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Digression 3: Corrosion – Rust Never Sleeps
- Grazester 3y agoThis article is apt for me. I just had to battle some rust on a cross member under my car. It has some rust that I removed with a wire wheel, sanding a rust converted. I primed it and painted it and how waiting to install it. I guess I should expect to be doing this dance every 5 years give I live in the North East. I should have probably gotten the thing powder coated and call it a day(or life time)
- AlgorithmicTime 3y agoI've just taken to applying Cosmoline to the underside of my truck each summer.
- brutusborn 3y agoI don’t understand why your comment did so badly, I found it interesting. Does it cost much? I live next to the ocean and had just accepted that rust was part of my life now.
- AlgorithmicTime 3y agoI mean a gallon can is $90 plus shipping. It's not too bad.
- Grazester 3y agoAbsolutely! I just bought some of this stuff and plan on applying it to the to under body of the car itself also.
- userbinator 3y agoUsed oil apparently also makes good undercoating.
- AlgorithmicTime 3y agoI have environmental and health concerns about used motor oil. Cosmoline is specifically formulated for rust prevention and forms a waxy coating, and doesn't have the additives and pollutants motor oil does after being in an engine.
- ambicapter 3y agoThe concept of this website is interesting as heck. > Books in Progress is what we call a “public drafting tool”: Drafts will be made available for comment from the public, allowing for direct collaboration between author and reader. > As a reader, you can comment on a passage from the text, or respond to another comment. The author will accept or dismiss these comments. Once the author implements comments, a new draft will be created and the current one archived. Helpful commenters will be thanked in print at the author’s discretion.
- in_vestor 3y agoWhile the article mentions stainless, it doesn’t really give it enough credit. Lots of words describing the failures of the Statue of Liberty, but no words describing how the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and the top of the Chrysler building (both stainless) have persisted for decades with absolutely zero corrosion. My understanding is that this has vastly exceeded the expectations of the initial engineers. Stainless steel artifacts made today will still be around in a million years if they aren’t intentionally destroyed.
- TylerE 3y agoYou're OVERstating the power of stainless. It's stain less, not unable to be stained. Stainless steels absolutely can corrode.
- hnben 3y ago>> [...] Stainless steel artifacts made today will still be around in a million years if they aren’t intentionally destroyed. > [...] Stainless steels absolutely can corrode. yes, but according to the article, only in contact with certain chemicals and metals. So some items will remain for a long time (albeit not all)
- TylerE 3y agoThere are many different alloys that are called “stainless” with varying properties. As for “millions of years”… yeah, no. Certainly not on anything within 100 miles of salt water. Stainless isn’t magic.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- jschveibinz 3y agoI was happy to see this article. I was thinking about sacrificial anodes (cathodic protection) today for my outdoor furniture.
- fovc 3y agoStruggled a bit to find this, but here’s a link to the other chapters already written: https://books.worksinprogress.co/ https://books.worksinprogress.co/ Does anyone know if there’s an RSS feed?
- nickswhitaker 3y agoWe send out notifications via our Substack here https://www.worksinprogress.news/ https://www.worksinprogress.news/
- fovc 3y agoWould love some targeted RSS feeds if possible! Especially for the books
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- carapace 3y ago> The [galvanized corrugated steel] sheets don’t just have value; they are value. With two sheets you can buy a goat, with twenty an Ankole cow. Giordano Bruno said that whatever has the most value and the least cost of storage becomes money. This seems like an example? Amusingly, the "coins" store themselves as they are literally the roofs protecting other valuables-- and people! --from the elements.
- dredmorbius 3y agoApparently a fact you like repeating ;-) <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=giordano%20bruno%20money%20by%3Acarapace&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...> Would you happen to know where Bruno said this, as it doesn't seem any of your earlier comments gives this vital detail, and I'm not finding any likely references elsewhere? A definition I find useful (though not entirely accurate) is from William Stanley Jevons who identified a properties of money as: 1. utility and value 2. portability 3. indestructability 4. homogeneity 5. divisibility 6. stability of value, and 7. cognisability William Stanley Jevons, Money and the Mechanism of Exchange Chapter 5: <https://archive.org/details/cu31924013816172 https://archive.org/details/cu31924013816172> Points 1, 2, & 3 afford low cost of storage. Of those, I differ with him on utility and value, as we have fiat currencies and accounts notations of no intrinsic value themselves, rather utility and value are the inverse of trust in the money-issuing authority. "Seignorage" in specie is then a measure of trust, and fiat currency effectively has infinite trust. My own view is that money is that commodity which has the most universal appeal, that is, it's what is wanted more than any other commodity. That might be a domestic government-issued coin or currency, but often has been something else: currency of some other government (as in Ecuador, El Salvador, Zimbabwe, British Virgin Islands, and Bonaire, the last being a Dutch territory), or physical commodity such as cigarettes, cowhide, beaver pelt, grain, shells, silk, etc. In high-trust societies, debt and credit substitute for physical tokens. Thanks.
- carapace 3y ago> Apparently a fact you like repeating ;-) Yeah, I really find it interesting. It's so modern, almost like something from cybernetics. It reminds me of how Gurdjieff said that the "atom" of a phenomenon was the smallest amount of it that evinces all of its qualities. It only took seven years to get a thoughtful reply. Cheers! :) > Would you happen to know where Bruno said this I originally read it in one of Robert Anton Wilson's books (or possible a foreword he wrote for some other book that he didn't write, which probably isn't helpful.) I have no idea where he got it. Certainly money in practice and theory has become much more complex than it was five hundred years ago when he (might have) said it. I should tell you that when it comes to economics I'm basically a troglodyte. I feel higher economics is actually a form of numerology. I won't be offended if you decline to discuss it further with me. :)
- agumonkey 3y agoGreat article. Cross roads between old, daily life, technical.
- dang 3y ago[stub for offtopicness]
- lagt_t 3y agoI love the metal-related naming of Rust's environment. Quite charming.
- tux3 3y ago"We want to make rust just go away, and it just won’t. So we negotiate." Poetic words. Not to be taken out of context, of course.
- MereInterest 3y agoAs the article states, corrosive environments cause an acceleration of rust development, and salt water is often a leading cause. Therefore, if you want to prevent rust, you must avoid C.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nu11ptr 3y agoThe weird thing about being an uber geek: You see this headline and assume the article is about a popular programming language!
- zem 3y agothis side note leapt out at me 8<-------------------------------------------- The ongoing maintenance budget for the statue these days, I’m told, is about $6 million a year—$5 million for managing public access, $1 million for physical maintenance. And any year the $1 million is not entirely spent, the remainder is banked so that the fund will become sufficient over time to pay for a major overhaul. 8<-------------------------------------------- what a refreshing change from the whole "use it or lose it" mentality!
- flandish 3y agoShows it can be done, huh? Shows that when it’s not done it’s not done by choice. Shows that when it is done, it’s done to support the most iconic marketing tool of american hegemony and imperialism cosplaying as a symbol of “freedom.”
- zzbn00 3y agoVery nicely written article. One thing about rust, salt and moisture: salts deliquescence. I.e. they absorb moisture from air until there is enough liquid to dissolve themselves in. This happens below 100% relative humidity (around 75% for common salt, but as little as 31% for cacl2). So salt-contaminated surfaces can easily get wet even when the air is not that humid, bad news for steel!
- thelastparadise 3y ago...so we should be washing off salt from our cars when they treat the roads for snow? Or does the new chemical they're using not have the same problem?
- zzbn00 3y agoWashing the salt off will reduce rate of corrosion. Probably the most important to wash is the underneath. I suppose it is more important for cars that do not do that many miles/year as in this case the internal parts will last a long time.
- dmoy 3y ago> so we should be washing off salt from our cars when they treat the roads for snow? Kinda depends on how long you're gonna keep the car If you have ever driven old cars in the Midwest, terrifying amounts of rust from road salt is definitely a Thing. Or at least it used to be decades ago, I assume it still is now.
- ComputerGuru 3y agoStill is.
- doubleg72 3y ago“Rust: The Longest War” is a really good book I once read regarding this topic. Highly recommend checking it out for further reading… https://books.google.com/books/about/Rust.html?id=sEHqBgAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description https://books.google.com/books/about/Rust.html?id=sEHqBgAAQB...
- 32gbsd 3y agoDang that was a long read
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- HDThoreaun 3y agoI do enjoy a good Neil Young pun
- dhosek 3y agoWhen I was a kid, my dad drove a 15-year-old Volkswagen Beetle that was more rust than metal in a lot of places. The floor under the pedals was completely rusted through and my dad claimed that he sometimes had to start the car by putting it in gear and running with it Fred Flinstone–style. I do remember that there was one underpass on the way to the YMCA which regularly would get a few inches of standing water after a rain storm and when he would drive us to swim lessons, we could count on getting splashed.
- KRAKRISMOTT 3y agoBe careful, rusting cars are often structurally unsound. It's fine if the shell is rusted, but you don't want too much rust (beyond general surface corrosion) on the skateboard.
- dhosek 3y agoWell, given that he gave up that car in 1975, and no longer drives, I think we’re ok.
- jhallenworld 3y agoI have a 23 year old VW Passat. It's rust-free, but the clearcoat had rotted through, so for the fun of it I repainted the car with $150 of Rustoleum with a roller ("Hunter Green" from Home Depot- it should be sprayed, but I don't have a good place to do it and I'm not willing to pay). It looks good, but like a car that has been painted with a roller :-) What's interesting is that I also have a 13 year old VW CC. This car has major rust problems, it's as if VW forgot the recipe. I think it's partially a water drainage problem since most of the rust is between the door seals. But yeah, classic Beetles all seem to have the rusted floor pans. I think newer cars coat the floor with bitumen or something, or just have better drainage.