Yesterday I created a cheap TLC UV viewing cabinet. It costed me just over 40 euros to create.

It contains:

- Ikea matte black storage container. (I don't think they are produced anymore)
- Cheap glass photo frame (as glass filters UV-C, which is the worst for your eyes)
- black fabric Potholder
- Tesa powerstrips
- piece of stretch cord
- 2 TL-mini fixtures
- UV-C 6W lamp
- UV-A BL 6W lamp

First I cutted a piece out of the center of the lid and superglued the photo frame on top of that. Also a square was cut out of the side of the container. This square was covered with the potholder and hold together by the stretch cord.
The potholder was cut vertically to be able to enter the box for marking plates.
The two TL mini fixtures are attached to the lid with two tesa powerstrips each.

That's really cool! Thank's for sharing

Just the kind of ghetto science I like - nice work!

Anyone here tried making their own TLC plates yet?

From self-made silica gel?

That is genius man, well done!

A bit large, no?

Like the actively needed volume is like 1/20th or less of the space that tub appears to take up...

If you're really enthusiastic, why not?
Otherwise if you use some other ready or semi-ready source of silica gel, I won't call it cheating Dissolving a load of quartz sand in caustic soda (or potash) is surely a bit of a pain.

Wouldn't aluminium oxide also work?

Thanks for the comments.



I was indeed thinking to use the bin as an indoor pool initially, but the lady was a bit afraid of the costs for heating that much of a volume and I just realized:
' This is so easily cuttable, I don't have to paint it all black, I already paid for it years ago, it perfectly seals, I can compare multiple plates in it room wise this is my perfect TLC cabinet '




It could be done, but crushing silica is not something I would like to do without a proper mask. Also the polygram TLC plates are not too expensive. Aluminium Oxide plates are really dirt cheap from ebay. No need to make those yourself (unless of course when you enjoy doing so)

See this video:

In fact I already did this once, but I am not so sure about the quality of my product, in terms of uniformity of grain size, porosity and distribution of hydrophilic bonding sites. When I looked it up online, I read that commercial chromatography grade silica gel is prepared by carefully controlled hydrolysis of SiCl4 in wet ether. I won't be trying that on my kitchen top soon. Preparing reverse-phase silica also seems a bit hard to do for the amateur.


For dissolving quartz sand, you'll need molten hydroxides. That's not a friendly procedure. Instead you can buy some kitty litter silica gel and dissolve that in hot lye solution. Or just buy the waterglass. Then precipitate the silica with HCl and wash with copious amounts of water.

I wouldn't grind the kitty litter silica, the dust is very unhealthy and it'll probably wreck whatever apparatus is used.

Just to re-emphasize what has already been said, silica dust is super dangerous.

See: silicosis

Anyone going this route should work in a well ventilated area and use a full respirator as well as eye protection.

You only get one set of lungs <3

First test results for mescaline. I used pure cafeïne as a reference.
The solvent used was 99.9 methanol with a few drops of 5% ammonia solution.
PolyGram silica plates were used.

I ran 4 plates to test the density of the spotting. I found that a spot of 2 uL of 1 mg/ml cafeïne/methanol gave perfect clear spots.
The mescaline ( which is washed and near pure) however needs a bigger concentration and was not visible under uv at 1 Mg/ml.
I highly doubt that a Dried sample soaked in methanol would give proper results . At least a small extraction is needed and about 3 mg/ml will give detectable spots.

The faint spots above the thick caffeine spots is the mescaline

I checked with the rf spot calculator but iT doesnt match my four identical plates. Rf for cafeïne was 0.454 and for mescaline is 0.65. This could be due to the fact that fumarate was used in de spot calculator instead of my HCl or the eluent mixture was different. I know for sure my product is near pure highly active mescaline.

See images attached