Product Warning Alert


josephbw

Active Member
Tonight I was in my workshop working on a boxcar, and tuning up the couplers. I picked up my Kadee powdered graphite, gave it a very gentle squeeze, and was instantly drenched in powdered graphite. The tube literally disintegrated in my hand sending the mess on my sweatshirt, my lap, the workbench, my tools, both hands, and of course the boxcar. I cleaned it up right away before I sneezed and sent it throughout the house.

I'm only posting this to warn all of you about the hazards of using the Kadee graphite tube which I purchased in the late 70's or early 80's. The plastic became brittle over time, and imploded without any warning at all. I collected as much of it as I could save, and put it in an old metal 35mm Kodak film canister. That way it will still be in a container that starts with a K. :)

Consider yourself warned. :D

Here are the remains of the carcass.

P1010843.jpg
 
you reminded me when I spilled my quart of spikes on the floor....I picked up every single dern spike I could find...teeeeny...I still have that container and put spikes in it. Thats a long time on a container of graphite, plastic will tend to get brittle over time. I don't use any graphite or anything in my couplers, I just polish them up good with the wrong end of a drill bit. I think in my club I was working on equipment and found faulty couplers, opened them up and there was hardened graphite....
 
Nothing to do with trains but I had removed a ceiling fan in a bathroom and used some of that spray can pop corn texture to patch the area. I bought two cans because I was doing two rooms. Well I had one can left sitting out in my garage this past summer. One hot as hell Texas afternoon I heard a loud bang in the garage, went out and found that the can had exploded and sent that stuff all over my bench, ceiling, walls, floor and the worst thing of all it was all down the side of my street rod too. Yeah the can had been out there for about 2 to 3 years. I went and started checking all the spray cans in the garage after I cleaned up the mess.

David
 
I used to work at a plant outside of Lincoln that made hydraulic couplers for the ag industry (John Deere, Case, IH, etc.)
One evening someone in the assembly area dropped a box... and sent 20,000 ball bearings all over the floor! Took a while to clean those up!
 
For the graphite, I use a small shallow jewel case to store mine. It's easy to pick up graphite with the tip of an Exacto knife and apply it precisely.
 
Plastic, depending on the type it is will turn brittle and even disintegrate, under the "proper" conditions. If you're wanting another "warning" this is what happened to me several years ago.

The drain faucet on my hot water tank turned brittle and one day it gave way. I wasn't home at the time. When I did get home, there was a good 8" of water in my basement and garage. I was able to get the water turned off, and after a trip to the HoDo, I replaced the remains of the plastic faucet with an old fashioned brass faucet.

Insurance covered it all completely, fortunately, and got new carpet for the basement rooms. I also lost about 20 years of MR, RMC, Model Railroading, the Gazette,and a few others as well.

So be sure to check the drain faucet on your hot water tanks, or you could wind up with damage like I did.
 
A variety of things can and do happen. I use very tiny Rail Craft spikes. .022 dia. x .287 length, and had put them into a shallow rectangular plastic box with a snap lid to make it easy to grab a spike from with my needle nose plyers or even my fingers. Well one day murphy happen to be passing through and caused me to knock the box off the upper level bench work. It then hit the lower shelf I made for the transformer and then flipped on down to the floor and a throw rug I have there. OMG now how am I going to pick these all up? Ah, I remembered an old Cow Magnet, cylindrical with rounded ends, and held that and passed it over the cement floor as well as the carpet and picked up about 99% of the 300 to 400 spikes dumped all around. A little later another friend, Joe, that lives fairly close to me mentioned a good way to make a handle to hold the Cow magnet is to stick it in the end of a piece of old hose so it could be passed over the floor easily without having to stoop down so much. Darn Murphy, I now have a sign posted on the door telling him to Stay Out!

Say Carey, Thanks for the heads-up about the drain faucet on the hot water heater as that's what I also have on mine. A Nylon one, I believe, but your info is very worth while.
 
I used to work at a plant outside of Lincoln that made hydraulic couplers for the ag industry (John Deere, Case, IH, etc.)
One evening someone in the assembly area dropped a box... and sent 20,000 ball bearings all over the floor! Took a while to clean those up!
A member of the US Women's Hockey team always wears a string of pearls during games that her mother gave her.

One game the string broke. 30 pearls went everywhere on the ice....and were the same color as the ice.

Since the pearls could have damaged the zamboni they couldn't just tell her 'oh well' and continue. They spent the next 45 minutes searching the ice until every one was found.

She now has those pearls strung on a steel wire instead of normal necklace string.
 
Carey, how long had that water heater been in service?

About 10 yrs. We went ahead and replaced it the next year as the tank began to leak. Before I installed it, I replaced the faucet on the new one with the brass faucet off of the old one.

I always suspected that when the plastic faucet broke, that it resulted in a crack in the tank lining, due to the temperature difference of the water coming in to a very hot tank.
 
Leaks in the tank are caused by the expansion and contraction in the tank's material from the constant heating and cooling cycles, wherever there are soldered, brazed or welded joints. Electrolysis can also do it, but that usually occurs in the same places.
 
About 10 yrs. We went ahead and replaced it the next year as the tank began to leak. Before I installed it, I replaced the faucet on the new one with the brass faucet off of the old one.

I always suspected that when the plastic faucet broke, that it resulted in a crack in the tank lining, due to the temperature difference of the water coming in to a very hot tank.

Carey, if a hot water heater last you over ten years, you are doing very well. I'm on my third now. You don't know they are bad until the water starts flowing on to the floor.
Added to what everyone else said, the quality (purity?) of the water is also a factor.
 
I can agree with that WJLI26. We have a high mineral content in our water here in Birmingham. It's not as high as say artesian water, but it's still high. I flush out the HWH at least 2x a year to help reduce the mineral build up in the bottom of the tank.

Its a good thing that I know how to install these things when they do go bad. I checked with a plumber in my neighborhood and his cost to install was almost a Grand!
 
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I can agree with that WJLI26. We have a high mineral content in our water here in Birmingham. It's not as high as say artesian water, but it's still high. I flush out the HWH at least 2x a year to help reduce the mineral build up in the bottom of the tank.

Its a good thing that I know how to install these things when they do go bad. I checked with a plumber in my neighborhood and his cost to install was almost a Grand!

Wow! That's high. The first one went on the Fourth of July. Fortunately, the Home Center was open, and my son and I brought one home. It took us a while to reposition things, but once in place it was easy to sweat the connections, and thread the gas line. Second replacement was a package deal when I replaced the furnace and AC. It was pretty much a throw in. Biggest problem the first time was disposing of the old one. Hope this one holds out.

Our municipal water is well water. We filter the water we drink.
 
Where I am the water is called "hard water" because of being high in lime content. When we had a solar heated system installed about 10 years ago it had to have an upgraded S/steel tank to combat the impurities. At that time "Caboolture water" was well known for it's poor (lousy) taste. Always had a filter for that too. Fortunately we're now on the Brisbane supply which is much better. Still filter it though. Old habits. The solar tank came with a 20 year guarantee.

Lifetime guarantees I love, but just whose or what lifetime that is.......well?
 
I tried grease em on my ho scale atlas gp40-2. By the way a bran new model and the top cam off and he tube cracked. There is no other way to put it then i was screwed.
 



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