I’ve had this issue where a common chemical product is impossible to find. Take Isopropyl alcohol, in the States, you can buy 70% or 90% IPA at any supermarket or drug store. In Taiwan, doesn’t exist.
And this weekend I went looking for Mineral Oil or Boiled Linseed Oil, something to treat wood. Again, nowhere to be found.
Any else find it strange? or are there major chemical restrictions here?
Try in this street:
Most of the shops are on the right walkside as you walk towards Changde street. If they don’t have the chamicals you need in the shop, they can order for you. One or two shops in that street also have lists of different stuff, so you can see the name in English.
Must be. Instead of IPA - and for certain uses - I use witch hazel from the States. (I realize it’s not a perfect substitute.)
But. Best thing ever for aftershave, for me. Also stops dead the itching from mosquito bites. And I wear a watch with a rubber watchband, couple weeks ago noticed that I had it cinched too tightly and some kind of skin thing was taking root underneath the band. You guessed it, witch hazel made it go away in the first application (washed the band in soap and warm water, too).
No idea why this isn’t available in Taiwan, except that witch-hazel is a North American plant.
And I thought that I.P.A. was about the only choice you could find in Family Mart, 7Eleven, Carrefour and any other place you can name for getting drunk with beer.
It’s because you pay insufficient attention to what beers are famous in which countries.
There’s a thread that may be sort of about boiled linseed oil. I think most of the words in that thread just involve the results of me wandering around looking at stuff on the 'net, but I have no idea whether any of the stuff I found is useful. Anyway, here it is:
At least as to what I wrote in the thread linked above, my advice is that if there’s nothing that shows obvious promise, maybe you shouldn’t waste too much time on it.
Prob’ly better off going with @mad_masala’s recommendation.
Also, in that earlier thread, @JB_IN_TW mentioned Amazon.
I stated 70 or 90% Isopropyl Alcohol. That isn’t something people should drink unless they want to die. It is used to treat wounds/cuts and good for cleaning electronics since it evaporates quickly.
Oh, right, sorry, I didn’t know what I was saying.
BTW, have you ever been told racist shit by Decathlon stuff?
If you find boiled linseed oil (or danish oil, or tung oil), I’d be interested too. I bet they’re around but I’ve visited some lacquer shops and such with no luck. I did find shellac in a hardware store, though.
Linseed oil (aka flaxseed oil) is trivially available as a cooking oil, but apparently you can’t just boil it at home – the boiling point and exploding point are very close together. So you need a vacuum boiler, or special additives.
I went to Ikea yesterday and bought their Behandla, which has Beeswax, Linseed Oil, Tungsten Oil, and others. This should do the job for protecting the wood. Also, I grabbed Mineral Oil to give that a try too.