rust on one wire
 

I have rust on one wire on the mizzen lowers. What does it mean and what are the consequences. I cannot see any breaks.

Thanks for any assistance.

what do you mean by 'rust'

a brownish coloration ... or dark brown flaking rust ?

rust on wire
 

dark brown and some flaking

Do you mean one strand of a wire or one whole cable ?

If you have flaking rust(or grainy textured surface to dark brown rust area) on stainless steel it is cracked, crevice corroding and otherwise failing.

Perhaps a rigger may find on actual inspection that this is not the case, but based on your brief description this is my opinion -if it has flaking rust its gotta go, its failing-

Barber pole
 

Hello,
Usually what you are describing is an artifact of the extrusion process, wherein one yarn was inadequately cleaned as it exited the extrusion die. The resulting corrosion is from particles of metal from the die. But I once saw a piece of 1x19 wire with one mild steel yarn, and 18 stainless ones. Oops. If you have actual, deep corrosion going on, it might be that the affected yarn is not good steel, and, as Brian says, the whole thing's gotta go.
Fair leads,
Brion Toss

Candy cane stripe 1X19 wire
 

I periodically see 1X19 ss shrouds with a candy cane stripe of light surface corrosion. It typically affects about 3 yarns adjacent each other. I have never seen flaking. Other than that, all appears normal. Is there any reason to condemn the wire?

Thanks, Alison

rust on back stay
 

All my Seldon rigging I replaced in spring of 2009 looks good, except the back stay just above the SSB lower insulator. Light rusty stain that is running from where the wire enters the swag and runs down the insulator. Thanks for your thoughts

Something else?
 

Hello,
This might be something other than the "coffee staining" we spoke of in the previous posts. Is this definitely a swage, or is it a mechanical terminal, lime a Sta-Lok? If the latter, too little and/or the wrong type of sealant might have resulted in internal corrosion, and you are seeing the byproduct. Unsealed swages can also corrode internally, though I expect you'd then be seeing corrosion on other rigging pieces. Something must be different about this piece... the only other thing I can think of is that the wire used here is different from all the other wires, less corrosion-resistant. Can you post a picture?
Fair leads,
Brion Toss

Rust on 1/4" 316 SS 1 X 19
 

I re-rigged my boat in 1996 with Loos 316 SS 1/4" 1 X 19, purchased from West Marine.

After my maiden voyage from Hanalei Bay to Port Townsend, one exterior strand in the 1 X 19 cable turned brown with surface rust color, but not yet flaking.

I removed one stay at a time and treated each foot of the cable with SS Pickling Paste then neutralized it, then fresh water rinced the cable throughly.

As Brion says, I deduced that the one strand in the cable was contaminated with iron from the die it was pulled through, and as it was pulled through the lead scrubbers, that strand was not cleaned well.

Larry Pardey told me there was a wire company in the UK that uses jewels as scrubbers, but I didn't get the company name, nor why jewels would be better scrubbers then lead.

So , I re-installed all those Loos stays and used them without any further rust showing on the outside , from 1999 to 2005 on a cruising voyage to Thailand.

Now in 2011 I had a chance to un-ravel some of that old cable and found slight rusting and pitting on the center strands, that cable always looked bright and new on the outside, which gave me a shock .

Good surveyors recommend replacing all structural SS every 10 years, especially if the boat is used in the tropics, and I couldn't agree more with that rule of thumb.

Douglas , S/V Calliste, Singapore