There were a few steel hull boats built out of the stuff.... not too successfully as boats usually are painted. Bruce Roberts, a major designer of steel boats, gets quite abusive about the stuff when people ask whether they should use it instead of the plate he specifies :-)
Bruce-in-Bangkok (correct Address is bpaige125atgmaildotcom)
This is what works for me on a small scale:
1) Degrease really thoroughly. I use two-stage process with acetone followed up by ZEP industrial strength cleaner from Home depot 2) Spray with lemon juice. I suspect hydrochloric or any other acid would work. The rust appears in front of your eyes.
Don;t know. I used to think that roberts was living in Australia but a year of so ago red a two part article he wrote about cruising the French canals (in a steel boat, of course). I suspect that he probably works by modem these days.
Bruce-in-Bangkok (correct Address is bpaige125atgmaildotcom)
They do say it can rust through though not by pitting. However this lot may be surplus due to poor chemistry.
I have galvanized roofing from Home Depot on the flat wood shed roof where it collects rust-promoting oak leaves and branches over the winter. A few of the sheets had started to corrode from trapped water when I bought them (at a discount) and a couple of those spots lost all the zinc and began to rust after exposure. LPS-3 applied yearly has almost stopped them from growing although one tiny leak did develop.
It's a serious nuisance to spray a large surface I can't walk on. Most of the wood shed roof panels are weighted down rather than screwed so I can remove them for maintenance or replacement when a large fallen branch dents them. I can reshape a crumpled panel fairly well with a rubber hammer and pipe anvil but it needs to overlap by several corrugations afterwards to be watertight.
I roofed half of my storage shed with the galvanized steel, angled 45 degrees which sheds snow once the weather warms. The northern side is clear SunTuf polycarbonate, over PalRuf PVC which falling acorns soon punctured. To allow rapid repair I made two of the six panels on each side removable hatches and put a strip of PT decking along the lower edge to support a ladder.
My grandparents on a hill farm in Alabama had tin roofs on the house and outbuildings and being the lightweight kid I had the job of fixing them when we visited. They didn't have road salt or oak leaves and the metal had only a light coat of rust, mostly the wind caused damage there. I'm sure it was higher quality roofing than the 29 Gauge that HD and Lowes sells.
Another discussion on accelerated rusting;
Wow, that's a lot of experience you have with sheet roofing, Jim. I wouldn't have thought that acorns can do real damage, even to PVC.
Anyway, galvanized roofing was common where I was born, where many of the post-WWII houses -- no kidding -- were converted chicken coops. There were no housing developments around there then, and the demand for housing after the war was such that people were making houses out of anything they could get -- storage buildings, trailers, what have you. There were a gazillion chicken coops around and a lot of the chickens were evicted. The new construction, though, was mostly concrete block, because lumber was in short supply.
I don't know how thick the roofing was but it sure was a lot thicker than 29 gauge. It seemed to be pretty tough. A lot of it actually was tern plate; lead-coated, rather than zinc.
-- Ed Huntress
The colored Palruf is much tougher than the clear. They are 80' -
100' trees with few lower branches.PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.