Quick question.
When you go about tagging parts to be removed for asbestos removal, What is the best means of tagging? By this I mean is it better to use metal tags rather than paper?

Plan on years of outdoor storage or maybe damp indoor storage. Assume that many years (??) from now, someone else will be trying to figure out what goes where. Take lots of color photos before removing anything, and make a binder of large color prints. Label them!


Marking parts:

"Permanent" felt-tip pen black ink fades quickly into oblivion. Spray paint also fades very quickly. Painting with a brush is much more long-lasting than spray-paint from an aerosol can. Paper tags disintegrate and are often accidentally torn off when handling heavy parts.

Stamped metal tags are nearly indestructible. Use them. Buy a set of number and letter stamps. Attach tags with heavy-gauge rust-resistant wire: stainless if possible, galvanized is OK. McMaster-Carr www.mcmaster.com stocks these items.

Markal "Ball Paint Marker" are useful for marking less-than-perfect (i.e. rusty) surfaces. These are generally sold by welding supply stores. You may have to special-order them. They combine quick-drying laquer with a large ballpoint pen tip and a tough plastic bottle. (The toothpaste-tube versions tend to leak in your pocket when you bump into things.) Be sure to wipe off the tip after every use, or you'll throw away another $7 worth of marker. You have to squeeze the plastic bottle to get the paint to flow well on many surfaces. The results are not as weatherproof as stamped metal tags, but are much better than felt-tip pen.

Nissen makes a similar product, but it doesn't work as well on rusty surfaces.

- Doug Debs

Many years from now it will be all finished I hope! Thanks for the tip on the marker pens. I used them before on valve repair and also on the inside of various aircrat parts as we dismantled a jet. I had a look today and was stunned by the amount of parts that have to be removed to gain access for the asbestos guys..

We use a metal tag system that goes hand in hand with a paper trail... We have a handy little system that has a pre-made paper that can be filled out with a quick description, where it came from and where it was stored. The part gets a metal tag attached to it with bailing wire.

Aluminum pop cans cut apart into tag size pieces works just fine. An out of ink ball point pen will mark into the tag and leave an impression that can later be read.

Warning! Warning! Keep in mind that it is very necessary to have a complete action plan with funding in place prior to locomotive disassembly. Unfortunately, too many steam locomotive restoration projects get underway without hard and fast dollar and date numbers in place. There lays the risk of having an all too expensive project with too many unknowns ahead of you. You don't want a parted out 6069, looking all the worse for disassembly, in the eyes of the local power base! This is merely a warning. If you have already taken all this into consideration, please disregard this message.

Thanks Richard.
Money might be a small problem but it might be helping hands which will be a bigger problem lots of things have to fall into place before a single bolt is removed.

Pictures, pictures, pictures. We used that method along with tagging and record keeping and it made a huge difference in putting things back together that someone else took apart.

Many times during disassembly we stopped and took pictures and then noted in a log what had been removed that day, by then reversing the log and pictures you could reassemble without finding out something had been put in place that needed to be removed for something else to go on. I have been involved in both well documented and poorly documented jobs. The better the documentation the easier and more enjoyable the reassembly.

Thanks Andy, The log is a good idea as well. I photographed the engine from front to back top to bottem both sides yesterday.