Part Eight: Muriatic acid bath and rusting
This is subjective. You may or may not be a fan of the rust patina created by the two-step process of muriatic acid and rust inducing wash. You may like the shiny galvy appearance of sheet metal or want to paint the fins. You may have selected a completely different material, plastic, wood, aluminium… I am offering this as an aesthetic answer to my tastes. Bypass this entirely if you have a different vision.
Should you elect to approach this or any other part of this project, your safety is your responsibility. Again, my purpose here is to expose you to procedures that are entirely up to you. Using ACID, requires compliance with all the care and caution that ACID requires. I am not offering advice on how to accomplish the procedure, but exposing you to the process. Proceed with all the cautionary warnings and procedures recommended by the acid manufacturer and on top of that, use common sense and be careful. After all, you are using acid to chemically etch galvanized coating off of sheet metal with all the inherent fumes and waste. The process is pretty quick. Just assure the fins are all well treated. GOOGLE the formula for the rust wash. I GOOGLED and came up with 16 oz, of hydrogen peroxide, 2 oz. of white vinegar and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Spray on after dissolving all the salt and almost instantly, you have rust. If not well treated, with muriatic acid or rust wash, there will be a splotchy effect, outlines of the fins on the other fins and you will be re-submerging the pieces in acid or spraying with rust wash. Here are the extremes of shiny, completely rusted and partially rusted:
The top two fins show two stages of rust. The upper depicts rust after about 30 days of exposure to the elements after the rust wash. The next, immediately below shows the rust after about 18 months. Your results will vary depending on your climate. The lower is a muriatic bath for a shorter time, all the galvy was not etched off and the rust wash was added. This is about 10 months in the elements. I like the rust appearance. So, use the look that you want. NOTE: The flattened corrugated ribs are horizontal to the ground. That provides some stability against fluttering in the wind. The vertical installation of the tail fin would work just fine. However, it will deflect in the wind. So some of the energy used to move the fish in the wind is absorbed by the fin deflecting. Again, a personal preference.
Next, Part Nine: Siting, installation
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