Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The things found in old houses

The wife and I are much enjoying our new digs. Early 1900s home, FAR better neighborhood than before, much more room...

But, as with all old homes it will develop problems from time to time.

This morning's was/is a plumbing leak that is coming from the tub when it's in operation. Not huge, but something that needs to get fixed. Of course, the source of the leak is a damned mystery, and the problem will most likely be solved by removing a section of ceiling beneath the tub, fixing the leak, and then patching with sheetrock (as opposed to the plaster-and-lathe that's currently there).

Anyway, whilst exploring the problem area this morning, I removed the trap door in the bathroom linen closet. Hmmm... what's this? Drain cleaner? YIKES...

Yeah, this stuff will clean your pipes:







Now, what to do with it?

Make a battery???? Check the Anarchists Cookbook to see its practical applications????

laughing...

Youa asked for it!!

ET is right on target!

That is some heavy duty stuff!

Your local household hazardous waste station should take it.

Love the skull and crossbones!

Keep it. Just the ticket for 2 legged pest control or making a batch of gun cotton.

Piss off a tree-hugger/democrap and make like you are dumping it in the storm drain in front of your house.

By far not the most "interesting" or potentially lethal stuff I've ever found in old houses.

My Dad and I cleaned out his parent's place after his worthless brother finally died. The garage was a cornucopia of stuff. Including a gallon glass pickle jar 3/4 full of strychnine.

Or, the one that I helped clean out in Vermont; an old barn and farmstead that had been bought and set for renovations. 2/3 case of OLD dynamite.

I know some meth. cooks who could probably chemically tone it down and use it to put a little zing in their meth.

Well, if the pipes are metal, and someone actually used that sulfuric acid base cleaner I can give you a guess as to why the pipes are leaking.

Cleaners these days are usually lye based and not nearly as corrosive.

Concentrated sulfuric will react violently, and exothermically, with just about anything including water. I've used it in the lab that was so concentrated that is was as thick as syrup. You could let a drop of water drip on it and it would pop as the water drop burst into steam.

Some areas have a hazardous household chemical turn in program. Maybe you could give the waste disposal folks a call. Or maybe dilute it and use it in your car battery? (just kiddin')

In any case be careful. That's some mighty nasty stuff.

Different world today for sure.

You can't even buy decent cold medicine anymore without ID, finger prints, DNA sample, retinal scan.............

I'd rather people like that just take a shotglass of it straight.

VA, is that a plastic bottle or glass?

Yep, as soon as I found this (there's a little bit missing from the bottle), the idea as to WHY there is a leak was there. WHERE is the next issue. Cast iron tub, and pipes of various eras and compositions (bronze, copper, iron, probably some lead somewhere...), basically what you'd expect of a house built in the early 1900s and updated throughout the years as need be.

Plastic.

The solution to pollution is dilution. Slowly pour it a few cap fulls at a time into your toilet bowl and flush or get some of the alkaline drain cleaner and mix in open air to bring pH up from 1 of sulphuric acid to 7 of neutral.

If you are in an area that has a lot of calcium carbonate rock mix the acid in water and put in a few shovels full of white rock and the add more water. pH will rise and the problem will be solved.

rut roh

you probably know this already, but plastic can turn brittle with age, so I think the first task is to gently get it into an overpack container, so if it starts to leak the acid stays contained.

One of our helpers in the shop was cleaning the bathroom, when he grabs some toilet bowl cleaner and decides to use it at full strength. He eventually realized the fumes were way too strong, and gets out. The boss and I take turns grabbing a breath outside, running in to dilute the cleaner with water, and then running back outside, trying to minimize our exposure. We eventually get it cleaned up with no harm done. I look up the cleaner and realize it's 25% Hydrochloric acid

I've seen that container before,it's a one of my huntin pard's coffee thermos..

Betcha he ain't ever got a problem with constipation...

Be careful if you plan on diluting it. Always add acid to water, not the other way around. Adding water to acid will cause boiling and spitting and other nastiness. If I wanted to get rid of it, I'd pour it slowly down the the drain as intended while running the water (not if you have a septic system).

Sulfuric acid is still a common drain cleaner. It's safe for most metal and plastic pipes, but it shouldn't be used on stainless, chrome, aluminum, or galvanized - so be careful you don't mess up a stainless steel sink or decorative fittings.

We used that stuff years ago when commercial drains were lead and bronze and emptied into cast iron soil pipe & clay tile pipe. We chased it with baking soda by the pound water by the gallon. That was in the 50's, the newer stuff would get eaten alive by it.

Found this in the walls of my house (first built in 1866, and added on to as the years went by). It's from when newspaper was glued on inner walls for insulation, and keep the wind out. Found a lot of other articles too...

Bro! Awesome find!! I renovated a home built in the mid teens in Houston and found a classified section that someone was willing to trade a CAR for a typewriter!!

Shiplap walls covered with wallpaper.....full 2x4's for studs. Pine heart floors. Solid.

If one buys one like this it helps to know construction, or have deep pockets.

That's COOL!

Talk to a paper conservator locally and have them deacidify the newsprint, and you can then frame it or whatever.

In our first home, to get to the basement you'd have to go into the garage, then through a door and down a flight of stairs. This became a PITA for things like laundry, especially when it was cold out.

I built a "hallway" so we didn't have to go into the garage anymore to go down stairs. When I was pulling apart the plaster/lathe heading down the stairs to put up sheet rock, I found a set 4 adult molars. Wierd.

VA - as for your leak - Fastest and simplest thing to check first is the plumbers putty between the tub and trap. That putty gets old and flaky over the decades. If you can unscrew the top of the drain and the pipe and replace the putty with new, it might solve your problem without cutting out the ceiling. I've fixed several leaking tubs this way for customers. It takes less than 1/2 an hour. If it doesn't work you haven't lost anything.

when i was kid growing up in Kingsville TX my brother and i found a bunch of newspapers from the 1930s and 40s in an abandoned farm house. some had story's from WW2. wish we would had saved them , but being young kids had no idea as to their value.

Found a search warrant in Austin (on S. Congress) from the '30s. Gambling paraphenalia. Roulette wheel, numbers game etc. Remodel.

My dad had 4-5 shoeboxes full of old baseball cards from the 50's and 60's.

His four kids used every one of those cards to make their bicycles sound like a motorcycle!

I cannot imagine how many rare and valuable cards were destroyed.

Best advice yet.

dump it down and old drain
and keep them flowing like new!

Use the acid to form a pickle works really well when tanning hides....

I actually needed something in AK a few years back to save a hide... went to napa and got a container of battery acid.... worked like a champ...

Store in a safe place. Useful stuff at times...

when we moved in to our 1900s home 2 year ago (originally built and owned the Brownings) we found:

--a box full of gold jewelry, most with personal inscriptions
--a box full of coins from around the world, about 23 countries
--a child's grave in the SW corner, including headstone
--a letter on UT Senate letterhead signed by Frank Browning conveying the combo to the built-in vault to the new owner

(the inscriptions on the jewelry allowed for tracking down the granddaughter / owner)

Yep.

I know I'm not the only "old chemist" on the 'Fire, as some have posted already, but conc. H2SO4 is a damned useful chemical by times and damned difficult to get hold of anymore.

Contrary to popular belief, conc sulfuric is not as dangerous to human tissue as the supposedly safe "lye-based" (i.e., strongly alkaline) drain cleaners. It is actually very useful for clearing severe drain clogs, although using a good power snake is probably a better choice.

I don't know that I'd keep it around, as I don't practice home chemistry any more. It's safe enough to slowly pour it down yer terlet, though, flushing every 1/2 cup or so.

Well said, Doc.
I would much rather get con H2SO4 on my skin than KOH or NaOH(both strong bases).
However, con H2SO4 is hell on clothes and shoes-I work with the stuff almost every day, so I know.

I found some pretty cool old bottles, one was bottled Dec 25, 1925. There was a few "Prescription" alcohol bottles that are from around prohibition time.

No acid drain cleaner though.

I use several acids quite a bit for work. Peracetic is my least favorite to handle. The stuff will melt your nose hairs, DO NOT inhale!

Get a drop on your skin and it turns white and starts to smart pretty good.

Peracetic is nasty from what I hear(I have never worked with it, myself).
Hydrofluoric is another "fun" one.

Not that is how you get gun cotton. Fun stuff but there is no way I will confess how I know. I just will barely admit to knowing how to make the still.

Scott, I had never heard the term "gun cotton" before, so I looked it up.

When the black helicopters show up here I'm gonna snitch on YOU!

55 gallon drum, copper tubing, and a campfire. Beaker half full of cotton and stand back at least three feet.

I worked with HF and TFA (trifluoroacetic acid) when I was doing bench biochemistry. HF is so toxic they give special OSHA classes on it and you can't enter the lab that uses it without the training. TCA has a pKa about 10,000 times stronger than HF, and TFA is so strong there aren't enough zeroes in my vocabulary to write it.

Johnny wuz a chemist,but Johnny is no more for what he thought wuz H2O wuz H2SO4!!!!

Any of those 'modded' acetic acids are nasty buggers.

Exxon used to use HF by the ton at their Billings, MT oil refinery. Don't know if they still do?

HF is still one of only things that readily removes silicates from different metallic(and other?) surfaces. It is used in some carwash soaps, believe it or not.

Talk about heart burn!

VA,

the best way to neutralize the acid is with baking soda. But you'll want to do the mixing outside in a large container. Used to work with sulfuric acid a lot. That stuff get's very hot when mixed with water.

Not to hi-jack, but I've found several small (empty) bottles, over the years; labeled Edison battery oil - would these have contained sulphuric acid?
Mark

One of my brother's clients found four trapdoor Springfields in an original US Army crate crammed in a wall that were probably stolen during Reconstruction.

How bout this "thing" in an old house? ..Hey Troll Doushe,you crossed the line when you made a reference directed at my wife last night. She happens to be quite the lady,your's are probably made of rubber and come with a pump so [bleep] off...

http://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/6155472/WTF_is_this#Post6155472

Grandfather found a Stevens Favorite in the attic of an old house he bought. Sadly the barrel may never have been cleaned and it was pitted beyond use. Outside was in good shape.

We fond a pair of womans high top shoes and some button hooks while remodeling an old house. Nothing real exciting but still kind of fun.

I am thinking maybe this one was posted in the wrong place.

Use it when you have a blocked drain. Thats the good stuff.

Scott as far as I'm concerned this troll is a "thing in an old house".

Got it. Now I understand. Some days most days I am more than a little slow.

If you intend to keep it, I'll suggest transfer into a new bottle, like Nalgene. The bottle it's in could be getting brittle with age.

If you want to dispose of it, your local landfill probably has a "Haz waste" day. You can let them deal with it if you are not comfortable screwing with it.

As mentioned several times, you can very slowly pour it down a drain with *copious* amount of water.

Also as mentioned, do not add water to the acid. As we said in New Joisey:
Do as ya oughtta
add acid to water (it rhymes in Jersey-ese)

If you want to "play" with it, fill a shot glass with sugar and pour the H2SO4 into the glass over the sugar. DO THIS OUTSIDE!! It will produce a column of carbon as the acid oxidises the carbon in the sugar. It does not asplode!

If your grass has moss, you can dilute it 1 part acid to 9 parts water and "water" the moss.

Not telling you what to do Woody but if it were me I might be real tempted to bring this to the attention of Rick. In my opinion, and we all know what opinions are, this is way beyond reasonable. I an not in favor of rash banning and Ricks easy hand is what makes this a great place but this deserves the dreaded "B" word.

I admire Rick Bin's policy of not banning folks, but personally think that attacks or insults on another poster's family should be dealt with severely-i.e., ban the !@#$!!

my chem prof in college did that first day of class, cool as hell....

I didn't think it was ever determined that "Alaskan John" was Akhntr. I read Akhntr deny being him a couple of times. I got no problem with some payback, but you wanta make sure it's the right guy. I don't read all the threads relating to this though, so if you know something I don't...just disregard.

Well, not to get off topic but I just gotta say that my asploded a few times last night and the wife was not amused.

I wouldn't dispose of that down the drain of an old house that could have porous cast iron piping. Have seen it eat the bottom out over time or remove scaling that is preventing leaks.

FWIW, Hercules still sells a 93% sulfuric drain cleaner named Clobber to professionals.

i would take that stuff out into the woods with a shovel, dig a hole about a foot deep, dump it out, smash up the jug and bury it.

Have two cases of it. If you cant get a pipe unblocked with this stuff, your snaking or digging up pipes.

Cole he can deny all he wants and it's only a pic but he can't get passed his typing..He's a CF turd that needs flushing and has insulted more than just me..lets end this here I don't want to screw up a decent thread anymore than it already is...please continue gentlemen.

Would like to keep this going in a positive direction..so here's my addition. Was doing a total house remodel about 10 yrs ago and found these in the attic wrapped in an old blanket.There was a stack of complete papers and the owner said take a few since you found them.Apparently they were the 3rd occupants since these were stashed back in the 60's..anyway got two complete sets of each..

About 20 years ago a guy I know was doing a major clean-up/rehab on an old rental house. Came across an old Ortgies semi-auto handgun at the top of the basement wall between a couple rafters. Wasn't exactly mint but wasn't rusted; just pretty dusty. They were made in Germany from 1919 until about 1924 or'25. Forgot what caliber it was; maybe it was 25 ACP. Don't recall what he ever did with it either.

Reminds me, I was helping clean up and old abandoned home thirty years ago and found a Marvel Game getter in it's original holster. Had the factory paperwork in the bottom of the holster. Those were tough times and I sold it. Now I am sorry but back then we are on the money. It was in like new condition with no signs of it ever being shot.

2-3 years ago a guy found this in the wall of an old farm house he was rehabbing up in Will County, IL, turned it over to the Sheriff!

I remember that. Wonder if he got anything out of that. Think he would have been better off keeping his mouth shut and leaving the state.

Nope he got some grief for bringing it in rather than calling them out to see how he found it. Made a crime scene out of the joint for a couple of weeks and of course the feebs got all bent and finally took possession from the Sheriff.

When we moved into the house that I will always identify with my childhood, a 15 room Victorian (with basement and attic it was 5 floors). My folks bought it from a widower of 90 years, who was born in the house. Still had gas fixtures, servants' quarter with separate stairways and all manner of neat stuff. One thing that wasn't so charming was the fact that in that giant place there was only one bathroom, and it was a pull-chain type...

Anyway, my brother and I found all sorts of amazing stuff, stuff that if I found today would have me on 7th heaven. One item I remember was an American flag with 13 stars. It was so old and fragile, when we picked it up roughly, it began falling apart. We figured it trash and binned it. Also, found a large room with perhaps 20 modern day sized trash bags full of colored feathers, many obviously exotic. In retrospect the feathers were worth some serious coin, but being 8 I had no idea what they were for, and binned them too. It wasn't until years later when I commented about the feathers to my mom and wondered out loud what they were for that she said, 'oh, I thought you knew: at one point that room was used as a small scale factory for tying flies (or is that 'flys'?), as in fly fishing flies. D'oh.

My dad was a police officer (retired as a lieutenant) for forty years, much of it spent as a detective. When he passed I went through the house and helped to clean it up. Mom was still alive so anything of "value" I showed to her before I took it. Got three "cheap" handguns (Iver Johnson and H&R .32's and a large caliber "bulldog" with no markings that he had stashed in a cabinet. Lots of $ tucked away, maybe $300 or so. He had a large WAD of silver certificates that I didn't count. Told mom they were worth some money and she kept them. (When she passed I couldn't find them anywhere and I know she never sold them. I believe she gave them to my meth head nephew for spending money). Lots of search warrants, receipts, and newspaper clippings of cases he was involved with. He was big (6'4 and 280 pounds of muscle) and one clipping was a front page picture of him holding a mental subject that had killed his wife. You can tell the guy was struggling but my dad had him in a good lock and looked calm as could be. Lots of old alcohol bottles (mostly full) that he had seized, and so on.
Anyway, lo and behold in a pile on his workbench he had a live shell. Didn't measure it but it had to be 40mm or so. Anyway I brought it upstairs, sat it on the table and asked mom what she wanted me to do with it. She said "Get it the H#%&a out of my house. I played with it a little (mostly to bug mom) and then called the police to come get it.
Pretty soon here comes a young cop who could care less about the shell. He said "I'll take it in for you. Not a big deal." About a half hour later we left the house and here was the cop waiting beside the shell on the lawn. He said he started to think about and called the bomb disposal unit. We laughed our butts off.
I miss my dad. He was a heck of a man and the best father I could have ever asked for.

A friend of mine had a job cleaning out repoed houses.He found a remington model 12 pump 22 under a pile of trash in his first house.
Another friend of mine is 6'9" tall,and noticed a strange item on top of the stud wall in the basement of a rented house.Turned out it was a collector grade smith and wesson pistol,wrapped up in an oily c.loth.

I bought a home in Studio City, Calif., in 1974. The home had been built in 1937. There was an old, separate, detached garage that was once a storage and tractor shed. I decided to do some rewiring in it so I could build a reloading bench, power tools, good lights, etc.

As I was running some wire in the rafters, I found a ragged cloth bundle. I unwrapped it and there was a Colt's Police Positive Special, 5 inch barrel, blue steel, in .32-20 WCF. It was in perfect condition. Afterall, it is very dry in southern California so there was no rust due to humidity.

I called the real estate agent and asked for the phone number of the lady from whom I bought the house. I called her, told her what I found and asked if it were her revolver?

She said it was not her gun. She said she'd bought the house about 25 years previously and did not even remember the person's name from whom she bought it. She didn't want the Colt's so it became mine.

I had a LAPD buddy of mine run it to see if it were stolen. Came back clean as a pin.

You might say the price was right.

A really fine shooter, too!

L.W.

40 years ago doing renos in a 1906 house ,old papers in the walls ,also a bill for 49.00 and change for wireing a 2 story full basement house,
BIL found 32 colt in old build ,i still haven't finished fixing it ,,cap and ball

Neat stuff folks.

Growing up in northeatern Ohio, I could never pass up a chance to go poking around an old abandoned farmhouse. I found lots of old papers, but little else of value. I'm sure most of them had been pretty well picked over.

I hunt a piece of State Forest land up here in Minnesota up by Pine City (Chengwatana State Forest) and ran across an old machinery shed that had been converted to a hunting cabin. It had obviously been empty for years, but it looked like the guys had just cleaned up and left. The dish pan was hanging over the sink on a nail, the bed rolls were all neatly tied up on the bunks, and there was a stack of old Phesants Forever magazines sitting next to the oil lamp on the table. Man, if that old shack could talk. I always wondered what happened-did the guys just walk away from it, did the last member die? 'Shame to see a neat old shack like that rotting away. The last time I was up there it had been torn down and hauled away.

DO NOT mix with a base! If you do you'll see an exothermic reaction you won't believe and it will probably splatter anyone nearby!

Save it, it can be very useful for lceaning some items, espceially rusty things. You will need to dilute it by filling a bucket with cold water first, then slowly adding a little acid to the water. That way you can control temperature and you won't have the aforementiond violent reaction.

My only good find was down in Ohio south of Negley. I was back in a hilly area grouse hunting a spot I'd been through a hundred times and stumbled upon the remains of an old trappers cabin. I'd walked through that area many times and never noticed that little cabin. I found the bottle dump and pulled a couple nice bottles out of there. The cabin was pretty well collapsed, but I managed to get into the area around where the stove pipe had gone through the roof. I found the metal flange laying there, and started poking around under the roof studs. I found several stretcher boards, still in good shape after all those years, and a rusted hammer off a percussion gun of some sort. Try as I may, I couldn't find any other gun parts. This cabin was up high on a a hill and I got to thinking, he must have had a spring he'd found nearby, because it was a pretty good hump to the closest water. I started poking around up behind the cabin and finally found the spring. If I wasn't looking for it, I'd have never seen it. He'd dug out a hole and built a little cofferdam to contain the flow. I could see where he'd put a makeshift roof over it to keep the bugs and crud out. I was surprised to find all this stuff in an area I'd hunted for years, and never even realized it was there.