Concrete floors and chainsaws don't mix

[Buck1278]

When I bought my jonsered 621 the dealer said that it had been sitting in the previous owners basement for some time and has some corrosion on the bottom of the crankcase. I was a little skeptical, but it makes sense, and this might reinforce his reasoning for the corrosion.

 

[Bill G]

Buddy of mine "discovered" a couple of old homies in a barn on the dirt floor.
When he brought them to me and we started washing the caked on dirt off we washed right on thru to the crank. Th bottom was so corroded that it just ran right off with the dirt.

You should see what the old dirt floor did to a 84" Mac bar I bought years back

 

[Moss Man]

Well well, looks like a have a pretty good sized project facing me, most of these are still sitting on the floor. The basement is heated, but the floor is quite cold;

 

[DroppedP51]

oh no Im too late

 

[belgian]

Sure, my ol' 621 sat on concrete for years before I "saved" it (my FIL gave it to me).

It show no such damage at all!

Niko, I have seen a lot of saw cases eaten up by corrosion just by sitting on a concrete floor for a long time. Corrosion is a matter of time given the right circumstances (temp, moisture, ...) and concrete is not your friend, you can believe Jacob.
I will never ever store a saw on a concrete floor.

 

[Net-Knight1]

Contact corrosion! Magnesium is in the air relatively corrosion resistant, but faster eradicates on contact with water or acids so.
If there were other metal objects, such as Splitting wedges, it may even come to galvanic currents, where magnesium is then relatively bad deal and is therefore also popularly used as a sacrificial anode.

Sorry for my bad writing, i Hope you understand.

 

[a. palmer jr.]

Just in case, I went out this morning and took the Homelite Super 2 off the garage floor and put it on the antique cook stove in my garage. The other two saws were late model Poulans. I turned them over and both were plastic. I left them there...doubt if dampness will hurt plastic.

 

[a_lopa]

I have always avoided leaving saws on concrete due to it burning coils out.

 

[BobL]

its probably the lime that does it,cold concrete was what i have been told ,stand to reason if you heat a battery it will actually charge its an old bush trick,put one near a camp fire,but not to close or it will destroy it

Heat doesn't actually charge a battery, but speeds up reaction rates and clears some of the gasses away from the electrodes so that it can more effectively deliver what charge is still has.

Most batteries do not run out of charge the physical and chemical conditions inside them prevent the further removal of charge. An ordinary dry cell battery still has 90%+ of its charge remaining after we think it is dead - it's just that the charge cannot get out of the battery.

Magnesium is insoluble in pure water and even in moderately alkaline solutions such as would come from sitting on concrete. My understanding is that the amount of corrosion it suffers when sitting on concrete has to do with any small amounts of chloride in the concrete. This comes from the water used in mixing the concrete and is why some concrete is OK and some is not. Air moisture condensing on saws contains high amounts of carbon dioxide which dissolves into the water forming carbonic acid which also dissolves Mg. It might seem like it comes from the concrete because the water drips to the bottom of the saw where there are more paint scratches than anywhere else and this is why it corrodes faster there than anywhere else on a saw. Another source of corrosion some of us might not be familiar with is the sawdust from some type of plants like palms which can be very corrosive. One of my arborist friends coats the entires clutch area around his saws with a film of grease before he tackles some types of palms, and when he's done he washes his saws down to get all the palm juice off.

 

[BIG BEAM]

Magnesium is what they call a sacrifcial (sp) metal.It's what's used in water heaters so the anode rod corrodes instead of the steel tank.I think it's also used on outboard motors also so it corrodes instead of the aluminum.
DON

 

[Moss Man]

The wifey and I planned out some low coat shelves today, all our saws will be off the cement floor by weeks end.

Isn't this board just the cat's **s?

 

[youngs24]

Just wanted to remind people that magnesium chainsaw cases and concrete don't mix well. Below is a picture of a saw that I acquired that had been sitting on a concrete floor for years. The owner didn't know that he was damaging his saw. I didn't see the floor but I would imagine that newer concrete that gets damp would escalate the chemical reaction from concrete to the saw case.

well the problem is when who ever pour the concrete floor they used calcium chloride to make the cement set up faster in cold weather the problem is when you lay tools or anything metal on the floor it will sweat and rust if medal and aluminum and magnesium pit it and eat it up some concrete will do that and some want it has all to do with what they put in the concrete if yall remember several years ago when the walk way fell at lowes motor spead way it was becuase they used calcium chloride and it caused the rebar in the concrete to rust then eventually the walk way failed all because people are to tight to pay the extra to get no chloride accelerater in the concrete when they pour it later Troy

 

[stihl sawing]

Just wish i had a concrete floor in my shop.

 

[Old51AVE]

It doesn't actually 'charge' the battery, it just ups the specific gravity because it is affected by temperature... A fully discharged battery will freeze relatively quickly below the freezing point, where a fully charged one
won't freeze until about -70c! Here in Canada in the winter, we use a block heater for the engine and a battery blanket to keep the batt warm so it has more cranking power than it would if it were @ ambient temp.

As far as concrete discharging batteries, I have seen it happen, like so many are saying, moisture plays a role here and it could be as simple as the fumes out-gassing from the concrete carrying corrosive salts in vapor form.

I once worked @ a warehouse, we had lots of customers coming back with flats of canned pop that were all flat, flats and flats of them! I went to the back of the warehouse with the boss and saw that they were sitting on the concrete, floor! I told him that's yer problem right there! He did not believe me.. So I showed him. I took a pop from the top of the stack and opened it, fizzy... I then took one from the bottom... FLAT! He said no way it was the floor. so I did it again, one from the top fizzy! I slid a whole flat out from the bottom of the stack and opened every one, FLAT! I said SEE! He still didn't believe, so I said put all the pop up on wooden pallets and you wont have any more trouble, he did and the problems all went away! I told him, all the flats that were returned were obviously from the last rows that were sitting on the floor, all different brands and types..

As far as the blocks of metal on the boat hulls, those are called "sacrificial anodes" and are put there because they 'sacrifice' themselves to the corrosion so the parent metal stays protected. They are also on outboard motors, if you see a small block of soft-ish Metal bolted onto the lower leg somewhere, they are not balance weights! Your hot water heater should have one as well, usu as a plug looking thin on the top, it supports a long rod of anodic material suspended in the water inside. There should also be some isolators on the pipes coming in and out of the heater to stop the flow of 'corrosive' galvanic currents.

I work on aircraft now, and they are all put together with lightweight materials that can corrode FAST if not attended to quickly! Mostly Magnesium wheels and skins are affected the worst! Galley's, bathrooms and entrance ways are the most common areas to find corrosion.. We have to be mindful of all kinds of corrosion, dissimilar metal corrosion, we use a chart to determine which metals can go together without problems, like a steel screw in an aluminum part, etc.. Magnesium does seem to be the worst, though. Even carbon fibre is corrosive to other materials from a dissimilar metal standpoint, we use stainless screws in carbon fibre because the galvanic action between steel screws and carbon fibre eats them to hell in a very short time! I have seen corrosion on planes do some really scary stuff!

Old51AVE :greenchainsaw:

its probably the lime that does it,cold concrete was what i have been told ,stand to reason if you heat a battery it will actually charge its an old bush trick,put one near a camp fire,but not to close or it will destroy it

 

[MCW]

I wonder if there is some kind of salt in the concrete that gets released into the moisture and gets on the saw.

Correct to a point. As mentioned concrete is porous so dissolved salts can move through the concrete from soil moisture below (Basically Osmosis). In Australia in my area it is generally called "salt damp" as there are dissolved salts (Sodium/Chloride) in this moisture. As water evaporates at the concrete surface it draws the salts up too which don't evaporate and concentrate on top of the slab. Some areas are more prone to this than others. Damage like you see in the first photos IS NOT common across all areas and has more to do with underlying ground water and it's salinity than the concrete itself (although I'm sure there are certain grades of concrete with higher Sodium and Chloride levels than others however without moisture movement through the concrete these salts would remain locked up and immovable). In my area due to irrigation restrictions we are seeing a massive increase over the last few years in both Chloride and Sodium readings in both plant tissue and soil analysis (I'm a Horticultural Agronomist). Growers don't have enough water allocation to apply leaching irrigations to flush the salts down lower in the soil profile. As a rule brick houses in my region are built with a plastic barrier layer about 1-2 bricks up to limit any moisture movement up the wall (salt damp).
Ground water in my area has been recorded with an EC (Electrical Conductivity - measured in µS/cm) of around 90,000. Sea water is around 40,000-50,000 depending on where you read your info from.
I carry a dual pH/EC meter with me in my work vehicle and do regular testing on grower's water.

Another source of corrosion some of us might not be familiar with is the sawdust from some type of plants like palms which can be very corrosive. One of my arborist friends coats the entires clutch area around his saws with a film of grease before he tackles some types of palms, and when he's done he washes his saws down to get all the palm juice off.

Yep. I've heard that a few times and did some work recently on a guy's Powermac 610. I could tell straight away it had been cutting Palms without cleaning as it still had all the Palm coloured crap stuck in it. He said he had been cutting quite a few Palms when I asked. The corrosion inside the clutch cover was horrendous. It had copped a hiding this thing but was running like a clock with basically no maintainence and a LOT of work and abuse.

 

[Locoweed]

Move to the desert & 99% of your corrosion problems will disappear. Not too many trees to cut though.

 

[Old51AVE]

Great elaboration there, MCW! We have allot of Alkali salts in our soil here! We have what we call "alkali lakes" or "salt marshes" that looks like snow on the fields in summer time, but it is not snow it's SALTS!

Old51AVE :greenchainsaw:

Correct to a point. As mentioned concrete is porous so dissolved salts can move through the concrete from soil moisture below (Basically Osmosis). In Australia in my area it is generally called "salt damp" as there are dissolved salts (Sodium/Chloride) in this moisture. As water evaporates at the concrete surface it draws the salts up too which don't evaporate and concentrate on top of the slab. Some areas are more prone to this than others. Damage like you see in the first photos IS NOT common across all areas and has more to do with underlying ground water and it's salinity than the concrete itself (although I'm sure there are certain grades of concrete with higher Sodium and Chloride levels than others however without moisture movement through the concrete these salts would remain locked up and immovable). In my area due to irrigation restrictions we are seeing a massive increase over the last few years in both Chloride and Sodium readings in both plant tissue and soil analysis (I'm a Horticultural Agronomist). Growers don't have enough water allocation to apply leaching irrigations to flush the salts down lower in the soil profile. As a rule brick houses in my region are built with a plastic barrier layer about 1-2 bricks up to limit any moisture movement up the wall (salt damp).
Ground water in my area has been recorded with an EC (Electrical Conductivity - measured in µS/cm) of around 90,000. Sea water is around 40,000-50,000 depending on where you read your info from.
I carry a dual pH/EC meter with me in my work vehicle and do regular testing on grower's water.