Hi all,
You can make your own from "baking powder" (Sodium bicarbonate - NaHCO3), you can also get around the problem of needing accurate scales if you use fairly large weights and lots of dilutions (plastic measuring spoons or kitchen scales should be fine). You don't need to be able to measure volumes all that accurately either, as 1000ml (1 litre) of water (or dilute solution) weighs 1000g (1kg).
I've lifted this straight from Wikipedia, but it is correct.
"An aqueous solution containing 120 mg NaHCO3 (baking soda) per litre (1000ml) of water will contain 1.4285 mmol/L of bicarbonate, since the molar mass of baking soda is 84.007 g/mol. This is equivalent in carbonate hardness to a solution containing 0.71423 mmol/L of carbonate, or 71.485 mg/L of calcium carbonate (molar mass 100.09 g/mol). Since one degree KH = 17.848 mg/L CaCO3, this solution has a KH of 4.0052 degrees."
120mg = 0.12g but we could make the initial solution a lot more concentrated, 1.2g = 40KH and 12g = 400KH.
(This is where we get the initial "6g in 500ml" from, 6g in 500ml = 12g in 1000ml.)
So 12g in 1000ml = 400KH I'll all this "solution 1", and 100ml of solution 1 in 1000ml = 40KH "solution 2", and then 100ml of solution 2 in 1000ml = 4KH "solution 3" and solution 3 is the one you want.
So you can make a litre of 4dKH solution for the cost of 12g of Baking Soda.
cheers Darrel