I have never been a big fan of the oil bath. Ever since grad school, using exposed Nichrome wire and a paper clip as the stir bar, it always seemed like an accident waiting to happen. Even with self contained heating elements like the Chemglass or Ace glass oil-baths, it still did not seem like the best way to heat a reaction. I have always wondered what a reaction exploding in a 200 deg C oil bath would look like. Would the solvent ignite? Hot oil flying across the lab? And the ritual of cleaning the NMR tube off before taking an NMR spectrum was a bit of a pain in the ass. So with properly sized aluminum rod from Ebay, the hole drilling started.

Such a freaking mess. Drilling aluminum is right up there with column chromatography. No fun! To the eagle eyed observer, that is a GCA Precision Scientific Co. “Big Jack” lab jack under the table to help move the drill press table up and down. Those lab jacks are the absolute best lab jacks made. The sellers on Ebay have no idea what they have. Pure gold those lab jacks.

But now the squad is all here. It also allows me to put a metal container on top, so that the system is fully enclosed in case of any sudden pressure releases aka BOOM!