such a horrible way again.

Considering that (see my posts of this topic) with one method (A) you empower the alcohol nurturing it several times with new lime…
And with the other (B) you empower the lime giving it to eat the▲of alcohol, that at the same time opens the matter of the lime and… and after that you add the tartar… and at the end you have the same plate of fix spirit like P. says…
I presume…

The Paracelsus alkahest (C) works, if I understand well, only with the opening of the matter and then puts together the two paths: lime and tartar or, better to say, lime and carbonate of potash. Aha!

I know that dew & dry paths are the core.
Nevertheless I will work with lime too because of that old smiling guy that, for no reason, gave me that unslaked lime: notice that in northern Italy it’s a quite rare matter, if you go to an hardware market they’ll try to sell you a very “slaked” lime because they even forgot what “calceviva” is!
They use it only for chemicals or factory-productions.
I remember that, when I was a child, everybody could easily buy it and that, my father sadly explained me, they need a lot of calceviva during the II world war.

Immediately after the old man gave me the unslaked lime freshly made in his factory, I met a wonderful, huge, white airone near the country road: I went near to the bird, he didn’t move and watched me calmly.
And in these days I’m writing you under the sight of a swallow who’s sitting less than two meters from me.
I stay, I go, I scratch, I sing: it stays.
May be these things I should post in the spiritual-supernatural place of the forum...
Zosimo

It is like when the swallow it announces the spring: it does not sing

Now I'll give up for some months to the lime path.
Finally it rains, so waterworks can start.
Sea water is putrfying, determined dew too for Ruesenstein-Gualdi path.
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In the pic you can see a A.Leyden exp. the old way with no fixed salt etc.
and I'm distilling away the 1/4 part as wrote in the recipe I found
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Zosimo