My Sally Hansen's is cloudy????

[Silver Creek]

Hi Allen,

Basically if your acetone has picked up water, when you add it to the polish, the acetone will dissolve in the polish and thin it, but the water will not dissolve and will instead form very tiny droplets which you will see as clouding.

Don't know if you have any water in the acetone, but if do, then it can cause the sympoms you saw. If that is the cause, then the Sally Hansens is toast.

Regards,

Gandolf

I agree with Gandolf.

If you used pure acetone, I think there is water in the acetone. I think your acetone is saturated with water and when mixed with the lacquer thinner in your head cement, the acetone mixes with the thinner and the result is that the acetone is no longer able to hold the water in a polar hydrogen bond.

Hydrogen bonds are weak. When one breaks, the free water molecule must either find another free water molecule or another acetone molecule to bind with. When there is a smaller % of acetone in the mixture, there is a greater chance the free water molecule will find another free water molecule to bind with and then you eventually get a water droplet that causes cloudiness. Basically the lacquer thinner in your original mixture is "driving out" the water in the acetone by creating a situation that allows water droplets to form in the head cement.

I would get rid of the acetone by pouring it into an old open paint can and placing it outside to allow it to vaporize off. Then mix any residual with sand and put it into the garbage.

I don't use pure acetone to thin my Sally Hansen's. I use lacquer thinner. Although acetone is a component of lacquer thinner, there are other nonpolar components like toluene, napthas, etc that make lacquer thinners less likely to absorb water. And even when some water is absorbed by the acetone, when you mix the acetone thinner into the head cement the % of acetone is not changed enough to allow "free" water molecules to coalesce.

Laquer thinner is also less volatile than pure acetone so you won't need to thin it as often. Finger nail polish is a lacquers so why not use a lacquer thinner?