Check Your Chemicals

Shop safety reminder; check your paint and chemical storage from time to time.

Yesterday I reached for a 3M contact adhesive rattle can among all the other cans of paint, primer, lubricant, etc racked on a steel shelf in my shop (We all have a shelf like that, right?). To my surprise, I found the bottom of the can was badly corroded. Hmmmm. A little poking around found 10 more cans just like it.

A plastic bottle of DuPont 5717S Metal Conditioner (original packaging) had somehow developed a tiny leak in its base. 5717S is a phosphoric acid concentrate used to prep ferrous metals. The acid ate about a sq ft of the shelf surface as well as the rattle cans.

Moral of the story? Maybe it is not such a good idea to store acids with flammables like paint and lubricant. Some of those rattle cans were pretty close to popping a pressurized leak. Maybe just a mess, but maybe also a fire hazard. And it's not a bad idea to survey your paint storage from time to time. Burning down the shop would be one of my top ten disasters.

Yup, I have had problems with my chemicals not leaking but permeating through the plastic containers. I have been converting to glass and metal containers.

Watch out for the plant fertilizers, root stimulators, etc. Some of those things will corrode metal (containers) too. (Ex) wife used to spill that stuff all over the place.

Mine was the

West Systems Epoxy cans with the pump------heat caused the sticky brown **** to expand out of the pump.

What a mess, luckily it is water soluble----cleaned up fine.

I now remove the pumps when I store the epoxy.

Lacquer Thinner

It had been a year or two (maybe 3?) since I had opened my can of lacquer thinner. I picked it up the other night and there was a strange sound. When I opened it, the lacquer thinner was gone. The sound was that of little rust particles shaking around. I guess I didn't tighten it enough when I last used it.

But good grief! Three years? I should have checked the can a long time ago. At least it wasn't the problem you guys describe where the bottom of the can corroded through.

For short term storage...

Mike S said:

West Systems Epoxy cans with the pump------heat caused the sticky brown **** to expand out of the pump.

What a mess, luckily it is water soluble----cleaned up fine.

I now remove the pumps when I store the epoxy.

Click to expand...

...I keep the two WEST cans/pumps in an old cardboard box lid. At least when the goop expands in the AZ heat, the mess is contained....

It surprised me too the first time it happened...

If you unscrew the pumps each day, you still end up with two things full of goop to be stored...