Nice info, if I could understand it. Is this dangerous? Toxic? How do I clean up the mess?
Funny thing is, I live in one of the driest places around. Did I seal up this chain with moisture and it did its thing? What happened?
The bottom of the ammo can looks like it has a pool of black yucky ink or tar. I ain’t touching any of it. I left it open to the air. I want to see what happens tomorrow.
Do you remember placing anything else in the box besides steel items? If it’s just rust, whether the normal kind caused by CO2 and moisture, or the hydrogen sulfide kind, or even “Desert varnishing” since you say you’re in an arid place but not likely since the container was sealed, you can clean it off with a little oil. That is if it’s nothing more than rust.
^
My dad’s ammo can sometimes produces a film of sticky liquid at the bottom. He/we stash a handgun, ammo, leather holsters, cleaning rags, oil tubes, etc. in there and leave them for years at times.
Without a flow of water to flush it, the surface of the steel became alkaline.
The alkaline environment (heaps of OH- around) prevented the formation of orange rust … Orange Rust is a complex of Iron oxide-hydrate.
In a sufficiently alkaline environment, only black iron oxide forms.
( Rain water is slightly acidic, so always forms orange rust. )
You want to add a water absorbing device (like the plastic container used in houses.) to stop all rust.
Congratulations on establishing your place in history. Thousands of years from now, when our descendants finally manage to fight off the last of the zombie horde and begin the process of rebuilding civilization, they’ll remember you as ‘the guy who started it all’…
There had to have been something else in the can. I don’t know what “a pool of black yucky ink or tar” is, but I’d bet a pretty (uncorroded) penny that it’s organic. Which means that whatever made it had to have been feeding on something organic. A rag, maybe? Oil of some sort, intended to prevent the chain from rusting? An animal that crawled in there and died without you noticing?
I have discovered that black yuk in plastic buckets I have left tools in, in ever case water had been introduced. I would say water or moisture was somehow involved. Maybe the chain was slightly wet when put away.
This has got to be it. I think the last time I used this chain was to tow someone stuck in alkaline mud. I live on an alkali dry lake and every time it rains, so bozo wants to go mudding and gets stuck up to the axles.
Probably got some moisture in there/didn’t clean it before being sealed up.
After leaving it out all night/day, the black ooze dried up and turned kind of gray. The whole chain looks like it has been dragged thru ash. Weird!
