weighing_powders
You might come across the problem of having powders that you must weigh to a small, relatively precise amount regularly. Maybe you bought a large amount of some magnesium salt for oral supplementation for cheap, or maybe you need to add a very small amount of your special ingredient to your pancake or welding mix.
Taking out a milligram scale every time is tedious. It makes sense if you only do this rarely, but people often take supplements daily.
I've tried many solutions for this problem. Here they are, worst to best -
Paper
You can fold a small spoon and reinforce it with tape. Since prototyping is fast and adjustments are easy, you can make a spoon that will quite reliably measure the amount you want.
Problems:
DURABILITY. The picture is of my own such spoon, which lasted ~6-12 months. Quite handy, but as it breaks down, it loses precision and becomes kind of nasty.
Dilution
In some cases, like supplementation, you can dilute your compound in a suitable solvent and measure volumetrically.
You can use a syringe, but using ice-cubes prevents spoilage:
1. Measure out your ice-cube-tray volume by pouring very warm water in it and pouring it out. Make sure to subtract some water if you're taking a large volume of compounds.
2. Measure out the amount of supplements you need for the ice-cube-tray number of days and dissolve in the water.
3. Distribute the resulting water back into the ice-cube-tray and freeze.
Problems:
As mentioned, most of the time the solvent will be water, and the resulting mixture will be prone to spoilage.
If you take enough stuff, eventually the water will become saturated and the mixture won't fully dissolve, or crystals will crash out as the ice-cubes freeze.
Have to redo it regularly unless you have an infinite freezer
Wooden/pencil spoons
As you can see in the title image, the best solution I've come up with so far is wooden spoons.
They're durable and precise.
It's actually very easy - just take a drill and a cheap pencil, and get to work! You'll want to stabilize the pencil by pressing it hard against a table with your hand, and the drill by pressing it against your leg and side while sitting. In a pose like that and the drillbit parallel to the horizon, it is very easy to control the drill and slowly drill an appropriate-sized hole. It will take some work and intuition to get the right volume, but I found that I can get the right size in about 4-5 attempts. In my experience, you can get accuracies of +/- 5mg for small volumes of powders, which is sufficient for most use-cases. Additionally, I believe most of the difference will be from crystal packing in the spoon, not the spoon itself, meaning you can grind up your powder to achieve higher precision.
This actually makes me think - perhaps using a drill and some wood, a lot can be manually machined/milled. Perhaps even metal can be machined with enough willpower. Something to think about.
Oh and, by the way, everyone should own an electric drill/screwdriver. It is one of the most useful tools you can own.
Taking out a milligram scale every time is tedious. It makes sense if you only do this rarely, but people often take supplements daily.
I've tried many solutions for this problem. Here they are, worst to best -
Paper
You can fold a small spoon and reinforce it with tape. Since prototyping is fast and adjustments are easy, you can make a spoon that will quite reliably measure the amount you want.
Problems:
DURABILITY. The picture is of my own such spoon, which lasted ~6-12 months. Quite handy, but as it breaks down, it loses precision and becomes kind of nasty.
Dilution
In some cases, like supplementation, you can dilute your compound in a suitable solvent and measure volumetrically. You can use a syringe, but using ice-cubes prevents spoilage:
1. Measure out your ice-cube-tray volume by pouring very warm water in it and pouring it out. Make sure to subtract some water if you're taking a large volume of compounds.
2. Measure out the amount of supplements you need for the ice-cube-tray number of days and dissolve in the water.
3. Distribute the resulting water back into the ice-cube-tray and freeze.
Problems:
As mentioned, most of the time the solvent will be water, and the resulting mixture will be prone to spoilage.
If you take enough stuff, eventually the water will become saturated and the mixture won't fully dissolve, or crystals will crash out as the ice-cubes freeze.
Have to redo it regularly unless you have an infinite freezer
Wooden/pencil spoons
As you can see in the title image, the best solution I've come up with so far is wooden spoons.
They're durable and precise.
It's actually very easy - just take a drill and a cheap pencil, and get to work! You'll want to stabilize the pencil by pressing it hard against a table with your hand, and the drill by pressing it against your leg and side while sitting. In a pose like that and the drillbit parallel to the horizon, it is very easy to control the drill and slowly drill an appropriate-sized hole. It will take some work and intuition to get the right volume, but I found that I can get the right size in about 4-5 attempts. In my experience, you can get accuracies of +/- 5mg for small volumes of powders, which is sufficient for most use-cases. Additionally, I believe most of the difference will be from crystal packing in the spoon, not the spoon itself, meaning you can grind up your powder to achieve higher precision.
This actually makes me think - perhaps using a drill and some wood, a lot can be manually machined/milled. Perhaps even metal can be machined with enough willpower. Something to think about.
Oh and, by the way, everyone should own an electric drill/screwdriver. It is one of the most useful tools you can own.