Ok Gerry,in my haste to generalise and in the absence of books due to moving
house i over simplyfied the matter. My point was that a marine environment
is not good for iron survival. Figures i have found today confirm this
suggesting that iron in sea water corrodes five times faster than it would
in soil and ten times faster than in air (Hamilton 1975 Conservation of
Metal Objects From Underwater Sites)and therefore you are less likely to
find unaltered iron objects in the sea. Perhaps your cannon balls serve to
illustrate just how complex and unpredictable the properties of iron are?
You would agree however that Bernard was wrong when he stated that iron is
an easy material to conserve. It has an inherent atomic instability that
makes it seek out a more stable oxide state i.e. rust. Effective
conservation involves trying to control the rate of oxidation, not an easy
task.
Once again this may be a gross simplification but perhaps less bold than the
last statement.
Martin Roe
Lead Mining in the Yorkshire Dales
Web site @http://www.mroe.freeserve.co.uk
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