Not so fun wang chung offering:
Came home to a new smell today. VOCs, specifically.
"That's funny...the house doesn't usually smell like a broken petrochemical plant when I walk in..."
This is bad.
Sniffed around (literally). Found the culprit. A less-than-two-months-since-purchase quart can of paint thinner.
American company. Allegedly.
But using, to a metaphysical certainty, some total p.o.s. container made of pure chinesium, purchased by them, beyond any argument, from the glorious minions at the People's #28 Excellent Metal Container Factory in Sum Fuk Dup City, People's Republic of Chinesian Cheap Shit.
Corroded and rusted dafuq up in less than 60 days on the shelf, from a can only six months old since it was filled at the factory, in an area with average humidity in the high 40s, stored in a cool dark paint cabinet, away from any other problematic elements or any chance of galvanic corrosion. But nothing is foolproof, because fools are so ingenious. Or just cheapskate SOBs.
Cap: sealed tight.
Squeeze the can: pinpoint leak shoots out 2/3rds of the way down the can (red circle in header pic), amidst a fresh and chunky 4" rusticle right along the "sealed" cheap ass chinesium can seam. (Can't figure out if they sealed it with soy glue, paper tape, or just straight sugary syrup.) Which - clearly - ain't sealed any more. In a failure of a type of container technology that was perfected on this continent over 150 years ago. Lazy stupid bastards.
FFS, dad had thirty-or-more-year-old cans, with labels from all the way back to the Depression, sitting around his shop when I was a kid, and never had a single leak from a one of them. Oh, but wait, those were Made In America cans, from the last century.
Fortunately, the can I bought was still about 90% full (I'd barely used a cupful to clean up some brushes a couple of months ago). So it had leaked enough to let me know there was a problem, but hadn't completely unzipped and shat the bed. Yet. Probably by mere hours.
If I hadn't found this until a day or two later, I'd probably be writing this from the burn ward, after the water heater pilot light did a little physics demonstration.
The people who palmed this off on customers, at every level, should die of metastasized dick cancer, attacked by rabid pit bulls and badgers, as they fall into a pool of flaming lava, those chintzy m*****f*****s!
Testor's Models had the right idea: Next can of paint thinner goes straight into a glass carboy jug with a gasket-sealed metal screw top or a rubber stopper, because those bastards can't f**k that up. Yet.
The can (emptied out now - thanks for the hazmat situation, @$$holes) is getting sent back to the cheap bastards who used it as a retail container, with a strongly-worded letter. God help them and their legal team if I ever have a house fire, but the new house and car will be fabulous. I'll CC the major retailer who sold it, along with the pics, because their other cans are going to be failing too, on the store shelves, and that's liable to turn into an even bigger lawsuit, and probably sooner than later.
I wonder how much that's going to save Cheapshit Chemicals Inc. in the long run by buying chinesium metal cans by the metric buttload.
Poor materials, poor workmanship, and the opportunity to be rid of substandard products. The U.S. is now a convenient place to make money on what should be destroyed.
ReplyDeleteWhat's the product? My wife works retail and it's part of her job to look out for things like this in the store.
ReplyDeleteWow - a shelf life like that for a container of VOCs is criminal.
ReplyDeleteI suspect your homeowners insurance, plus your rental agreement will become null and void upon learning of this post marked Exhibit A.
ReplyDeleteI suspect not, but feel free to make that case, counselor. ;)
ReplyDeleteI'm unaware of the proviso that stipulates that defective products packed in shitty containers voids all bets. Doubly so when this all happened inside a UL-rated fire cabinet.
And at any rate, it'll be the insurance of the American Shitty Canned Products company that's going to take the hit if/when they're at fault. My insurance company will be happy to take them to court.
And this point, going forward, I'm simply going to decant their product into heavy duty glass, containing 0% chinesium.
Interesting and dangerous. Would have been safer if the VOC was in a tall boy lined aluminum can. Not as sturdy but it would not leak.
ReplyDeleteJust glad you found it BEFORE it let go completely!
ReplyDeleteIf the fire cabinet was UL rated you'd not have smelled the paint thinner it until you opened the cabinet.
ReplyDeleteOver the years, those who mean to rule us have "phased out" glass jars w/lids; metal cans with screw on lids - in favor of plastic. Convenience, they say. Bullshit, says I. Why? Because some fucker realized that the aforementioned could be sterilized and re-used, much as you are doing... and, well - there you go. I know it is different to think this way; but if you don't believe "they " have been thinking of ways to fuck us - and the planet up - for decades, well then I'm just some crazy ol' coot who saves and utilizes jars and cans for years.
ReplyDeletePlastic Tupperware and such has chemical shit in it.
This sounds like somebody was stealing from Tom Clancy's Debt of Honor, though those were gas tanks in Japanese cars.
ReplyDeleteI've seen steel cans go south, but those were the ones holding methylene chloride paint stripper. Since that crap has all sorts of not-fun side effects, I've decided that any paint that needs to be stripped will see something a bit less ferocious. My paint thinner cans are about 10 years old, and are still going strong. Lost one or two paint cans (the plastic ones with metal lids) due to rust, but that's over 15 years or so.
@OldNFO,
ReplyDeleteSo am I!
@B,
Apparently, the pint of paint thinner that leaked out didn't know the rules, because I could smell it outside the cabinet just fine.
I think that says more about UL ratings than anything else.
I killed a bag of cat litter just soaking that small amount up, and it took all day with a fan plugged in faaaaar away to ventilate all fumes outside, after I pulled the mains to the shop, and turned off the pilot to the water heater, until it didn't reek inside anymore.
@RCPete,
ReplyDeleteI suspect that methylene chloride paint stripper has been outlawed or disowned for cheaper ingredients? I don't see MC on the content label these days for most of the strippers in the big box stores.
ReplyDelete@maru
I've heard it's been outlawed (apparently bad news for some processes, including the decaffeination and some pharma manufacture), but as of a few weeks ago, there were cans of the stuff at Home Desperate. The bulge in the cans was present, and unfortunately a common occurrence with that stuff. There's not much that methylene chloride doesn't destroy; heavy rubber gloves last an hour or so.
HD might be selling off old stock. Not sure of the brand.
Better lucky than good,(I ALWAYS say, THESE days). Glad there were no untoward outcomes.
ReplyDeletei was hoping to find out what brand of paint thinner i shouldn't buy.....
ReplyDeleteNo say bad things about our manufacturing, we use same rust proof cladding that go on tank, shells and missiles.
ReplyDeleteThank you
Peoples Zhouhan Steel Factory #69