Where is the best place to buy chemicals?

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Let's be honest - Ligma Baldrich is robbing all of us and all they are doing is buying their chemicals from the vendors that you could also buy from! #stopsigma

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Ligma Baldrich is not getting their URL listed
Blasta Deck is also not getting their website listed.

[NurdRage]

Once you're far enough up the learning curve of chemistry, restrictions become mere inconveniences. You can make anything from anything else, as long as they have the same elements. A good supplier just reduces the barriers between you and what you want. You cannot be stopped if you really want it.

[frtzkng]

I am very glad so many out of the chemistry community contributed to an EU survey which, if left ignored, would have banned even more chemicals for private use. The participation is often less than 10 people, and we took that number over 200.
That said, if you're an EU citizen and want to do amateur chemistry, either set up your own small business, have business connections or give up.

[dejjal]

Ok, I work for a lab chemical supplier so I'll give you some pointers;
1. Diethyl Ether is a DEA List 2 chemical so shipping that from the US to Canada involves some paper wrangling but it's doable.
2. Shipping chemicals legally means finding the right carrier, Fedex and XPO hate 6.1 Toxic, ABF will ship almost anything except for HF.
2a. Not everything can ship overnight.
2b. Stuff like Bromine, Nitric Acid, and Iodomethane require special packaging.
3. PLEASE find an SDS for a chemical before you buy it.
4. There are chemicals that require you filling out a form, stuff like Carbon Tet, Grignard, and certain reducing agents.

[vancouveropenbsd]

I used to do ordering for a research lab. My job description included the phrase, "If shipping charges are outrageous, call up vendor and yell at them." Half of my job involved doing just that with Fisher. Oftentimes I could guilt trip them into giving us a break by saying, "Look, we're not a major pharma company or big university. We are just trying to scrape by on a tiny little NIH grant."

Eventually I got tapped to do a fully standards compliant Hazardous Materials Inventory Statement. See, the fire department told our lab director, "Until we know what's in your lab, if a fire breaks out, we're just going to stand on the sidewalk and enjoy the fireworks."

I'm pretty sure Sigma-Aldrich doesn't sell to individuals at all.

[xXCatalysticXx]

Every home chemist needs this as a reference.

[jsalsman]

Back in the 80s there were "book brokers" who for a high three-figure annual fee would allow you to call them and query their reasonably up-to-date catalog database (by voice only) of their ~7, 000 industrial process chem vendor quotations. They were well worth it for all but small labs.

[tandemdwarf]

If you're in the U.S., Ace Hardware is far and away the best hardware store chemical supplier. Lower prices (especially compared to Home Depot), often continue to stock recently discontinued items for up to an entire year or two, wider selection, and most importantly, by far the best and cheapest readily available sulfuric acid. The Rooto Sulfuric Acid Drain Cleaner is cheap as dirt and high enough purity I often don't even distill it.

[PhantomGamerMods]

As someone who’s never done any chemistry ever, I watched the whole video and can confirm this is the tier list of all time.

[LabCoatz_Science]

Walmart is pretty much S-tier here in the states, tbh. Hard to beat a liter of additive-free concentrated sulfuric acid for $5, and they also a ton of other useful chems in-stores (sodium hydroxide, HCl, glycerin, methanol, etc). Plus, they sell reasonably pure nitromethane online!

[davidbarts]

One trick with eBay is to write to the vendor asking if you can combine shipping if ordering multiple items. Many vendors will then create a special package deal listing just for you to buy.

[wuwucrafter]

Yes I have waited for this. Sadly, almost everything fun is banned in Germany

[gamemeister]

Home Depot my beloved. They started selling battery acid for something called a watchdog. Instead of having to distill out the sulphuric acid from the stabilizers in drain cleaner at over 700°F, you can distill out the water from this at a much more reasonable temperature, as it's 50/50 water and acid

[dudehaha]

Etsy used to be the prime place to get export banned Russian Ratnik body armour, both carriers and plates. Shit do be wild.

[Eivesohn]

I saw "Walmart" and immediately thought "I wonder if big researchers can get their stuff at walmart", then I remembered that a lab I previously worked at used grocery-bought low-fat Svelty powdered milk for the Western-Blot blocking buffer kahdksh

[MrMaddy]

apparently you can find phenol in a Tim Horton parking lot.... so i heard

[erics]

OMG, I feel for today's chemistry hobbiests, with the generic taint of being into explosives and drugs. In the late 60's and 70's, in Miami, Florida there was a chemical company and even a teenager COULD BUY ANYTHING. Just had to have the money. I spent too much there. Then there was the high school chemistry lab where one could "borrow" chemicals. The lowest tier was the pharmacy. I worked at one and was amazed at what chemicals were in the back room and untouched going back 20 years. Sigh. Not that I didn't do explosive things (only pressure "bombs"), but using an old chemistry textbook I explored stuff not normally seen and synthesized (among other things) Bromine, Iodine Chloride, Sodium Tetrathionate (my favorite reaction in how it crystalizes out), Chromyl Chloride, Hydrogen Selenide (dumb) ... of course Nitrogen Iodide. But not having the means to do dry synthesis, couldn't do sulfur chlorides and such. But oh boy am I lucky I survived my teenaged years.

[Rachel-sxzw]

A lot of hydrocarbon solvents used for cleaning purposes are refinery products deemed to far out-of-spec to serve as fuels, light lubricants, and technical grade solvents. Instead of being burned flared off, it goes to a company that blends the various out-of-spec batches of refinery product into marketable products (its kind of like bottom-shelf Canadian whisky). There was recently a huge fire at one of these plants in Texas that blends out-of-spec refinery products into Goo Gone and similar products.

[michaelimbesi]

Never done any chemistry myself, but waste chemical disposal might be a good video topic. I work in the maritime industry and sometimes, some allegedly unscrupulous companies will allegedly “dispose of” chemical waste by allegedly mixing it into ship fuel and hoping nobody notices and they’ll just get run through the engine and burned out at sea.

(Just look up contaminated bunker fuel)

[quintssenta]

> pure tar
Ah yes, the INVERSE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE: you can't transmute shit with it, but you always can turn anything into it.

[amosbackstrom]

Must be very expensive for the customs/postal service to open and test every chemically seeming substance they see.