PAINT

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1661, 10 September 1925, Page 7

PAINT

THAT MAY SAVE MILLIONS

A problem that has been for many years the subject of investigation by Governmeint committees would seem to have been solved—almost accidentally—by a chemist in the service of one of the big companies controlled by Sir Alfred Mond (says the Weekly Scotsman). Industry in Great Britain is said to suffer a drain of something like a hundred millions a year owing to the corrosion of metal and wood fittings and apparatus by fume-laden atmosphere. Sir Robert Hardfield has placed the annual cost to the world of wastage due to corrosion at £700;000,000. The problem had presented itself in immediately practical form to a manufacturing firm in the Midlands, to whom it was a matter of life and death. Day by day the works buildings and plant of the company were being eaten away by the fumes of their own products. •Many preservative paints were tried but without avail. Finally a chemist was specially detailed to investigate means of preventing the damage, and after years of patient research and experiment a formula for a bituminous paint was evolved, which seemed promising. When tested it exceeded the most sanguine expectations. It is being put on the market in two forms—one for metal and one for wood. The essential principle of the paint is bitumen of various kinds so combined as to make them extremely colloidal or adhesive.

The discovery has significance for the householder as well as for the engineer and the industrialist.