chemistry, alchemy, and blind luck


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Posted by Catherine Cartwright Jones on October 25, 2001 at 20:11:11:

In reply to: Help from the Sirius Mixmasters, please posted by Lauren on October 25, 2001 at 19:33:50:

At the moment you terp your paste, the molecular change starts. Every
moment from that, your henna will have more of the shallow-penetrating
dark brown molecules and fewer of the deep penetrating orange
molecules. Factors affecting this are heat, amount of terp, porosity
of skin, perspiration, thickness of line, keratinization of skin,
whether or not you waved a dead chicken over it and how fast
butterflies were beating their wings in Madagascar. That is to say
.... you can make an educated guess about what's going to happen, but
alchemy and blind luck may blow your guess out of the water.

As many experiments as I've done with the terps .... I suspect that
the uncontrollable variables are as great, if not greater a factor
than the controllable.

The current fade-down of the "Oh my Lord Increase me in Knowledge" is
interesting in that respect. I terped it about 24 hours prior to
application (as I recall). In many sections I've been able to peal
away the near black terped (oxidized Lawsone?) cells to see the
underlayer of orange (regular Lawsone?) cells. The terped henna
penetrated to a specific depth, and the unterped penetrated farther.
I'm using the plain henna fingertip diamonds as a point of comparison.

If you have a lower precentage of terps, or shorter terp-soak, you're
apt (but not guranteed) to have a thinner top layer of darkdark color
and more underlayment of dreamsicle orange.

 


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