Ex Poste Analysis (Mel’s Wax) – Part III, The Resolution

I think I am more or less back on track, compewder-wise. I took some advice from RalphB and placed a sledge hammer next to the keyboard and spoke to the compewder in calm but undeniably threatening terms.  It has been behaving better ever since.  Actually, compewder guru Tim had a session with it. — DCW

As we left the (mis)-adventure with the batch of Mel’s Wax having identified and solved the problem, I was left with a large batch of the misbehaving product to deal with.  Of course my question was, “Can I recover this and make it useful?”

I first let the emulsions sit for a week or so then decanted off the excess solvent from the top of the jars with a pipette.  The result was a couple of paper cups filled with nearly pure solvent which I merely disposed of as it was of no use to me.  I was careful to not dip the pipette too far down into the liquid so as to leave the emulsion itself untouched.  This cautious approach left a small amount of excess solvent fraction stratum on top of the liquid.

I decided to remove this excess fraction using techniques familiar with anyone who has ever undertaken some liquid chromatography, I simply wicked off the surface excess by draping in a strip of paper towel on top.

The ultimate result of this approach was to arrive at the balanced formulation with the emulsion performing and behaving exactly a it as supposed to behave and perform.  Nevertheless this was not product I was going to sell given the log and winding road, so I now have couple dozen jars I will give away to friends and barn visitors.

Thanks to a recommendation from my friend Steve Voigt I will be trying a new source for the solvent and will re-calibrate the formulation for future batches.