RUSTING(THURUPIDIKKAL)
Dearfriends, Afterabout three months of my involvement, two days back I could replace the rustediron sheet part of my front gates. The first lathe, whom I contacted, wantedtime to get best quality sheet from Coimbatore. He had done the gate and grillworks during construction. Time passed. I contactedanother lathe. This lathe who did some recent works of fencing in my home wantedone month time to finish earlier works and get quality iron sheet. They havedone the work now. I thought today Rusting can be my topic.Rusting I have taken in a broader sense in this posting. Recently I read a mailwhich stated Gold is the only metal which would not get rusted even afterhundreds of years. Rustingor some sort of decay occurs if not used not only for iron but for other metalsalso. At the same time over use can create early damage. A nostalgic look in to rusting. Sincerely, GopalaKrishnan 07-09-2021 1. Some sort of rusting is good. Whileconstructing RCC structures for my home, the rusting on the iron rods was notremoved unless it was too much rusted. Rather than a herculean task, buildingengineers are of the opinion; it gives a little more grip to concrete with jelly and cement. 1a Carbon steel Isit steel or iron was my first doubt. I recollected, I used Tata steel for RCCin my home. So I desired to know about it. The steel used for RCC was CARBONSTEEL. The content of carbon gives hardness to the steel. I recollected I paidabout Rs 40000-00 for Tata steel. 2. My grill windows. Afterknowing about the carbon mixing; now I could make out that grills, more brittleand hard has MORE CARBON WITH IRON. Toavoid rusting we give a paint coating, after applying a special paint calledPrimer. I have seen only brown colour primer and it is applied by the lathe itselfand the item is supplied with primer coating. I checked now the sheets brought by the grillman. I could make out it was best quality. 2a. Rusting in knives Rustingin the locally made knife, would first get transferred to the item cut with it, and cutting is also difficult witha rusted knife. Normally rusting if any is removed along with sharpening, byforcibly moving it on a granite surface or abrasive. Rustinggets removed and knife too gets sharpened. Another method is applying a smallquantity of oil and wipe with a cloth to remove rusting. It may remove rust,but might not sharpen the knives. RecentlyI had a carpentry work. The carpenter applied oil and then started working withhis hand saw. I asked him, will it not affect the sharpening and increase thetime required for work. His reply was interesting. By applying oil, his saw issafer, only effort is more. Saw is costly. Nowwe get steel knives and small abrasive to sharpen knives in metal shops. 3. Pazham murikkunna pitchatthi. Theplantain being soft, a sharp knife may not only cut the plantain, but even theholding hand. So for cutting plantains only small knives with more thickness andless sharp are used. Butto cut a jack fruit or Elephant yam, we require knives of with more length,breadth and sharpened cutting side. I have seen on those days Hand axe (Kai kotali)was used to cut the jack fruit in to small pieces. I have seen in whatsappmachine for cutting jackfruit to smaller pieces recently. 4. Kotali and rusting. Kotali,koonthali, Manvetti (Powrah) are all liable for rusting if not used frequently.In the shops, they are painted and kept to avoid rusting. 5. Kacchi adikkal (Heating and blowing) Theblack smith for sharpening the tools, heat at a high temperature for flexibility,Then it is blown. A somewhat easy process, but care and caution arerequired in the process. After the job, the sharpened are is cooled and used. Thisarea appears bright and not easily gets rusted if cleaned and kept. Mycuriosity started with this BRIGHT NOT RUSTING AREA. Why moister cannot reactwith it, as with other areas. WhatI could gather about it- With raw iron, rusting is quicker. So for the tools the cutting edge isprovided with an alloy of iron, and not getting rusted. 6. Galvanising GALVANISINGis a method to avoid rusting. Our mostfamiliar bucket for fetching water from the well comes galvanised, giving thesilvery appearance at least in the first one year. Depend on the quality of galvanising;bucket would not get rusted for long period. Where galvanising is not properrusting may appear in the bucket. Telecommunicationcomponents used in the open are/ were galvanised on this account. Similarly themetallic poles of iron content used by electricity department. If we observe thetower lines of electricity department, about 12 feet of the angles from bottom arepainted periodically in silver colour to avoid rusting. Yes,now the query- what is galvanising. It is application of ZINC OVER THE IRONSURFACE. So a galvanised sheet is an iron sheet over which zinc is coated.Probably the sheets being more costly, not always available in tin sheet shops. 7. Galvanised iron pipe or in short GIpipe. Weuse GI pipe in many locations, where sturdiness is more criteria. But in duecourse it may get rusted. So where replacement is difficult, quality PVC pipeis used. One could remember at joints, the threading get corroded in old pipes. Ihad recently problem with my washing machine. Checking by technician, he foundthe water coming was less. The metal pipe threading had rusted and almostclosed water coming though inlet pipe. 8a. Road crossing Whiletaking water supply connection to my residence, for road crossing, thinking offuture difficulty of cutting the road, PVC pipe was been laid, and connected atends to GI pipes, where it is flexible to replace. But still my doubt-At leastin very three years the road is re-laid and height is increased. Whether thePVC pipe would withstand the pressure? 8b. Falling of coconut leaves. Recentlywe had a never imagined occurrence. Previous night we had good rain, and nextday when we switched on the motor to fill over head tank, water flowing outsound was observed. On seeing around we found the mischief was played by a heavycoconut leaf, exactly falling over the PVC pipe in an area breaking it, ofdistributing water. We replaced that area with GI pipe to avoid furtheroccurrence, on our pressure with reluctance, the neighbour cut the coconut treeslanting mostly to our home. 9. Stainless steel Weuse a lot of stainless steel now days especially as vessels in the kitchen. Ihad an interest to know how it has become stainless steel; the basic material usedis iron. But it is an alloy of CHROMIUMand iron. The chromium gives the shining and non rusting quality. 10. Irumpu Danam Kodukkamo? Whenstainless steel came in market, I was a boy, not knowing anything about alloys.At that time, during a function, giving of danam was under discussion. One ofmy atthans was more knowledgeable. He said-Stainless steel is mostly iron. Canwe give iron vessel as danam? Stainlessis iron was a new information to me on those days. Normally for Danams, copperor brass vessels are used. Now too for kalasam, our sasthrikal would write-Pitchalai kudam perisu –(Brass pot big). In my next posting I will go some moretechnically details about IRON ALLOYS. I have not touched cast iron, ourcheena chatti, in this posting. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/356759419.2677515.1631024006582%40mail.yahoo.com.
