About zinc...

[ETN]

I was wondering about zinc. I've heard some say that zinc becomes brittle with age. Does this mean that anything made from zinc in our collections will crumble to dust within out lifetime?

Erich

[Stu W]

I was wondering about zinc. I've heard some say that zinc becomes brittle with age. Does this mean that anything made from zinc in our collections will crumble to dust within out lifetime?

Erich

That would depend on the length of your lifetime.

There are zinc artifacts around that are several hundred years old so I doubt your collection will go any day soon. Longer than that is anyones guess.

Regards,
Stu

[Paul R.]

Stu is correct. Also the biggest problem is zinc pest, (zinc rust, zinc buggers) or whatever you want to call it. There has and still is a long and never ending debate on the problem and how to "cure it". There are a number of contributing factors for this problem (do a search on the WAF forum “zinc pest”).
One must remember that zinc is the poorest quality of junk metals. It’s a combination of basically un pure composite medals “most conservators call it everything including the kitchen sink medals”. Most of the zinc problems occur in smelting, or melting down the other medals in the process.
The fast or poor manufacturing piece of the metal. I have seen newer pieces of the new zinc made five years ago with a cleaned up of impurities in the medal. They were made with the newer technologies. Wow! You cannot believe the huge differences in the medals. Remember that also there was a war going on. There was a huge amount of pressure to get things done and get things out the door attitude. Just keep in mind if you have zinc problems. There is no cure for it, only a temporary fixes. Investing in an acid free box to store zinc items it helps a lot, and control the humidity seems to stop or slow down detraction process.
Of course there are your items to do with as you see fit.

[ETN]

Thanks for the help

I'm aware of zinc pest and thanks for suggestions of how to care for it.

I guess the way some talk is that anything made from zinc during the war
will just crumble over the years. Glad to hear that is not the case.

Of course, that's true that there was a war going on and this stuff was only meant to last through that and not to be collector's items.

[mike y]

Of course, that's true that there was a war going on and this stuff was only meant to last through that and not to be collector's items.

Im sure they had plans to reissue these awards after the war was won with awards made from silver and gold from plundered nations

[Fariz]

Weren't many or most late war German I.D. tags made in Zinc? some of my late war tags have sufered from corrosion - I'm not sure if thats thre right word to use.

[Erich B.]

I recently saw a ca. 1920 sewing machine foot pedal unit where the actual pedal had been cast of zinc and then plated. You could crumble the zinc with your fingers--it had the consistency of peanut brittle. So, potentially zinc badges can become extremely fragile (I'm sure storage environment also plays an important part, and this machine was apparently stored in a cellar).
Erich