You see all sorts of things at boat shows some good,some bad, some recherche and others, well just kind of foolish. This weld you see here is just one on a very expensive piece of kit that you bolt onto the aft end of your boat. I am not going to say any more than that as I do not want to identify the product. Suffice to say that the welds were rather poor or rather the welds were OK but they had not been ground and polished. Not only would this have made the product in question look far better but more importantly it would have made it a whole lot more durable. Contrary to what some people will tell you stainless steel can and will corrode in the right circumstances; it is especially prone to crevice corrosion wherein molecules of water become trapped and stagnate within the steel which then sets up it's insidious work of eating away at the surrounding metal. This corrosion can happen to any of the types of stainless; type 316 is probably the most corrosion resistant and is the sort most often used for keel bolts and the like. What makes this core of corrosion worse is that on the outside everything can look fine and dandy but hidden away things are going from bad to worse. It is for this very reason why you should never use stainless screws to hold planking in place for instance on a wooden boat, things can go bad very quickly. Anyway back to the item above. This was proudly on display at the Miami show for all to see and even though this was a display model the welds had started to corrode in the atmosphere so I hate to think what would happen if this bit of hardware was actually bolted to a boat and sat for months or years in a salt water environment, I doubt it would not be long before it was a rusty mess. Polishing the welds is a time consuming and dirty job which I have learned from experience but it is a necessary evil, sure it makes it look pretty but done well the weld all but disappears and the microscopic holes left on the surface of the weld are removed leaving far less cracks and crevices for crevice corrosion to start.
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