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Origin of the paint that was found as red-gray chips - any ideas?

Chris,

Have you asked Dr. Millette if he would be interested in holding an open forum before hand?

Maybe a better idea, so as to prevent any truther from claiming bias, we invite him to hold an open forum somehow after the results are back, and in the process of being published?

I personally would be interested in discussing his opinions on the results.

Cheers!

~Tri
 
triforcharity: As I understand, our influence (if any:cool:) on the planned work of Jim Millette (from the choice of methods up to the interpretation of results) should be as minimal as possible. Later on, a thorough discussion in JREF seems to be inevitable:blush:

Oystein: Although this thread is on paints and not thermites:cool:, it is always good for me to learn something new even in the field of pyrotechnics. Linked Kevin Ryan's video provoked me to read an original paper on Al/Fe2O3/Viton fine thermites prepared by Gash et al (better late than never:rolleyes:)

Some remarks:
- As regards determination of aluminum (one of the things of our interest), it is written in the paper that elemental aluminum in used UFG (ultra fine grain) Al was determined by thermogravimetric method. There are no details provided but I expect that aluminum powder was heated on air in TGA device up to high temperatures and metallic aluminum was then determined from the increase of weight (caused by oxidation of Al to Al2O3). Btw, there was about 70 % of elemental Al in these UFG powders. Of course, this method is not applicable to red-gray chips, containing lot of organics (and other stuffs).

- This is one of the examples of thermites in which not only some polymeric binder is used, but it is used as an active component (contributing to thermitic reaction). More specifically, about 10 wt% of Viton A was present in Gash'es thermites. As other fluoropolymers, Viton is an exceptional polymer in sense that it contains mostly bound fluorine instead of hydrogen (around 60 %), which greatly increases its thermal stability (remember just Teflon and its wide use for kitchenware). Even Viton, however, degrades massively at temperatures between ca 475 and 500 degrees C and it is completely degraded/vaporized at 550 degrees C (see http://www.rtvanderbilt.com/documents/MSDS/US/vit006a.pdf, p. 5).

- To be honest, I have so far no idea how Viton (and similar fluoropolymers) participates on the thermitic reaction. It is only written in the paper that this polymer acts as "a strong oxidizer". Notably, gaseous products are formed in this case (in contrary to purely inorganic thermites). It implies (among others) that we should be careful enough in claims like "thermite can't contain a substantial amount of any polymeric binder" and "any thermite does not release any gaseous products during burning".

Viton has characteristic FTIR spectra (see paper) and its fluorine (present in a great amount) may be detectable by XDES, but I am not sure. Anyway, this is not important for paint theory.

Perhaps these things had been already mentioned elsewhere; if yes, sorry.
 
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Oystein said:
:confused: Greening said what exactly when on what paint thing? Got a citation?
Click to expand...

"Now here lies the rub: Jone's red chips do not contain zinc, although

some WTC iron-rich particles do indeed contain significant amounts of

zinc. Nevertheless, zinc is essentially absent from Jones' red chips,

thus it looks like these mystery particles are definitely not paint

chips." -- Frank Greening
 
Are you serious? What more important question is there that chain of custody? Chain of custody is exactly the tactic NIST uses to dis-credit the Harrit/Jones paper.

1. Who kept these samples so long under what conditions?
2. Who originally took the samples and from what location on what day?

Until these questions are answered, these new samples hold no merit.
 
superlogicalthinker said:
Are you serious? What more important question is there that chain of custody? Chain of custody is exactly the tactic NIST uses to dis-credit the Harrit/Jones paper.

1. Who kept these samples so long under what conditions?
2. Who originally took the samples and from what location on what day?

Until these questions are answered, these new samples hold no merit.
Click to expand...
I think "ignored" is a better word than "discredit". Discredited implies they spent time on it. NIST ignored it like the rest of the scientific world.
 
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superlogicalthinker said:
"Now here lies the rub: Jone's red chips do not contain zinc, although

some WTC iron-rich particles do indeed contain significant amounts of

zinc. Nevertheless, zinc is essentially absent from Jones' red chips,

thus it looks like these mystery particles are definitely not paint

chips." -- Frank Greening
Click to expand...

superlogicalthinker: This contribution of Frank Greening in the relevant thread on The911Forum was one of his first posts on this matter and lately he changed his opinion, as summarized above by Oystein. Your citation is just a cherry-picking.
My hats off to Frank Greening, who was able to argue so well with truthers just several days after publishing of Bentham paper (and the same is valid also for JREF opponents like Sunstealer).
 
superlogicalthinker said:
"Now here lies the rub: Jone's red chips do not contain zinc, although

some WTC iron-rich particles do indeed contain significant amounts of

zinc. Nevertheless, zinc is essentially absent from Jones' red chips,

thus it looks like these mystery particles are definitely not paint

chips." -- Frank Greening
Click to expand...

Please re-read my post #1426.
It quotes Greening extensively on the issue of zinc and no zinc in the dust particles, and explains that this is indeed the starting point of this thread, but that in fact we have solved the problem that Greening found: There is a primer painted on a significant portion of the twin towers structural steel, namely the floor trusses, that does not contain Zinc, but matches the composition of the first 4 chips analysed in the Harrit paper almost perfectly.

You are welcome to ask questions about this, but before you are going to make claims in refutation of what I just said, please make sure you first read this thread. Look out for the key-word "LaClede"!
 
superlogicalthinker said:
Can you show me some proof of where there samples came from?
Click to expand...
superlogicalthinker said:
Are you serious? What more important question is there that chain of custody? Chain of custody is exactly the tactic NIST uses to dis-credit the Harrit/Jones paper.

1. Who kept these samples so long under what conditions?
2. Who originally took the samples and from what location on what day?

Until these questions are answered, these new samples hold no merit.
Click to expand...

We expect Jim Milette to describe the chain of custody in his upcoming paper. So far, we have not enough information on it to pass judgement, and are thus holding back judgement until Jim has published the information.
Can you agree to this approach?
 
Oystein said:
We expect Jim Milette to describe the chain of custody in his upcoming paper. So far, we have not enough information on it to pass judgement, and are thus holding back judgement until Jim has published the information.
Can you agree to this approach?
Click to expand...

Holding back judgment but not cash?
 
RedIbis said:
Holding back judgment but not cash?
Click to expand...

Yep, I am taking my chances there, aren't I? ;)
I am investigating some faith in Chris and Jim, that's right. That's because I do not Poison the Well. I assume good faith here just as I did with Jones.
 
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Hi all,

Here's a possible scenario I would find ironic: NIST doesn't trust the nongovernmental sources of dust used in the Bentham paper. I expect some of us won't trust Jim Millette's samples because they were collected by NIST or the EPA! I accepted the chain of custody in the Bentham paper because I know they did everything in their power to preserve the integrity of the samples (even if they may have been somewhat contaminated) including four separate sources, each carefully mapped. In an email from Jim Millette I understood that he had a good chain of custody from officials close to the investigation. I trust that too. We'll know more later. For now I'm going to let him do his work.
 
RedIbis said:
Jones provided the provenance. We've yet to hear how Millette got his other than taking it on faith that it's "ironclad."
Click to expand...
Why do you continue to treat Jones' , et al's Bentham paper as proof of nanothermite in the WTC dust, when it's been proven that thermite of ANY variety doesn't have the required energy output to match that found in their own samples?
 
Oystein said:
It quotes Greening extensively on the issue of zinc and no zinc in the dust particles, and explains that this is indeed the starting point of this thread, but that in fact we have solved the problem that Greening found: There is a primer painted on a significant portion of the twin towers structural steel, namely the floor trusses, that does not contain Zinc, but matches the composition of the first 4 chips analysed in the Harrit paper almost perfectly.
Click to expand...

Among sources proposed for the iron spheres, I have always thought that a significant part of it might be welding fume. Welding painted steel will incorporate some of the elements of the paint into metal spheres. Most of the welding was done on the core columns, which were painted with Tnemec, which contains zinc. The zinc-free floor trusses were at most just tack-welded on a very small area at the ends. I would thus expect more of the welding fume to contain zinc than not. Both primers contained chromium and silicon. These are found in varying amouints in the iron spheres.

Because, as we have determined, based on the locations of the two types pf primer, there would be more La Clede than Tnemec chips in the dust. Thus, we could expect a lower proportion of zinc in the aggregate of the chips than in the welding fume.
 
Oystein said:
We expect Jim Milette to describe the chain of custody in his upcoming paper. So far, we have not enough information on it to pass judgement, and are thus holding back judgement until Jim has published the information.
Can you agree to this approach?
Click to expand...

Is it possible for someone to reach Millette so the waiting period is less.

I would think that there is one poster reading right now who could get in touch with Millete and ask him to tell us here at JREF how he got the samples, where he kept them for so long and under what conditions, and why he sat on them for ten years before going public?

Did he know that the topic of the red/gray chip would be a popular subject ten years from 2001 and decided to keep his samples secret until he needed them?

I doubt that very much.
 
Oystein said:
chrismohr is in contact with Jim, and Chris is reading this thread ;)
Click to expand...

Ok then, Chris should get in contact asking Jim for a written explanation as to the chain of custody for his samples and why he decided now should be the time to go public with them.

This should be discussed now in my opinion anyway so that we know our time is not being wasted waiting for the results. look at what happened to the Harrit/Jones paper with chain of custody.

Wouldn't want to see the same thing happen again. History...right?
 
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