Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Buying chemicals as a business?

sbbspartan - 4-11-2013 at 18:46

So, I was looking at ordering some nitric acid from GFS Chemicals. They sell it for pretty cheap, especially if you order in bulk. They require you to be a business to buy their chemicals though. My dad has his own woodworking/carpentry business with a federal business ID and everything else, so hopefully I'll be able to fill all their forms out.

My question is, do they really care what his business is or not? Will they get suspicious that a woodworking business is ordering nitric acid, or do they really only care that you have a business, not what that business is? How in depth do they really go?

Also, should I order something less conspicuous than nitric acid first, and then order that later? Does anyone have any experience with this? Should I just give up and order from somewhere else?

Dr.Bob - 4-11-2013 at 18:57

Nitric acid is used for many industrial uses. If he has a legit business, I doubt that they would worry. Now if you tried to order a bunch of related things like drug precursors or huge amounts of dangerous chemicals, then they might notice, but one gallon or two of nitric acid is not that unusual.

WGTR - 5-11-2013 at 06:44

That company looks like a good resource; I'm going to save that
one to "favorites".

Different companies have different policies regarding who they
sell to. Most of the time this is because they don't want to
deal with the hassle of the general public, as well as a desire to
limit their liability, since most of what a chemical supply store
sells is stuff that will kill you if you misuse it.

Anyway, if I was working for a chemical supply company, I
would have no problem selling nitric acid to a woodworking
company. If you check around, I think you'll find that nitric
acid in used to artificially "age" wood. Dichromates are
used for the same thing.

Pulverulescent - 5-11-2013 at 07:25

Quote:
My dad has his own woodworking/carpentry business with a federal business ID and everything else, so hopefully I'll be able to fill all their forms out.
My question is, do they really care what his business is or not? Will they get suspicious that a woodworking business is ordering nitric acid, or do they really only care that you have a business, not what that business is?

Besides the use of NA to 'age' wood, acetic anhydride is used to modify the structure of wood to make it less permeable to moisture . . .

bfesser - 5-11-2013 at 09:18

<strong>sbbspartan</strong>, there have been dozens of discussions on this topic. Try the search function or Google.

sbbspartan - 5-11-2013 at 12:10

Thanks for the replies everyone! I've never heard of Nitric Acid being used to age wood before - I'll have to tell my dad that. I'll go ahead and try to order from them.

@bfesser I looked using the sciencemadness search engine and google and found next to no topics on this. This topic, http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=24396#... deals with ordering from Sigma, but it wasn't terribly helpful. I'll try to look some more though.