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Re: Do razor blades scratch tank walls?



I agree that rusty razors will scratch glass.

A few of you are probably familiar with the "Car Talk Guys"
that host an NPR radio show that sometimes deals with
cars and their maintenance.  One of their "teaser" scenarios
was (I'm paraphrasing, because I can't do justice to their
word selection):

"You go out on a frozen winter day and find your car
covered in ice.  Being surprised by Old Man Winter,
you look around for something to scrape the ice off
the windshield.  You find a beer can from last night's
festivities, and knowing that glass (made from silicon)
is much harder than aluminum, you use the beer can
to scrape the ice from your windshield.  A few days
later you notice huge scratches in your windshield.
Why?"

Their answer:

"Yes, aluminum is much softer than glass.  However,
as you scraped the aluminum can against the glass
and ice, it scraped off the protective coating on the can
and the bare aluminum became exposed.  Almost 
instantly it was bound with free oxygen in the air, 
forming Aluminum Oxide, which is one of the hardest
substances known to Man."

So, if your razor blade is all or part aluminum, you might
want to treat it carefully near your tanks.

My apologies for editing out the most humourous and
entertaining parts of their comments, to those of you
that have heard their show.

--charley
charleyb at cytomation_com