preventing rust on evaporator

[hholt]

Anyone know of a trick for preventing rust on an evaporator that is being used outdoors?

I have been using a 1/2 pint outdoors for the past 3 years and its getting rusted pretty bad. I pick it up with my tractor and move it into the shed when not in use, and have tried stove paint and stove polish but neither seems to work.

Iknow the thing won't last forever but I'd like to get as many years as possible out of it. Suggestions???

[Haynes Forest Products]

Spray it down with oil. Not WD40 thats more solvent than oil. Use a light chain lube something that sticks. Then come spring build the mother of all fires without the pans on it and burn it off. Creasote in flue pipes will attract moisture and with the acids in the residue it will keep eating away at it.

[parsissn]

Take some lamp black or good pure soot (nice light weight dark black powder) and mix it with linseed oil. Remove the heavy rust with a wire brush or something. Then just paint on the soot/oil mixture. It will soak into the metal fill all the small holes much better than any commercial paint. You should then fire your evaporator so the coating will bake into the metal. Don't do it while making syrup, you will get a good bit of smoke and it might be bad for syrup - just boil some water. This is the same process we use to black steam boilers and it works very well. You may need to apply again the second year but after that it should only need attention every few years. When we do the boilers, we put the mixture on while the boiler is hot and it bakes in very quickly.

Mark

[3rdgen.maple]

My grandfather used to buy a box of parafin wax from the local grocery store He would light a fire in the arch with sheet metal over the arch and rub the parafin stick on the arch it melts right into it. Not as messy as you would think. First boil of the next year it looked good and since he put it on with a fire in it it did not smoke at all. Seemed to work good for him.

[hholt]

thanks guys, I painted it tonight with boiled linseed oil and fired it up with water. So far it looks like it's baking on pretty good.

Thanks!