Rusty backplates...?

[Scuby]

Quick question - I did my first sea diving with my shiny new backplate / wing over the weekend (after a bit of playing in Stoney), and when I came to rinse all the kit down on Sunday night I found a few rust patches on the plate that definitely weren't there at the start of the weekend. I've just come out of the garage and the plate's had its corners rounded off a bit more and the whole thing a rub down with some funny light abrasive stuff and thats cleaned it all up again, but just a little concerned.

The rust patches were probably only a couple of mm across, about 5-10 of them dotted around the plate, so don't suppose its a problem as such - just surface marks. Will I need to actually look after the backplate more than I expected though? It'd always get rinsed off with the rest of my kit, but do I need to be more careful than that and rub it dry or anything to keep it from developing rust again? I might have just knocked some surface marks off and it might be fine, but what is the usual "maintenance" needed for a plate? Should I be getting any rust marks, ever? Should I just ignore very small splodges? Or do I just need to give it a rub down every now and again?

Hopefully i'm worrying about nothing, but as it'll be next weekend before i'm diving again I thought i'd try to get it sorted (if I need to do anything else to it) now rather than wait til after i've been diving again.

Cheers

David

[nigelH]

Originally Posted by Scuby

when I came to rinse all the kit down on Sunday night I found a few rust patches

We had that occasionally with the Combro plate. We finally put it down to splatter of non-stainless from the cutting process. Laser cutters are messy beasts. It rusted off and vanished so it was no problem. We swapped one plate where the owner was concerned, buffed it up and dumped it in the sea for an afternoon then left it in the garden to dry for a week and the problem had gone away.

I hate stainless steel - well it annoys me. I can describe the chemistry used I just don't believe it it should work.

[zepp]

quote I can describe the chemistry used I just don't believe it it should work.


tell me then...........

[Woz]

You can sometimes get rusty patches on the plate from where they have been bent- the particles of normal steel left on the bender embed into the stainless then turn rusty. To get round this, specialist stainless fabricators only work with non-ferrous materials to stop cross contamination. And my beadblaster will only blast aluminium or stainless and won't touch normal steel as it contaminates the bead.

If you rub the rusty marks off when they appear then eventually, after 2 or 3 cycles, all of the contaminants will come out then your plate should be rust free after that.

And as Nigel says, when stainless is cut the chemistry changes so you can get some rusting around the cut lines themselves and a little on the spattered bits.