geekchem - 19-11-2009 at 10:10
Has anyone ordered from special-metals.com before? They are based in the EU (Poland) and have sodium metal for 27,77/kg.
I've sent them an email (actually several, to their various addresses) about a week ago, but there has been no response so far... I'm not sure
whether they are just really slow, or ignoring my emails...
1281371269 - 19-11-2009 at 13:00
I can't comment on this particular supplier, but as a rule of thumb:
If they don't reply, quickly, don't give them a penny.
geekchem - 20-11-2009 at 04:47
I finally got a reply, however, the hazmat shipping is insane... Almost 400 euros shipping for 1kg of sodium. Is hazmat usually this expensive, or
just because sodium is very reactive?
I think there were some threads around here about extracting Na from NaOH. Maybe that's worth a look...
I'm certainly not paying 400 euros on shipping when I could buy a good fractional distillation kit for that price.
Contrabasso - 20-11-2009 at 15:07
Stuff from Poland and Lithuania and Latvia travels round Europe with or without proper documents. If it is properly documented and shipped then that
is a fair transport fee.
densest - 21-11-2009 at 06:35
The difference legislation makes: in the US, 400 euros worth of hazmat shipping gets you a dedicated 300Km point-to-point truck delivery of 100Kg of
anything that's legal to put on the road, with documents. If the delivery services will accept your package, fees of about 40 euros will get packing,
shipping, and documents for a few Kg. If the postal service will accept it, and it does accept an amazingly wide range of substances, the cost is the
triple-seal packing required plus surface mail postage.
Bureaucracy never gets smaller or less expensive. 
geekchem - 30-11-2009 at 06:45
I found another supplier in the US, which caters to individuals. This guy is more responsive, too. Their prices are a little more expensive on the
metal itself, but it's offset by significantly cheaper shipping changes and the exchange rate from EUR to USD.
Ironic, that the geographically closest supplier is more expensive than shipping over a much greater distance.
I wonder whether there would be any other Finns interested in doing some kind of group order...