Fertan - Any Good ?

[Honey Ryder]

I have a steel trawler and am doing some work on the mid-ship bilge (not the engine room) and want to prepare the surface properly prior to painting. After reading Bob Norson's excellent article on painting a steel boat, I was wondering about the use of Fertan to remove surface rust prior to descaling with a compressor and scaler tool and then applying POR 15 / epoxy primer / fairing compound / epoxy / topcoat as he describes.

Is the use of Fertan compatible/advisable with Bob's method?

[Blue Stocking]

What does Bob say?

[SurferShane]

Fertan and a lot of the other similar products all seem to contain the same active ingredient? I tend to read the label and find the one that gives me the most blast for my money. Regardless, if anyone has found one that works amazingly well please volunteer the brand name!

@ Honey Rider – no chance you could post a link to the article?

Thanks, Shane

[Marinheiro]

Fertan is good stuff (altho I have not used it in marine applications), but be clear on its use. It is not a rust remover, rather a rust neutraliser which you apply after removing all the loose flakey stuff - see the instructions.I believe its basic constituent is tannic acid (hence the name).
Need to ask, you talk about the mid ship bilge, then mention fairing compounds etc - not really necessary in the bilge. However if this work is on the exterior you should be grit blasting.

[hpeer]

FWIW, here is what I do.

Scrape, sand, grind, etc. until I can't anymore.
1 - Treat with muriatic acid (or is it puric? ****!)
2 - Use a two part zinc epoxy primer (Amercoat 302H - 1st ingredient zinc, 2nd cement, 3rd epoxy)
3 - Top coat with a 2 part primer (Amercoat 370)
4 - Water tanks were then topped with two part stuff for potable water tanks (Amercoat 133.) That pretty much gave the paint guy a heart attack, that I the 302 and 370 on in a water tank. Seems OK to me.


Make sure to use ventilator for organics. I didn't and got myself sick for a couple of months.

Not that this is the best, it is what I do.

I think Brent Swain does something similar.

[barnakiel]

If the surface is prepped correctly (sand blasted till shiny) Fertan is not necessary. If it is not, Fertan will not help.

Fertan is good stuff. Not any better than other rust converters though.

Blasting, zinc or/and epoxy are twice as good.

b.

[SurferShane]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

If the surface is prepped correctly (sand blasted till shiny) Fertan is not necessary. If it is not, Fertan will not help.

Fertan is good stuff. Not any better than other rust converters though.

Blasting, zinc or/and epoxy are twice as good.

b.

After doing heaps of rust repairs on cars around the ocean I have to agree. The only way to get longevity out to the repair was to totally rid the area of rust using a softer grinding pad. If you leave any traces of the rust even with the so called converters it inevitably wants to eat its way back to the surface and you end up doing the same repair twice.

This is also the reason I am up for any suggestions before I go wasting either time or money doing any more temporary repairs on the boat.

[David M]

Have you considered a small sand blaster? It's messy but getting the metal down to bright steel is the surest method of getting your coatings to stick forever.

You might also want to look into a needle gun if the blaster does not seem appealing.

[SurferShane]

Originally Posted by David M

Have you considered a small sand blaster? It's messy but getting the metal down to bright steel is the surest method of getting your coatings to stick forever.

Last weekend I met a bloke on the lake who had his own steel boat and worked on the tugs. He was telling me he personally uses a mini sandbaster on his own boat. Somehow he runs the compressor off the boats engine. He said it was a slow process that worked.

He was also telling me about a two part commercial epoxy primer they had been successfully using on the tugs. Apparently it was manufactured by Wattyl paints. He was saying it was a lot cheaper than similar products. It is a pity I have forgotten the name, but it could be one of the following,

http://www.wattyl.com.au/Industrial/Pages/MetalCoatings.aspx

[TOM]

We have a steel boat and are currently using Fertan but only because we have run out of "Metal Ready" which i believe is a far superior {and more exspensive} product. Metal ready in our exsperience takes just about all the rust off and neautralizes whats left, i'm surprised you are not using it as it is part of the POR 15 process.

I do agree thou that the best result is obtained by getting right back to bare metal.

....I love how our Fertan container says poisonious at the top and non toxic at the bottom. Can you have something that is poisonious and non toxic at the same time?

www.byamee.com

[barnakiel]

Women?

[conachair]

I haven't tried it yet but a friend had good results on his deck. Not really sure if there's much to choose between them, they all contain phosphoric acid, though Fertan seems to have a few other ingredients as well. I wouldn't go near por 15 again , 2 part epoxy only now. I've used ospho with good results for a while now, with amerlock primer - Amerlock Catalog | Ameron Performance Coatings | Amercoat | Amershield | Amerlock | PSX | Dimetcote | Nu-Klad | Pacific Southwest Coatings , great primer, takes a long time to go off and is very runny, gets into all the little pitts and crevices. I think everyone will agree that sandblasting is the best but it's illegal in many places now and inside really not practical, you might as well take the boat apart completely as the sand or grit will get absolutely everywhere. I chip first, then use a sandpaper flapdisk on a grinder to get to shinely steel then acid. Even if you think the rust is all gone put some ospho on it and you'll see the rust bubbling away in the tiny pits in the steel. Any rust left under the paint will come back again sooner or later, I really think acid etching buys a lot more time.
Incidentally, phosphoric acid is the stuff in coco cola which makes pennies shiney. And we drink that stuff!


PS, download this from a guy who knows his stuff.
http://www.lulu.com/product/file-dow...-guide/4735597

[Honey Ryder]

thanks everybody.

the link to bob's article is:

Painting on Rusted Steel

does anybody know how to contact him?

the job is inside the boat so blasting is not really an option. i will goe for the scaler/needle gun, a grinder, and a nasty wire brush attachment for my drill.

note that bob mentions wattyl products in his article.

re phosphoric acid: is it used to remove tiny specks of rust the eye can't see? is there a trade name i can buy>

having read up a little on rust i now understand that it is oxygen and not water that causes the problem. remove all oxygen and there will be no rust. maybe explains why the titanic is still intact (low oxygen levels deep down). water carries oxygen and it works on the paint over time so the oxygen gets to the steel and then it starts rusting. so the trick seems to be to get back to bare metal and then to coat it so that no oxygen gets to it...hence the por 15 and/or epoxy, both of which are inpervious to water. the other trick is to make sure that the protecting layer of paint isn't damaged (scratched) by loose screws or anything else that might chafe it. apparently some car paint will rust through if not waxed because the water eventually gets absorbed by the paint and it gets to the steel underneath which then rusts.

thanks everybody!

[hpeer]

This spring we bought a 1987 steel cutter. It has 285 gallons of water tankage. Taking the top off the inside of the tanks still had pretty good coverage of the epoxy coating. But........it had blistered really badly. At first I was really upset by this but I got in there with a grinder and had at it. When hit with the sanding wheel the bubbles would let loose with some water but underneath there was NO RUST. Bright shiny metal.

I have seen something similar on my other boat, the coal tar epoxy came loose but the metal underneath was like the day it was coated.

My only suggestion is that the water that got in there was depleted of free oxygen and therefore no rust.

I ground out as many of the bubbles as I could and went back over with my normal treatment. So the tanks now have about 5 coats of two party epoxy.

FWIW I find phosphoric acid at Lowes or Home Depot in gallon jugs. Sold for cleaning driveways or some such nonsense.

[SurferShane]

Originally Posted by Honey Ryder

thanks everybody.

the link to bob's article is:

Painting on Rusted Steel

does anybody know how to contact him?

Thanks for the link.

As far as the contact is concerned I would be emailing Coastal Passage. They might even have his contact details somewhere in the mag?

The survey who did my boat also made similar comments about stopping rust by keeping the oxygen out. He cited the capping on metal piers as an example. Likewise, he advised me to just keep adding the layers of paint till I sealed it.