March 20, 2015 (continued)
Regarding the methanol, I did some research. I was originally going to go with Denatured Alcohol, which is 90+% ethanol and can be found conveniently at hardware stores, but I found that it doesn't have as good of benefits as does Methanol so I looked elsewhere. In the past I had purchased a 5-gallon bucket of Methanol but the problem was that I use it so slowly that the alcohol would go flat before I could even use it all. So looking around I found that I could use HEET, a gasline antifreeze, which is 100% methanol and can be found at any auto parts store. So I did some different shopping around and took some notes:
HEET, Amazon, one 12oz bottle - $4.70 - price per 1/2 gallon: $25.07
HEET, NAPA, one 12oz bottle - $2.49 - price per 1/2 gallon: $13.28
House Brand, NAPA, one 12oz bottle - $2.22 - price per 1/2 gallon: $11.84
Case of Polar, Amazon, twenty-four 10oz bottles - $27.95 - price per 1/2 gallon: $7.45
So while $7.45 per use seems like a lot (50/50 mix), the Denatured Alcohol approach is over $15 per half-gallon. So this approach is more than 50% cheaper and it's of a better, preferred methanol alcohol.
Broken down per bottle, it's $1.24, and if I use six, then it's a 46.9% methanol and 53.1% water (by volume). I'm happy with this.
Here I am entering five (because I was only down to about 60% water). I did have a bottle of HEET in my garage that was a few yrs old, but I figured what the hell so threw it in.