Red Ruin

[Music] British weather British people talk about it visitors to our Shores are amazed by it but the farmers are most affected by it one day it's cold cold and damp the next warm and dry good bad indifferent the weather is part of the pattern of our existence and has helped to shape our character as a people and our way of life in country town and [Music] Village because of our weather our soil and a score of other things Britain is a land of small farms and mix farming a land of dairy and beef cattle with fields of roots and other feed for man and Beast and corn the king of crops the crown of the year but though the general pattern of our fields and Farms may not have changed so much in the past 100 years or so our whole method of working them has been revolutionized within the memory of our youngest Men by the coming of the TR character and of [Music] mechanization to those who still think and talk of old England it may come as a surprise to learn that Britain is the most highly mechanized farming country in the world mixed farming and mechanization that means large numbers of seasonal machines costly machines when you consider they may be used at full stretch for only a few weeks in the year the British Farmer's investment in Machinery compared with his total investment in the holding is probably higher than anywhere else in the world and all this equipment has to put up with British weather unfortunately but understandably the number of machines has grown faster than the means of of stabling them few Farms have enough good buildings for all their seasonal equipment some of it lucky and is housed well some of it finds a pretty good home in the corner of a barn some of it gets reasonable shelter from direct rain under the lean to but inevitably a few implements are left to fend for themselves in a corner of the field where they were last [Music] used [Music] a dilapidated open-sided building gives little protection against driving winds General dampness mist and fog and weeks of rain the whole year round wet and fine the weather plays havoc with the farmer's gear rusting it eating his money away and when the season comes around [Music] again there it lies red with rust but what can you do steel will Rust and you can't change the climate among the first and worst casualties of course are the manure spreaders help Don by the acids in the fertilizer rust Works quickly and bites deep eating into the metal jamming up the working parts as tight as a drum but of course there's always The Optimist who neglects his machinery and then expects to find it in good working order just before [Music] Harvest [Music] hi Joe got a small job for you [Music] and so onto the junk pile goes another piece of gear that cost good money to buy and time and money to replace yes but what can you do well let's go right back to the start and look at the raw material from which farm equipment is made iron or here it is being dug from the earth into taken away to be made into steel muddy reddish yellow color not unlike rust to look at is it and as a matter of fact of course it is rust or something very like it for iron or is mainly iron oxide and rust is iron that's been oxidized by uniting with oxygen from the air some metals combine very easily with oxygen from the air and iron one of them mild steel seems to have one idea in life and that is to turn itself back as quickly as possible into something like its natural state [Music] [Music] [Music] tin is in no hurry to unite with oxygen not rusting easily it makes excellent containers lead starts off with a rush but soon gets tired of it the first thin layer of lead oxide lead rust you might call it forms a seal and the oxidizing seems to go no further the metal remains bright just below the surface which makes it useful for roofs and so on but to come back to iron let's see exactly what conditions make it rust most quickly and severely you all recognize this an ordinary mower blade we'll take five of them and try them out under five different tests to see if we can find the real villain of the piece which put one blade in a jar of air thoroughly dried by chemicals air and nothing but air another in boil distilled water so that no air touches the metal a third is dumped with water and left in air a fourth soaked in salt water the fifth damped in water and then sprinkled with artificial fertilizer now we'll let them have a rusting race the camera is set to take one picture every minute for a day and a night we shall see 24 hours of rusting packed into a minute and a half they're off we've marked them in colors so that you can follow the race the runners are bottom row red air without any water blue water without any air pink saltwater spray and on the top row white air water and artificial vol together yellow air and water together and already you can see what's happening air by itself isn't the villain of the peace nor is Water by itself the race is over we see what's happened in 24 hours White wins easily the more blade that was damped and sprinkled with artificials is deeply corroded no wonder the Manure Spreader only lasts about 2 years if something isn't done about this worst form of rusting pink comes second salt water Farmers along the coast know only too well the extra damage caused by salt spray and sea mist and damp air our or weather comes a good third evidently then the first answer to rust is to prevent air and water getting it steel both together from the earliest times men have tried to do just that they smeared their battle axes with Tallow animal fat was used on early farm tools waterproof paint came in and was used to protect non-working parts of Machinery then came mineral jellies and greases and oil from the Sun all these methods succeeded up to a point but only up to a point if the surface was damp then the fat or oil merely imprisoned the moisture like this whereas what was really needed was something that swept the water away to start with like this a substance or a liquid that would first displace all water and then quickly form an airtight and watertight covering as so often happens War produced the answer the research Departments of one of the great oil companies were called upon to find a means of protecting vital military equipment which might have to Wade through salt water and be fit for immediate action after landing on the beaches and means also of preventing the rapid corrosion of equipment in The Damp sweltering heat of tropical battlefields like the jungles of Burma in the early stages the Laboratories were up against a formidable task investigations on corrosion resistance were carried out in various forms and new test methods had to be developed to assess the water displacing properties of various fluids and compounds eventually a fluid was developed which had first of all the remarkable property of driving all moisture off a metal surface and then quickly depositing a sort of skin moisture tight and airtight the fluid is now known as NIS 256 how it works is well shown by a simple test cotton wool saturated with water but not dripping wet is here immersed in a beaker of ordinary oil notice nothing happens no water comes out but place a similar piece of saturated cotton wool in this other Beaker containing enus 256 and see what happens the enus fluid at one once begins to displace the water the drops of displaced water are now coming out in a continuous stream notice the pool of water at the bottom of the beaker the drops will continue to fall until all the water has been displaced we can see the effect even more clearly in this thinner glass container now let us see how NCIS 256 acts upon metal this mild steel plate is first soaked with salt water one drop of the fluid is allowed to fall on it water begins to drive off the moisture take a similar plate and see what ordinary oil will do plop and nothing happens back to the first plate the dewatering fluid is still driving the water away you can see The Little Wave moving to the extreme edge of the plate take a look at both these plates 2 hours later the one on which the drop of oil fell has begun to rust the other with the water displacing fluid has not now let us try a more practical test three mold boards are placed side by side in the open air the first is left alone ordinary grease is smeared on the second the third is brushed over with ncst the watering fluid they're left out in the open to weather for 3 weeks and we look at them again the one that had nothing done to it is red with rust cracks have appeared in the grease covering of the second cracks which will gradually rust the third has a smooth skin all over it and under this protective skin the mold board is clean and bright just as it was 3 weeks before as we can see after a wipe with a paraffin rag these rust preventing fluids are today available to the farmer but he must study how to use them every day farm equipment of one kind or another comes into yards like this for maintenance most much of it has broken down because of rust this Manure Spreader is Rusted solid the agitator would need a sledgehammer to move it fertilizer left on the teeth of the agitator and here between the spindle and the bearing will cause the moving parts to bind up solid that's why it's vital to drench the thing well with water this man has a hose he's lucky but remember there's no corner of a farm where you can't carry a few gallons of water if you take the trouble and a bucket will do as well as a hose having removed the dirt then apply the rust preventing fluid the one thing to remember the fluid is not a magic wand to be waved over the Manure Spreader it will remove water but not acid crystals you must use water first to give it a chance here we actually see the fluid driving off the water getting next to the metal and floating water off on the top then it seals It Off from any further moisture by leaving a protective skin on the working parts if you have this model wash all the artificials off the rods and see that the Enis penetrates into the bearings the shutter type gets choked up quickly unless it's washed regularly and then sprayed with the fluid The Reaper and binder has fairly complicated Machinery which is vulnerable to rust Remember The Optimist and his binder too often it requires new working parts each season especially the notter mechanism the tension on the twine must be the same throughout so the eyelets must be kept free from rust otherwise the notter can't do its work here's another useful job for enes at the end of each season treat all the working parts thoroughly dabbing plenty of the fluid all over to show the method the KN has been removed here but there's no need to do this in practice pay special attention to the jaw rust damages the delicate mechanism if left in damp air there's no acid to get rid of here so there's no need for water and the mower also needs protecting before it's put away brush the fingers liberally taking care to get the brush into the crevices sap rusts the blade as much as rain and unless the moisture is first driven off with the dewatering fluid it will Rust while it's in storage both the fingers and the blade should then be given an added protective by smearing them over with the special compound which forms a thick seal over the metal mechanics will find the dewatering fluid very useful too for preventing nuts and bolts and tools from going rusty those who possess a combine harvester really need a garage in which to house it during the winter months but that's not practicable for the average farmer yet providing he sprays the plants which are liable to rust such as the drum metal sheet and The Grater his Machinery won't rust even though it has to be stored in a barn brand new equipment often lies out in the open for days awaiting dispatch to the farm if there's a spell of bad weather the equipment will get rusty before it ever reaches the farm these new fluids will help to protect it Russ is it just one of those things that must be endured like taxes or the common cold not entirely of course it would be impossible to banish rust altogether from the farm short of making every tractor and Implement of materials that had no wish to oxidize but science has at least put within the farmer's reach the means of protecting his most costly and vital seasonal equipment the new dewatering and protective fluids that have been developed from petroleum will help if they're given a chance they're not magic wands they need using with common sense and Care on those terms they do their work well and they can help the farmer to overcome at least a part of a problem that has cost him money and worry for a long long [Music] time [Music]