beakers

How they design and analyze the coatings is another interesting topic, I guess only beer & orange juice naturally preserve themselves very well in metal cans.

In old times they simply had to wait to see how long whatever liquid put in them corroded away the material to the point of failure, or at least corrupted the taste, nowadays it seems they can test the liner coatings by impedance spectroscopy, sweep the metal and contact liquid with AC and somehow deconvolve an equivalent RC model of the chemical reactions taking place

The major manufacturer's liner formulas for particular products naturally tend to be super-secret.

Warburg impedance - the phase shift sits at 45 degrees over a an appreciable range of frequencies. It's actually ions diffusing under an electric field.

Mostly it 's the more mobile of the positive and negative ions involved. I had to make sense of it about twenty years ago for a liquid conductivity sensor in a dummy beer bottle designed to monitor a brewery bottle-washing line. Since the conductivity went from 300mS/m (2% NaOH) to 300uS/metre (tap=water) it was tricky, and I ended up measuring low conductivity at a much lower frequency (around 2kHz) that I used at the high conductivity end (around 200kHz) and made the frequency the actual output (albeit as somewhat non-linear function of conductivity).

I stab scalpels, sharp tweezers, needle files, thread taps and their associated tapping drills point downwards into blocks of polyethylene closed-cell foam, cut from the sort of foam frame that sometimes surrounds computers and test equipment when it arrives in a corrugated cardboard carton. I think this protects the cutting edges (or fragile tweezer points) from getting damaged by e.g. a hard glass jar or another hardened steel tool jangling around in a plastic pot or container. (It would protect my hands too, though I am less worried about that.) I have found that a scalpel can be stabbed very many times into the same piece of foam without weakening it to the point that its function is impaired noticeably.

For taps and tapping drills, it is also a convenient way to organise them by size and taper/second/plug shape. They stay in when the block gets knocked over. For larger taps (over 6mm, 1/4") it helps to pre-drill a hole in the foam, and large holes can be cut with an apple corer.

I am wary of other plastics than PE/PP, as my father once stored a lot of slitting saws and horizontal milling cutters on a dowel with sheets of some clear plastic (PVC?) between them, and it gave off a very corrosive gas that rusted them all badly.

By the way, where I live there is some restriction (perhaps a voluntary industry code) on the sale of lab glassware, particularly round flasks above 500mL, to the public. For some reason (lack of imagination?) they think that meth labs could not just as easily use any other kind of borosilicate cookware that was not sold as lab glassware. Due to this silly restriction, I make a point of acquiring such lab glassware to use for all sorts of mundane purposes, even when I could have just as easily used some other container.

Each of my X-acto knives came with a protective, hard plastic sheath. I leave these on the knives and store them "blade up". This helps me identify which of the items in the "pencil holder" are knives vs. lead holders, pens, markers, screwdrivers, etc.

There's the possibility of losing the sheath -- but, only if you place it somewhere other than on the desktop by the pencil cup WHILE you are using the knife. Then, replacing it on the knife when returning it to the cup.

Knives are cheap. I probably have 15 of them in pencil cups right now as I tend to want them in various places (for ease of access -- just like pens, etc.) instead of stored in a common place.

I have "drill indexes" for twist drill bits. This allows them to remain sorted (and labeled) by size in a convenient dispenser. And, little cases for tap&die sets (did I mention that I worked for a large hand tool manufacturer in a past life? :> )

Lightly oiling important tools is a good storage strategy.

I prefer to find things that won't further aggravate SWMBO thinking the house is a "shop". So, try to buy things that have some inherent appeal. I'd rather look at a cobalt blue glass than an flask, etc.

I've also made fabric covers for the monitors when they aren't in use (helps keep the dust off them and makes the room look less "techy") -- I have enough monitors here for a small business (30?)!

The CCP appreciates your service.