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Rust is the Enemy
- Thread starter Susquatch
- Start date
I live 300ft away from the Fraser River tidal estuary in Vancouver. Humid is one thing, try humid and seawater. Last week was +40* C and high tides. I use lots of way oil, all my steel tools get the occasional wipe down with rust inhibitor, and table saw and milling table get paste wax. No flat shelves, all my shelves are the open wire shelves used for closets and pantries. No wooden tool boxes, and for cast iron stuff that gets stored on flat surfaces (vise, chucks, collet index,,etc,) I park them on the waxy rust inhibitor paper that they came wrapped in out of the original carton from China.
Wow. I live in the deep south of Alberta and that sort of rust issue is NEVER a problem. If it wasn't for the salt they use on the roads in winter I'd probably hardly know what rust was. LOL.
You live in Rust Hell. I imagine your environment is a lot like that disaster I had in the travel trailer with salt precipitate.
I don't know about the waxed paper from China. However, I do know that the VCI (Volatile Corrosion Inhibitor) stuff most companies use to reduce corrosion in shipment (oily paper, oily cardboard, etc) is only good for a certain time period. Longer if used in enclosed spaces and shorter in the open. The principle of the stuff is that the VCI corrosion inhibitor itself is volatile enough to fill the air around it and settle on metal surfaces. In other words, the VCI component evaporates. But it is supposed to resettle on metal. Some even claim that their stuff can penetrate micro cracks in the grain structure of the metal.
That's why I'd like to find a supply of the oil itself. Then I could re-soak the cardboard or paper to recharge it so to speak.
I did find some Remington GunOil that they claim contains some VCI. However, it's not very thick oil and therefore it doesn't last very long on tools. It's also expensive and as far as I know, it is only available in small quantities - 6 Oz spray pump. I don't know how much VCI it contains either.
Ya, clean dry Prairie air. Even when it's 40 below it doesn't feel as cold as it does here at zero.
I miss Saskatchewan....... I was born SW of Humboldt.
Ditto that, extended life of any machines is by large dependent on environment plus the state or condition one leaves it. Obviously both contribute greatly to shop safety. Now I ask you after a machine is left in a sad state of cleanliness what can you really expect from it?
My 2 cents worth. I for one feel for the man who has to work with rusty tools and equipment because that can't be much fun. Only positive answer I can think of is stay on top of it although I realize it's easier said than done.
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I know virtually nothing about lanolin and turpine.
What mix ratio? How do you apply it?
Where do you get the lanolin?
Where and how do you apply this cocktail to your cars and boats?
Lanolin is recovered from sheep wool. Turpentine is deadly, read on.
https://nj.gov/health/eoh/rtkweb/documents/fs/1962.pdf
Two days later and the 5 gallon buckets are only half full running full tilt the whole time. More importantly, humidity is down to 60%. That will go to hell the first time I open one of the big shop doors, but I'm very very happy right now! Even feels cooler in there.....
Chicken lights
Forum Pony Express Driver
That’s great to hear!
For the benefit of anyone following this thread, I discovered a few things about dehumidifying my shop. Read on.....
I was shopping for a small dehumidifier for my travel trailer and found an electronic unit with both great and poor reviews. I wondered why, so I read a few of them. The vast majority of poor reviews boiled down to the buyers sense that they didn't work because the produced very little water even in small enclosed spaces. That got me to wondering, could it be that a small space doesn't hold much water and they actually worked just fine?
So I dug out my psychometric charts and did some calculations. As everyone here already knows, warm air holds way more water than cold air. But how much water? Well, it turns out that the MAXIMUM water that a cubic meter of 30°C air can hold is only 30g (30ml). Not very much - and that is for 100% relative humidity. So that answers the critics.
So then I wondered how much water there could be in my shop?
My shop is 80Long x40 wide x16high with an enclosed space at one end. That's about 1500m3. So the maximum water that can be in the air in my shop is 43.5kg or 43.5L. And that's at 30°C 100%. It's much less than that at lower temps and lower humidity! Or looking at that another way, If I keep the doors closed and minimize the air leaks, I would fill less than one 5-gal pail to bring my humidity down to 50% from 100% at 25°C.
So much for worrying about cascading pails....... My plans have changed.
Of interest, three days later, both pails are still only half full and hardly dripping at all anymore. The units are set to run continuously. A separate humidity device says its only 37% in there.
So, my new plan is 2 large dehumidifiers set to 50% dumping into one 5 Gal pail each. Both pails will have overflow float switches in them to turn the dehumidifiers off if they get too full. I think I'll also put each of the pails into a large Tupperware tub just in case I accidentally forget about them.
Great analysis.
Another thing to consider is air of different properties (temp, moisture content) do not want to mix readily. One needs a mechanical means of moving the air around the building to force the mixing and thus extract more moisture so that the whole airmass inside ends up with uniform properties.
In nature, one can observe this phenomenon by watching advection fog form over a cold surface: warm, moist air slowly flows over a cold, frozen lake for example. The fog forms initially just an inch or so above the ice as the temperature of the air in contact reaches the dew point in just that layer. If you move your hand to disturb the air, you can literally produce a bigger fog cloud. People riding snow machines can trigger this as well.
Another thing to consider is air of different properties (temp, moisture content) do not want to mix readily. One needs a mechanical means of moving the air around the building to force the mixing and thus extract more moisture so that the whole airmass inside ends up with uniform properties.
In nature, one can observe this phenomenon by watching advection fog form over a cold surface: warm, moist air slowly flows over a cold, frozen lake for example. The fog forms initially just an inch or so above the ice as the temperature of the air in contact reaches the dew point in just that layer. If you move your hand to disturb the air, you can literally produce a bigger fog cloud. People riding snow machines can trigger this as well.
I've always associated turpentine as pretty strong paint thinner. How are you applying that to your car?
https://www.doityourself.com/stry/4-best-uses-for-turpentine
Yup, I am a farmer now. I spray nasty chemicals regularly. I totally get what you are saying and it is spot on advice. Wind mixing, temperature inversions and other localized conditions can have a dramatic effect on spray applications.
I absolutely agree with your point. That's why I have a large fan in the shop that runs 24/7 - even in the winter. I simply assumed everyone knows that so I took it for granted and didn't mention it. But it really isn't something that everyone knows, so I'm glad that you mentioned it!
Hey, another related story for you that underlines what you said.
A long time ago, I was up north in the dead of winter doing some low temperature testing. It was -50°C the whole week that we were there. I have lots of great stories from that trip but one that stands out to emphasize your point was how much the temperature dropped in the valleys. Keep in mind that our vehicles were equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation. When we drove down into the valleys, the temperature consistently dropped another 20 degrees. You could literally watch the temperature dive with just a few feet of elevation change. It was like an underwater thermocline. Amazing!
Chicken lights
Forum Pony Express Driver
Same holds true if you climb a tree, it’s dramatically colder 50 feet off the ground.
Seems there is a lot of factors in this % humidity temperature, air flow rust is always happening , my question is what % of humidity do you think you start to see a real increase in the rust forming is 30% or 50% too much? obviously less would be better and less would mean it would take longer to produce the same amount of rust.
Proxule
Ultra Member
Turp is no more dangers then an other petroleum distillate!
It is how ever naturally sourced ( distilled from the tree resins ). I mix mine so its thin enough to allow it to be sprayed from a spritz bottle. A nice fine mist on the entire undercoating and it gums up / hardens up, Just enough so it doesn't really attract any rocks or dirt, But still soft enough to be mushed by finger.
On machinery and tooling you can thin it out even more, I spray it into my door panels and nearly every thing and any thing else.
Has yet to fail me.
It is how ever naturally sourced ( distilled from the tree resins ). I mix mine so its thin enough to allow it to be sprayed from a spritz bottle. A nice fine mist on the entire undercoating and it gums up / hardens up, Just enough so it doesn't really attract any rocks or dirt, But still soft enough to be mushed by finger.
On machinery and tooling you can thin it out even more, I spray it into my door panels and nearly every thing and any thing else.
Has yet to fail me.