hello there,
i remember reading some experimental entries about alternative materials/sustances like the stuff from diapers as thickener and strenghtener. i tried already the diaper-thing and it worked out well. it’s just hard to grind and i did not get a nice surface out of it. now i wanted to use silica. i read that one type of cat litter (crystal litter) is infect silca gel. did anybody use that yet? is it the same?
thanks for participating
dulf
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why not try a sample batch out for us and report back …
*pretty neat about the diaper method , but gonna stay with the cabosil for the $ point and ease
TT
Ohhhhkay, a few things.
Cabosil is a fumed silica powder. It’s a ‘thixotropic agent’, a powder added to resin to give the resulting mix a paste consistency, It adds absolutely dick to the strength of the hardened mix, might make it a touch less brittle but that’s about it. It doesn’t chemically combine with said resin or anything like it.
It is, maybe, a little less hard than the resin or about the same, so sanding isn’t an issue.
But it’s just a powder. I have used talcum powder and reasonably fine sugar when far away from more customary sources. Resin thickened with talcum smells real nice when you sand it, by the way. Wood flour is something WEST systems sells for use wthi its epoxy line, ultrafine sawdust. Flour and cornstarch and baking soda and salt, all should work fine. Fuller’s Earth ( Kieselguhr, diatomaceous earth, fossilized planktom essentially) - they use it making dynamite, why not.I think, matter of fact, that’s what they use in disposable diapers. Along with a lot of other things.
If you somehow collect the dust when you sand fiberglass, cool beans, use that. Sanding foam? Fine dust, fine thickener.
Now, with all of these available, why on (diatomaceous ) earth would you want to go through the trouble and mess and bother of grinding up kitty litter? Yeah, it probably has a silica product in it, though it’s mostly an absorbent clay. The Goddamnedcat just had four ninja kittens, I know way more about that stuff than I want to,
Silicas are a whole chemical family, some soft ( like talc) some quite hard. . Again, there’s a lot of products that will work just fine right off the shelf without going through all this rigamarole, go with one of them.
hope that’s of use.
We used to call Cabosil; “Resin Thick” and it was even marketed under that name. Yes flour works in a pinch. Finish is similar to Q-cell. Some guys used sugar on the decks of sail boards for traction. Sprinkle it on wet resin and then hose it off after it set. Most of these alternatives are an emergency use only. When you can’t get anything else. They offer no strength qualities. Cabosil sands poorly, but is excellent for thickening clear resin. It works great in butt cracks. Can be used in a mixture of milled fiber, white pigment, resin and Cabosil to set longboard boxes. I also use resin thickened with Cabosil to set Futures and FCS boxes.
Just shift it well when transferring from the cat box.
wow (or uau as we say in portugal) thank you all for your replies. where to start…
-shifting well is a very good advise 
thx a lot
-i expressed myself it a bit wrong, i don’t want to strenghten the epoxy. just need a thickening agent.
-i also use gypsum sometimes. all kind of powder makes the epoxy more thick of course but in my perseption a thickening agent works different and i don’t have to add as much as i would have to with a powder. with the gypsum for example i don’t really get a putty. i don’t think silica gel is just a powder as talcum (well i would be interested in the smell though:)
-there is different cat litter of course, the one i refer to is called “crystal litter” as i wrote, you can check it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litter_box#Silica_gel_litter
-it is made of silica gel. anybody knows the difference between silica gel and fumed silica?
maybe i am heading down the wrong thought. will grind some of the silica gel balls of these “do not eat” packages and make a test before i have to get kittens to get rid of all the litter.
will give note about the results but first - surf
Ah, you see, I come from Cape Cod, so many of my favorite people, including my adopted family, are Portuguese.
In any event-
-it is made of silica gel. anybody knows the difference between silica gel and fumed silica?
Okay,both are silicon dioxide, as is sand or for that matter, most glass and quartz crystals. But SiO2 takes a lot of forms. Cool stuff.
Fumed silica, think of something like soot or frost, deposited as it condenses on something, or perhaps snowflakes. You get this branched form to it, kinda spread out., you can see how it would thicken resin nicely. Those branches are not real strong, so they sand easily.
Now, silica gel…isn’t really a gel, it’s particles of SiO2 that were formed more like foam or porous bricks or for that matter, Cap’n Crunch breakfast cereal, Those pores absorb water ( a relatively small molecule) quite nicely and when heated, the water evaporates out and you can reuse it…though I wouldn’t reccommend doing that after the cat is done with it, at least not indoors. Longer molecules, like resin chains and such, maybe not absorbed so well. And it’s relatively hard though porous chunks.
Quartz…is SiO2 thats allowed to solidify as a crystal. Sand, crushed crystals. Compared to fumed silica, quite hard. And yeah, resistant to sanding, heh, the name sandpaper kinda gives that away.
hope that’s of use
doc…
Silica use in composits : cabosil, aerosil are called fumed silica or gel silica by sellers. All are near same main product, corn flake of silice that increase dynamic viscosity of fluid by create “friction”. Find it in many products from monocoat paint to tooth past… In cat litter work to reduce drain of urine that let more time to other component to absorb it by capillarity, same as baby pants. So can work but why not buy silica gel/fumed only?
ok. thank you very much for the detailed explanation. i got the point and understood why and even made a test:
NO, it does not work as a thickening agent.
or: not more than any other powder. i will order the cabosil/aerosil or use the stuff from the menstruation pads. does anybody remembers/knows who wrote the entry about alternatives to mircoballons? i can not recover the entry or the person who wrote about it. would like to know how to get the fibers smaller.
thanks a lot for the answers
I think that may have been Herb Spitzer.
Fibers smaller? Try those small electric kitchen chopper. Work with fiber glass.