Is this stuff called something else?? I can't seem to find it in the stores and don't know whcih section to look in. Paints, medical supplies?!? I did find something called camp fuel(methyl hydrate). Is this it? I found one guy at a store that knew what I was talking about but he checked and the store didn't have any. Appreciate any help on this. []

Fastsky,

I bought my alcohol at Lowes, and it was located in the paint area, specifically near lacquers. It is considered to be a solvent, so look for MEK, or acetone, and you should be able to find it.

Lew B

I buy mine in the paint department of Walmart.

Go to the local paint store or hardware store. Most places such as WalMart also handle it. The big advantage is that it does not have much water in it. Most alchohol you get in the droug store may be as much as 50% water, a big no no for many of our applications.

Thankx for the quick responses guys! Allready tried Wallmart, not there so will check out the paint stores. [8D]

In the paint department it is called "Denatured Alcohol Solvent."

You can now buy 99% isopropyl alcohol at the drugstore. It is much cheaper and works great for clean up.

I bought mine at Wally World and got carded at the register. I guess people sniff it or something.

methyl hydrate is another name for methanol

You can purchase it in any paint store.

It will thin epoxy if that is what you need it for.

Downunder it's called METHYLATED SPIRIT dont know weather it's sold under the same name over there.

Cheers,

Remember Always look after the ORGANIC part of the model.

Denatured alcohol is ethanol (drinking alcohol) to which relatively small amounts of things like benzene, toluene, methanol (prime ingredient in glow fuel) has been added to make it undrinkable and darned difficult to distill to anything close to safe to drink. As the ghost said, denatured alcohol is also called methylated spirits ("Spirit alcohol mixed with methanol").

Denaturing the alcohol means it is taxed differently... ie little or no "sin" tax.

Isopropanol is a different animal altogether.

All three types can be had with varying amounts of water. As others have suggested, try a drug store(look for rubbing alcohol compound...but check the label to make sure it's got ethanol and not isopropanol as both types are often sold as rubbing alcohol... a non-specific term) or a paint store and get the one with the highest percentage of alcohol ...or the lowest percentage of water!

Methanol=methyl hydrate="wood" alcohol=gas line antifreeze=methyl alcohol

Ethanol="grain" alcohol="spirits"=ethyl alcohol

In terms of toxicity, methanol is the worst, isopropanol is somewhere in the middle and ethanol is the least toxic of the three.

If you are really into chemistry, methanol is CH3OH, ethanol is CH3CH2OH and isopropanol is 3 carbons long... don't remember whether the OH is on the end or the middle and I've really tried to forget organic chemical nomenclature!(Sorry IUPAC members )

Depending on what you're using it for, one can often (but not always) be substituted for another. In general, if I remember correctly, the shorter the carbon chain the better the solvent...

Hope this helps!

EDIT: Oh yeah, one of the reason(s) you may have gotten carded for or may have to ask the pharmacist at the drug store for 99% isopropanol is that solvents such as these can find their way into illegal drug labs and some jurisdictions are attempting to make them more difficult to obtain.

Thankx for the above comments. According to my local paint stores that I talked to, the denatured alcohol just doesn't seem to be available any more and the next closest is methyl hydrate. Its listed as 99.9% pure alcohol. It also says you can use it for camp stove fuel and is readily available. I picked up a 1 liter bottle an tried it. It works great for thinning epoxy and also cleaned up some spilled Ca that I had spilled on the counter top.

IT IS SOMETIMES CALLED SCHELLAC THINNER.