Thread: My adventures with ivory. With a side order of GAH! CORROSION!

I'm an electrician, and in construction we're careful to avoid putting dissimilar metals in contact with each other (e.g., zinc-galvanized strut and copper grounding wire). If you can do something to waterproof the area where you have your copper and lead touching, you'll save yourself some future grief. Those dissimilar metals jammed up against one another will experience a lot of corrosion.

Originally Posted by roughkype

I'm an electrician, and in construction we're careful to avoid putting dissimilar metals in contact with each other (e.g., zinc-galvanized strut and copper grounding wire). If you can do something to waterproof the area where you have your copper and lead touching, you'll save yourself some future grief. Those dissimilar metals jammed up against one another will experience a lot of corrosion.

Thank you for reminding me of this! I've done enough work with exotic computer component cooling that I was well aware (and have been bitten by) the joy of galvanic corrosion. So I'm kind of surprised I didn't think about it here.

The one positive thing is that lead and copper are quite close on the galvanic chart and not as likely to screw each other over as, say, copper and aluminum. However, this really sounds like a job for Ren Wax.