distressed about shell

[alwion]

after joining, decided to dust all my stuff, and enjoy it. my 10" columbiad from ft fisher , a perfect shell when I got it 4 years ago, has a large 3" dia. bubble on the side and some cracks. may have had some glue injected in some cracks as I see some shine, but i never noticed before. no pitting or anything, stored in bedroom on wood stand, and back side which was facing the wall is getting ready to pit. Is there anything I can do to stabilize the pieces? Hard to believe such a perfect looking shell would start to fall apart or would have been water recovered without even the smallest pit.any ideas?

[acwbullets]

Your shell may not have gone through the proper electrolysis cycle. Most salt water shells have very little pitting but as time goes on they begin to flake. This is caused by the sodium chloride crystals that begin to expand. If they aren't completely removed during electrolysis they will eventually take over the shell. The same thing can happen to some shells that are recovered in fresh water but it occurs more often in salt water shells. I don't know what to tell you about trying to stabalize the shell. It may stop completely or continue to crumble.  If it were me I would sell it and buy one that has solid metal.

[alwion]

It was a perfect shell for 4 years, looked like it was just made ( I usually dust them 1x a year:(). this happened all of the sudden in one spot. Don't know how you would buy a stable shell, thought this was:(

[divedigger]

unfortunately that's how it happens, my pride and joy 200 lb Parrott did the same thing. About all you can do is knock off the loose stuff and clean it up with scotchbrite, then coat the area with polyurethane, 1st with gloss because of the high resin content, then with satin for the finish. The bad thing about salt relics is you can never know if you have gotten the salt completely out. I do salt test on mine but you can't tell what is hidden deep in a hard to access area.

[emike123]

I feel your pain -- I just had a 6.4in Read shell fall apart.  Nothing could be done, just had to eat the loss.

I just wish someone competent like DiveDigger had run it originally, not the dunderhead who did a quick job.   

[alwion]

I was afraid of that. I have emailed the dealer who sold it to me to see if it was ever electolisized? don't think thats spelled right, and the seller of my other 4 shells. two of them have bolt holes in them, I'm sure from having been run, but the dyer and brooke bolt don't . I know nothing about this procedure
1. does there have to be a threaded hole to run
2. guess it doesn't guarantee no failure
3. A fella named Steve had an site that said some like mine would have done this from a casting air pocket which might have draw moisture, and that it should be coated, he recommended micro wax over poly. On meteorites, we use ATF and let them soak several times a year, the oil has antirust components in it
4. on rusted edged weapons I use a linseed oil based product successfully for 40 years, but they wouldn't have salt problems

i'm learning alot, thank you all
I'm learning alot Thanmk you a

[alwion]

btw Divedigger, I licked mine and didn't taste salty, what do you use for a test?)

[divedigger]

Licking a shell is not going to tell you anything except how it taste, I use a chloride test kit from LaMotte laboratories. They have also a meter that I really like. But you have to check the shell in water after it has soaked 24 hours and reached an equilibrium. Kinda hard to do that at a show or a relic shop, and if the shell is coated you won't get a reading anyhow. It has to be done on bare metal in water. One other thing, try to display them in a controlled environment, not in the garage, not on the front porch(where my wife thinks I should put mine) and not right beside a heater a/c vent. You can allways put them back in electrolysis, but that is only good if there is a lot of salt still in. Usually if it spiderwebs it's fixing to do what it will do and electrolysis won't help much. Thanks for the kind word Mike, sorry about the 6.4, that breaks my heart too. I got an Eason shell at Charleston last year in a trade,and the guy said that it might have should have been run through electrolysis because it had a crack. He was right, when I put the juice to it the whole outer layer fell off. Turns out it was a marsh shell, they are the worst to deal with.

[emike123]

My Read that disintegrated had that micro-crystaline wax on it.  All that wax does besides making your projectile look like a candle is seal in a bad electrolysis job if it hasn't been done right. 

Alan, Divedigger runs his shells for over a year, probably closer to two, and changes the water weekly to get the salts out.  A normal electrolysis job for shells not found in saltwater would be a couple days.

If that is not done to a saltwater shell (my 6.4 Read was a saltwater shell too), then eventually it is going to disintegrate on you.  Caveat emptor for saltwater shells.  There are only a handful of guys I would get them from.  Like others, the guy I got my now beater Read from bragged on his methods high and low.  I'd like to run him through electrolysis   

[CarlS]

I might add that it's my opinion, without any empirical data to back it up, that if the salt water shell is allowed to dry out very long after found then the damage has been done.  I think this is the case with those that mysteriously fall apart.  When found they should be kept in water or at least wet until put into electrolysis.  Then they should be run for a minimum of a year.  There doesn't appear to be a way to speed up that process as the salts have to be pulled from deep in the shell surface before they crystallize which they do when drying out. 

In the attached image you can see the edge of a Harding shell that has been cut in half from the Charleston, SC area.  It clearly shows how the rust penetrates the shell at varying depths.  I'm sure a metallurgist can explain why the cast iron is not evenly penetrated.  But it's the rust areas like that shown that also soak up the salts from the surrounding environment.  And then when the salts dry and crystallize separating the rusted surface off the shell we get that surface scaling; thin in some places and thick in others.  On some shells that are not deep in the water or mud and thus get exposed to air (i.e. oxygen) to aid the rusting process this surface penetration can be quite deep.  It's a bit humorous to pick up a shell that looks to be in pretty good condition and find it weighs 1/2 its normal weight due to iron loss from rusting.

[divedigger]

yes drying out is the bad thing . That is what happened to my Eason. Mike in the early days I ran shells for 17-18 months, now it's 24-36 months.I change water every 30-60 days, depending on rainfall, as I use rainwater in the tubs. The 200 that split on me was run for 30 months. Sometimes it's just gonna happen. My very 1st shell was only run 12 months, and it has been just fine for the last 11 or 12 years. It's a lot like farming, do the best you can and hope everything goes right. But there are no guarantees, David

[CarlS]

I ran a 30 lber flat nosed bolt I found years and years ago at Sessionville for 12 months and it's been just fine.  Hasn't done a thing since I ran it.  While it wasn't real deep it was buried in more of a clay than the soft pluff mud found in the marsh and thus I think it got much less oxygen exposure.  It seems as heavy as the day it was fired.  The bad news was that it lost it's sabot.  The good news is it was in the hole with the projectile!   

David:  I really like your farming analogy.  It's right on!

[Pete George]

Alwion wrote:
> Does there have to be a threaded hole to run [electolysis]?

  No, the hole for electrical contact doesn't need to be threaded.  In fact, you often don't need to make any hole at all to achieve electrical contact for doing Electrolysis.  Because I dislike putting a hole in a relic, the only time I drill a hole in a relic for Electrolysis is when the relic is a shape which I cannot clip my battery-charger clamp onto.  For example, Solid-Shot balls and wood-fuzed balls have no convenient metal projection for the charger's alligator-clamp to grip onto.

  When I absolutely MUST make an electrical-contact hole, I use a very tiny drillbit (5/64 or 3/32-inch), so I can easily disguise the hole after the cleaning-work is finished.

  If your question was actually "Do I need to see a hole (for electrical contact) to know if a shell has been cleaned by Electrolysis?" ...the answer is no.   Absence of an electrical-contact hole doesn't automatically mean a shell hasn't been cleaned by Electrolysis.  Almost none of the shells I've cleaned has an electrical-contact hole ...because I'll clip onto the sabot 's edge or the (metal) fuze if the shell has one.

Regards,
Pete

[divedigger]

I don't drill a hole unless it needs to be drained of powder. My digging buddy John in Wilmington is very good with electricity(he built my power supply out of junk he had laying around about 12 years ago and it still works fine). According to him if I make contact with good metal, electricity will flow through the relic. In the case of balls with wooden fuse holes, I clean down to bare metal and drive a lead wedge against a ground wire and the fuse hole and I have contact. Grapeshot and shackles and I just wrap tightly with bare wire. I use a meter and check for current on the shell body to see if it flows. 

[Daveslem]

Good thread.