where to buy real chalkboard material?

[Stacey]

I am looking to buy, preferable a real slate or maybe EZ Slate chalkboard material so I can incorporate it into a project for my child. Any ideas? Thanks.

[Leon]

Actually you can use any material and buy the chalk board paint to create a chalk board.

[Stacey]

I like the idea of a slate type surface better than the paint..

[Andy Dingley]

Painted plywood is easier to chalk on than real slate.

[Guess who]

I chalked on real slate for decades with no problem, so I don't know where you get "easier" from. plywood is easier to cut and weigh a lot less. The only disadvantage to slate is weight and cutting to size, but even that's nothing to worry about in small doses.

Big advantage: When the kids are grown, use it as a sharpening stone. You can cut it up and make boxes and sell it as oilstones, and more than pay for slate and labour.

Possible source: Boards of education scrap schools, and you might be able to scrounge a huge piece like I did.

[Dhakala]

If you're looking for real slate try a roofing or flooring tile distributor. Long shot: a billiards supply house might have broken a slate table top recently.

[Badger]

Careful its not painted asbestos board, we're still removing those.....

Niel.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Why? It is perfectly safe and won't burn. Just use caution and proper gear if you are cutting it.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

To prevent it from spreading, wipe it down with acetone

[Leon]

Does that melt the fibers back together?

[Duane Bozarth]

No, but it seals in the PCBs...

[Dave Hinz]

I've always heard that a spray-bottle with dioxins in it was best for that.

[Leon]

I hear you, like the Dupont Freon thing. Thanks to Dupont we now have a Freon that is more directly harmful to humans vs. from the scare of depleting the ozone layer which was in worse shape in the 1920's. Shall we talk about the mold industry now. LOL.

[Leon]

Exactly, about 18 years ago I was reading about the Freon fiasco on an "uncirculated to the public" automotive trades magazine. Basically it was mentioned that the Swill scientists had discovered back in the 1920's that the ozone layer was in fact in worse shape than it is now, 1987 ish. Dupont was pushing legislation to ban the old R-12 because it depleating the ozone layer. Seems as though the real truth is that Dupont's patentent to manufacture the Freon was getting ready to run out and they had this brand new pattent on the new freon. Plus the new freon is supposidly more directly harmful to humans than the old. That's probably why the new safer freon must still be captured and not let back into the atmosphere when a mechanic works on an AC system.

[Charles Krug]

Am I the only one who noticed that Freon was "banned" (though it's still easily available in the Third World) just as soon as DuPont's patent protection ran out?

Funny that, no?

[Leon]

No, I knew about that about 18 years ago.

[Leon]

Actually Freon was not banned. R-12 is banned.

[Nate Weber]

Leon wrote: Plus the new freon is supposidly more

It has to be recovered because the EPA was getting pissed that people were not recovering all refrigerants, only R12. The 134A you buy for refrigeration is the same chemical that is in the cans of compressed air for cleaning computers and such.

Nate

[Andy Dingley]

Rubbish. Until 1957 and the International Geophysical Year, we had almost no knowledge of the upper atmosphere, the ozone layer, and particularly its behaviour near the poles. One of the problems with studying upper atmosphere behaviour is that we just don't have good data in reasonable volume until the 1980s - there was no way to get instrumentation in position to measure it, certainly not on a regular basis.

It's odd that much of what we know about the upper atmosphere is courtesy of NASA's second-hand U2-R, a relic of the Cold War, and also that plate-tectonics and continental drift was only convincingly demonstrated thanks to oceanic mapping efforts intended to hunt ICBM submarines.