While reading up on this subject I found a statment that under the right conditions copper can percipitate out of the steel and redeposit on the surface of other steel, this will cause rapid corrosion. After R L Musser told me of the staybolt problem they had I reviewed the Mill Test Reports of the PVQ plate and bar products I have recently purchased. Copper was anywhere from, (I'm going from memory, do not have the data in front of me), .04 to .12 with a max on one piece of plate of .33%. That is enough copper to be considered an alloying ellement.

I have been slowly collecting samples from boilers with this rapid corrosion issue, and if and when it is required I will have chemical analysis performed.

The attached pix is crown bolts after 700 days of service, wet layup. We replaced about 100 crown stays on this boiler for this condition alone.

I believe the corrosion some folks are finding needs to be exposed to the owners/operators of this industry. The real cause?? The solution will hopefully come from dilegence and more questions.

Robert Yuill