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Posted by D Sherman [72.47.9.228] on Sunday, May 15, 2011 at 14:38:20 :
In Reply to: GI gas can repair posted by Paddyofurniture [74.206.68.36] on Sunday, May 15, 2011 at 11:14:21 :
This seems like a good place to test the various gas tank treatments without risking too much. I've collected a lot of old jerry cans, since they're rapidly disappearing, but have yet to try to clean up the really bad ones. Most of them are either rusty inside or someone used them to store dirty motor oil or something similar and they have black sludge all over the insides. The sludgy ones are actually better because once rinsed out with several changes of gasoline and shaking, they are usually not rusty. I'm not sure what to do with the rusty ones. There are lots of ways to remove the rust, like shaking with gravel inside, any sort of acid, and the electrolytic method. The trouble is all fuel ends up with a certain amount of water in it and I find that any bare steel fuel container rusts in short order.
It might be worth trying some of that cheap gas tank sealer that JC Whitney sells on a Jerry can just to see if it works, or if you had some left-over POR15 try it.
Someday I'd like to try really restoring one properly with terne plate. Long ago, lots of steel stuff, especially tanks, used to be coated with what they called "terne plate". It's basically a high-lead solder, about 80% lead and 20% tin. The procedure would be to pickle the can thoroughly with acid until it's bright and clean inside, heat it up, dump plenty of zinc chloride flux (made by dissolving scrap zinc in muriatic acid until it won't hold any more) inside, and shake it around, then get it hot enough to melt the tin/lead alloy, put plenty of it in, tilt and shake it until it's all over the inside (probably wearing foundry gloves), and pour out the excess. That should make a jerry can that will last forever. A suitable terne alloy could be made with about equal parts 50/50 plumbing or body solder and pure lead. Old lead drain pipes are an easy source of pure lead. To get the whole thing evenly hot, I'd probably use a wood fire burned down to coals.
Essentially, this is 18th century technology so there's nothing fancy about it. Terne plating was used prior to galvanizing since galvanizing requires pure metallic zinc which wasn't widely available prior to electricity. Terne plating is nice and soft so the joints don't crack from bending, and unlike galvanizing, it's resistant to acids.
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