MacTech
Enlightened
Over on the Spyderco knife forums (spyderco.com forums) I've been running a series of corrosion tests, in the hopes of getting Spyderco's *rustproof* H-1 steel Salt series knives to rust (do a search for my username MacTech, if you're interested....)
Corrosion test #1 was a Pacific Salt and some lesser knives in a saltwater spray chamber (2.5 gallon aquarium with enough seawater covering a bubblewall wand to create a salt spray, test #2 was using a tabletop ultrasonic mister and a length of aquarium siphon tube hose to pump fog into the tank, that test didn't work too well, test 3 was to do a "long term" test of the Salt 1 (same setup as test 1), but got bored with that after 8 days with no rust, test 4 was rusting a pair of Victorinox Swiss Army Knives, which began showing signs of rust within 24 hours in the salt spray test...
My original goal was to set up the fish tank with an ultrasonic mister, but was never able to find just the misting unit, until last night, I finally found an Ultrasonic Misting unit! WOOHOO!!!, and it was in the Discovery Channel store, of all places.....
you know that AromaMist fountain dish thingy they sell?, well it has a self-contained Ultrasonic Mister module, the module has some LED's built in to make the tacky lightshow, but the important thing is that the Ultrasonic module is a seperate component, designed to be fully immersed.....
plain old Ultrasonic mist modules usually retail for $40 on their own, not even with a tacky little fountain dish, and they don't have LED illumination either...
so i picked up the fountain just for the misting unit, heck, the fountain dish is still sitting unused in the trunk of my car, don't think i'm going to be using it, well, maybe as a coin dish, or something....
So, i took the mist unit, put it in my 2.5 gallon aquarium and plugged it in, the mist rolled and curled around inside the tank, *so much* better than in that silly little dish, the aquarium contains the fog better *and* cuts down on water lost to evaporation and splashing, thanks to the glass lid, once the fog is built up in the chamber it roils and curls inside the tank, the fog is *so* thick that i can't see my Salt 1 in the tank anymore, the fog is thick as the proverbial "pea soup"
after taking the linked QuickTime movies (Dialup Warning, 9MB), i took some electrical tape and blacked out the underwater section of the mister, as the LED's would make sleeping difficult due to their brightness, so now the only light exiting the tank is diffused by the fog
this is going to be one cruel test, a thick fog, a very fine mist of water and air, highly corrosive, not as corrosive as salt fog, but salt water would clog up the misting disc in no time flat, so the fog chamber test will be strictly freshwater....
here's a couple video clips of the chamber....
Movie 1, showing the basic setup and the activity of the fog with the glass cover open
Movie 2, in this movie i use my green laser pointer to show how quickly the fog builds up, note how quickly the beam gets diffused by the fog, starts out a sharp beam of light, ends up a flood
I've modified the setup since last night, last night just had the misting unit in the tank bare, i found if i put the center core and glass cap over the misting unit (it's the "mushroom shaped" thingy in the center of the bowl in the Discovery link) it controls the mist far better, limiting the height of the mist to about half the height of the tank
Corrosion test #1 was a Pacific Salt and some lesser knives in a saltwater spray chamber (2.5 gallon aquarium with enough seawater covering a bubblewall wand to create a salt spray, test #2 was using a tabletop ultrasonic mister and a length of aquarium siphon tube hose to pump fog into the tank, that test didn't work too well, test 3 was to do a "long term" test of the Salt 1 (same setup as test 1), but got bored with that after 8 days with no rust, test 4 was rusting a pair of Victorinox Swiss Army Knives, which began showing signs of rust within 24 hours in the salt spray test...
My original goal was to set up the fish tank with an ultrasonic mister, but was never able to find just the misting unit, until last night, I finally found an Ultrasonic Misting unit! WOOHOO!!!, and it was in the Discovery Channel store, of all places.....
you know that AromaMist fountain dish thingy they sell?, well it has a self-contained Ultrasonic Mister module, the module has some LED's built in to make the tacky lightshow, but the important thing is that the Ultrasonic module is a seperate component, designed to be fully immersed.....
plain old Ultrasonic mist modules usually retail for $40 on their own, not even with a tacky little fountain dish, and they don't have LED illumination either...
so i picked up the fountain just for the misting unit, heck, the fountain dish is still sitting unused in the trunk of my car, don't think i'm going to be using it, well, maybe as a coin dish, or something....
So, i took the mist unit, put it in my 2.5 gallon aquarium and plugged it in, the mist rolled and curled around inside the tank, *so much* better than in that silly little dish, the aquarium contains the fog better *and* cuts down on water lost to evaporation and splashing, thanks to the glass lid, once the fog is built up in the chamber it roils and curls inside the tank, the fog is *so* thick that i can't see my Salt 1 in the tank anymore, the fog is thick as the proverbial "pea soup"
after taking the linked QuickTime movies (Dialup Warning, 9MB), i took some electrical tape and blacked out the underwater section of the mister, as the LED's would make sleeping difficult due to their brightness, so now the only light exiting the tank is diffused by the fog
this is going to be one cruel test, a thick fog, a very fine mist of water and air, highly corrosive, not as corrosive as salt fog, but salt water would clog up the misting disc in no time flat, so the fog chamber test will be strictly freshwater....
here's a couple video clips of the chamber....
Movie 1, showing the basic setup and the activity of the fog with the glass cover open
Movie 2, in this movie i use my green laser pointer to show how quickly the fog builds up, note how quickly the beam gets diffused by the fog, starts out a sharp beam of light, ends up a flood
I've modified the setup since last night, last night just had the misting unit in the tank bare, i found if i put the center core and glass cap over the misting unit (it's the "mushroom shaped" thingy in the center of the bowl in the Discovery link) it controls the mist far better, limiting the height of the mist to about half the height of the tank
