Coppercoat bottom paint

[Capt Phil]

Personally, at my age, I'm looking for a little humor in the discussions... cheers, Phil

[Jim Cate]

G'Day all

When one tires of rhetoric, here's an experiment that one can do to gain an insight into the efficacy of pure copper as an anti-foulant:

Get a piece of copper... say some leftover copper foil from your SSB ground or a bit of scrap pipe. Hang it in the water where your boat is moored. Leave it for a few weeks. Inspect it for marine growth periodically. If stuff grows on it, its usefulness as an antifoulant is questionable, and casts doubt upon the usefulness of copper powder dispersed in an epoxy matrix. This simple experiment will override anecdotal evidence and advertising blarney, and give you an idea how Coppercoat or its cohorts will work on your boat in your home waters.

I believe that in many areas you will find that the copper is richly encrusted with various organisms in about the same period as uncoated hulls. If one reads the logs of Cook and his brethren, one notes that their vessels, clad in pure copper sheeting, were quickly fouled and required careening and scraping just like our boats today. The copper was to protect against shipworm, not for antifouling.

Frankly, I suspect that in waters where fouling is severe using a hard epoxy coating without copper powder would work in much the same way as the copper loaded ones, allowing reasonable easy cleaning without damage to the hull material.

Cheers,

Jim

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

Get a piece of copper... say some leftover copper foil from your SSB ground or a bit of scrap pipe. Hang it in the water where your boat is moored. Leave it for a few weeks. Inspect it for marine growth periodically. If stuff grows on it, its usefulness as an antifoulant is questionable, and casts doubt upon the usefulness of copper powder dispersed in an epoxy matrix. This simple experiment will override anecdotal evidence and advertising blarney, and give you an idea how Coppercoat or its cohorts will work on your boat in your home waters.

I see this every day. Here in the Bay Area, the grounding plate of any boat that has one (or two) is typically the foulest real estate on the hull, usually requiring a metal scraper followed by a wire brush to clean it.

[lateral]

How about telflon &/or graphite?
Or a boom box playing head banger musak.
Or, all of the above minus the tbt.

[Ewan Clark]

Earlier in this thread I was asked about the use of Coppercoat in fresh water. A few minutes ago my office received the following email from an old customer of ours, Mr Shearing, who has a Haines 380:

I need a small tin of cc. to tidy up my water line, which is a little tatty.Can I buy it locally or from you? My hull was treated from new 6 years ago & is still smooth after travelling Europe`s rivers & canals. A very good product!!

I just thought I'd add it here as it seemed timely and pertinent to the question.

[Ewan Clark]

To Jim Cate - I could be misinterpreting your recent post, but you seem to be questioning the use of copper as an anti-foul. Which is a little bizarre, given that copper and its by-products such as copper oxide are the key ingredients of virtually every anti-foul currently available. Since the banning of tin (and its derivatives such as TBT), we (anti-foul manufacturers) have all had to move to copper.

Unfortunately the test you mention would be somewhat pointless. A piece of copper pipe does not have the same anti-fouling properties as Coppercoat or indeed any other copper based anti-foul (such as paints from International, Pettit, Awlgrip, Hempel, Veniziani, Jotun, etc.). And the "pure" copper sheets nailed to wooden ships centuries ago were anything but "pure", which is why (as you correctly mention) they were primarily designed to protect against worm attack, not fouling. The fact they helped a little against fouling was seen as a useful by-product, which, far later, led to the study and use of copper in better forms as an anti-foul.

Using any old copper in any old form will not make an effective anti-foul. The marine business history books are littered with failures (we all remember how ineffective Copperpoxy was, for example) - it is crucial to have the correct size, morphology, density and purity of copper, and even more crucial to have the correct binding/releasing matrix. Believe me, it's far easier to get this wrong than right!!!

To Fstbttms - good news. I managed to reach Jim Edwards as he was travelling from the Annapolis Boat Show and he does indeed know of a couple with Coppercoat on their boat in the SF Bay (its been on for about 7 years) and is still doing its job. Jim is going to try and contact them for further details. I'll post this to you later.

[sv Shearwater]

I put Coppercoat on our J/120 back in April and... Oh never mind I thought this thread about Coppercoat. Yawn.

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by Ewan Clark

To Jim Cate - I could be misinterpreting your recent post, but you seem to be questioning the use of copper as an anti-foul. Which is a little bizarre, given that copper and its by-products such as copper oxide are the key ingredients of virtually every anti-foul currently available. Since the banning of tin (and its derivatives such as TBT), we (anti-foul manufacturers) have all had to move to copper.

Unfortunately the test you mention would be somewhat pointless. A piece of copper pipe does not have the same anti-fouling properties as Coppercoat or indeed any other copper based anti-foul (such as paints from International, Pettit, Awlgrip, Hempel, Veniziani, Jotun, etc.). And the "pure" copper sheets nailed to wooden ships centuries ago were anything but "pure", which is why (as you correctly mention) they were primarily designed to protect against worm attack, not fouling. The fact they helped a little against fouling was seen as a useful by-product, which, far later, led to the study and use of copper in better forms as an anti-foul.

Using any old copper in any old form will not make an effective anti-foul. The marine business history books are littered with failures (we all remember how ineffective Copperpoxy was, for example) - it is crucial to have the correct size, morphology, density and purity of copper, and even more crucial to have the correct binding/releasing matrix. Believe me, it's far easier to get this wrong than right!!!

To Fstbttms - good news. I managed to reach Jim Edwards as he was travelling from the Annapolis Boat Show and he does indeed know of a couple with Coppercoat on their boat in the SF Bay (its been on for about 7 years) and is still doing its job. Jim is going to try and contact them for further details. I'll post this to you later.

G'Day Ewan,

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that the commercial antifouling paints that you refer to are based on cuprous oxide, not metallic copper as seen in your product. And on what do you base your assertions that the copper used in sheathing olden ships was not pure or nearly so? At any rate, to affect marine organisms I suspect that the copper must dissolve so as to be ingested or absorbed by the organism. I don't see that minor impurities in sheathing would influence the rate of dissolution of the copper very much.

I certainly wouldn't argue with you about the necessity of getting the details
(correct size, morphology, density and purity of copper, and even more crucial to have the correct binding/releasing matrix) right. But if fouling will appear on a pure copper sheet, why should I believe that it will not appear on a mix of tiny particles embedded in an epoxy matrix?

As fstbtms has mentioned, one observes fouling on bronze throughhulls, copper grounding plates, copper tubing keel coolers and other common cuprous attachments to boat bottoms. Some of those items are not indeed pure copper but copper alloys, but some ARE pure Cu and I have personally seen them covered with growth.

Please believe me... I wish there was a longer lived and more effective bottom treatment, one that would keep me from having to paint and then scrape or scrub my hull to keep it clean. So far I am far from convinced that your rather expensive treatment will do so in a cost effective manner.

I continue to believe that my little experiment would reflect the likelihood of your product's success for anyone considering its use.

Cheers,

Jim

[Ewan Clark]

Hi Jim

You of course quite correct - cuprous oxide is indeed the key ingredient in maintstream anti-foul paints. But here's the thing - it's also the key anti-fouling ingredient in our Coppercoat product. Please don't be fooled into thinking that it is the copper in Coppercoat that directly gives it its anti-fouling performance. It is in fact the cuprous oxide (amongst other by-products) that provides the protection. (Though obviously it is the copper that provides the cuprous oxide...)

The difference is that a surface of Coppercoat exposes far more cuprous oxide than a surface of a conventional copper based anti-foul paint. Which helps to explain why we can not produce Coppercoat in a range of different colours - it is simply too copper rich, so it can only ever be a dark green(ish) colour. That said, it can show a slightly brighter blue green (copper sulphate) deposit just above the waterline.

And of course you are correct to note that boat fittings made of bronze or brass or even copper become fouled. This is indeed why companies like ours manufacture anti-fouling - so these bits can be protected.

Coppercoat produces, exposes and releases cuprous oxide at a prodigious rate - something that copper pipe or plate simply doesn't. Which is why the anti-fouling performance of copper pipe can not be compared to the performance of an anti-foul. The easy way to see this is to look at a boat that uses a copper based anti-foul (be that Coppercoat or a conventional A-F paint) and check the level of fouling on the anti-foul compared to the level of fouling on any copper or brass or bronze sections - the anti-fouled part will (or certainly should be!!!!) far cleaner.

You may well not be aware that the introduction of just very small amounts of impurities to copper has a dramatic effect on its anti-fouling performance. As you might expect, this has been studied widely over the years, and our own lab tests and field trials from the late 1980's onwards revealed the same. For example, we use copper of a purity of over 99.7% - if we could use something less pure (and cheaper) and get the same results, we would. If we could produce and sell Coppercoat more cheaply I'm sure we could sell more and thereby help a lot more boaters.

I hope this explanation clarifies somewhat the way in which Coppercoat works.

[Roy M]

Photos of a Coppercoat hull after six months in San Diego harbor. Photos taken two days ago.

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by Roy M

Photos of a Coppercoat hull after six months in San Diego harbor. Photos taken two days ago.

Holy Cow! If truly a properly done Coppercoat hull, that is truly a staggering amount of growth. Hell, it's a lot of growth for a totally unprotected hull...

Impressive... I guess that they had to tow her to the yard!

Cheers,

Jim

[lateral]

.....sorry, couldn't help it. Good to see an ocean alive and well!
Did you abraid after applying to expose raw copper?
Was the growth hard to remove compared with other AF's?

I wonder if some ppl would prefer no growth & sail a dead ocean.

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by Ewan Clark

To Fstbttms - good news. I managed to reach Jim Edwards as he was travelling from the Annapolis Boat Show and he does indeed know of a couple with Coppercoat on their boat in the SF Bay (its been on for about 7 years) and is still doing its job. Jim is going to try and contact them for further details. I'll post this to you later.

Ewan- if possible, boat builder, model & name of boats wearing Coppercoat here, please. No offense, but I'll need to talk to the hull cleaners of the boats involved to get the straight dope on how well (or not) the product is performing in those particular cases.

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by Ewan Clark

Coppercoat produces, exposes and releases cuprous oxide at a prodigious rate - something that copper pipe or plate simply doesn't. Which is why the anti-fouling performance of copper pipe can not be compared to the performance of an anti-foul. The easy way to see this is to look at a boat that uses a copper based anti-foul (be that Coppercoat or a conventional A-F paint) and check the level of fouling on the anti-foul compared to the level of fouling on any copper or brass or bronze sections - the anti-fouled part will (or certainly should be!!!!) far cleaner.

You may well not be aware that the introduction of just very small amounts of impurities to copper has a dramatic effect on its anti-fouling performance. As you might expect, this has been studied widely over the years, and our own lab tests and field trials from the late 1980's onwards revealed the same. For example, we use copper of a purity of over 99.7% - if we could use something less pure (and cheaper) and get the same results, we would. If we could produce and sell Coppercoat more cheaply I'm sure we could sell more and thereby help a lot more boaters.

I hope this explanation clarifies somewhat the way in which Coppercoat works.

G'Day Ewan,

That's an interesting exposition, and thanks for posting it.

Could you explain why the Cu powder in your product produces so much more cuprous oxide than the Cu in a pipe or plate (of the same degree of purity)?
I suspect that common Cu tube or pipe is not particularly pure, but the foil provided for grounding should be OFHC or nearly so.

And while you are about it, why is the impurity level so important to antifouling properties? I'll accept that your research has found it to be so, but what mechanism is involved?

And finally, do you have any comments about the recently posted photos showing extreme growth on an allegedly Coppercoated hull in SD?

Cheers,

Jim

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by Roy M

Photos of a Coppercoat hull after six months in San Diego harbor. Photos taken two days ago.

Originally Posted by lateral

I wonder if some ppl would prefer no growth & sail a dead ocean.

Consider the additional fossil fuels burned by a boat (any boat) in the above depicted condition. Anti fouling is a trade off. Put a little poison into the ocean to reduce carbon emissions put into the atmosphere.

BTW Roy M- I'm assuming that bottom was not cleaned at any time during the aforementioned 6 months, yes?