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Mr. E. A. Duligal, B.SC.(HONS.), A.R.I.C., A.R.T.C.S., M.INST.M.S.M., formerly technical director of Metalife Corrosion Ltd., has been appointed managing director of the company, which recently changed its name to Molecular Metals Ltd.

Bitumen has long been used as a waterproofing material and as a protective coating for all types of surfaces exposed to the weather. It has been stated that the deliberate use of bitumen for preservation purposes dates back to about 3,800 B.C., so there is nothing novel in the use of this raw material. Bitumen is such a versatile commodity that new applications and modifications are constantly being developed and utilised in the protection of structures of all types.

During the last few decades there has been an increasing awareness of the importance of corrosion protection of steel structures, emphasised by increased cost and reduced availability of steel. The great increase in capital plant in both quantity and complexity has made protective measures against corrosion of vital importance to the industrialist. A brief review of modern synthetic coatings is presented in the hope that a greater appreciation of the merits and failings of each type will be given to those who regard protective painting as a necessary evil.

Beilby Memorial Award. The administrators of the Sir George Beilby Memorial Fund, representing the Institute of Metals, the Royal Institute of Chemistry and the Society of Chemical Industry, have made an award from the Fund for 1957 of one hundred and fifty guineas, to:

The surface preparation of metals has a profound influence on the life of paint and other protective finishes. The practical application of chemical and mechanical treatments are discussed and examples given to illustrate where they are used to the best advantage. Recent developments in factory and site processing are described with particular reference to steel, zinc and aluminium used in the building industries. The inter‐dependence of design, surface preparation, protective films and conditions of exposure is stressed.

THE sample submitted consisted of a short length of 2‐in.‐bore stainless steel pipe which had been sawn in half longitudinally. There was a fracture at one end of the sample, whilst at the other it had been threaded externally to take a heavy stainless steel nozzle. Fig. 1 shows diagrammatically the position of the sample relative to the adjacent components. This assembly was part of a fertiliser plant handling a mixture of chemicals consisting chiefly of ammonium nitrate but also including potassium chloride.

MR. DAMERHAM (Extract from address): ‘One interesting application which is not in my paper concerns the use of hard rigid plastics as bases for electroplating. One of the problems faced by the plating industry is that corrosion of base metals often affects plated metals; these effects are often seen in household fittings, motor cars, etc. A technique has been lately evolved whereby certain thermoplastics, the most successful of which is ABS, have been employed as the substrate materials, and electroplating by a process not very different from the conventional one produces a very good corrosion‐proof product’.

Considerable interest is being shown in the protection problems solved in the exceptionally corrosive conditions at the Manvers Main Colliery of the National Coal Board near Doncaster. The large development works nearing completion are part of the work undertaken on 30 new collieries and 137 major reconstruction schemes either complete since vesting date, or in progress.

The factors leading to the development of automatic shot‐blasting and pre‐construction priming of heavy steel plate are described in this paper. Pre‐construction primers are used to protect steel against corrosion during fabrication and to form the first coat of the final protective system. The ideal properties of a pre‐construction primer are reviewed and a general survey is made of the different types of pre‐construction primer. These are: barrier coatings, inhibitive primers and zinc primers.

People who frequent Japanese restaurants can now eat without apprehension from the black and red lacquered bowls in which Japanese food is frequently served. Murashige and Terada [Journal of the Japanese Society of Colour Material, 51, 12 (1978) p. 695] extracted the lacquer with acetic acid and found no cadmium or mercury and low lead content in only some cases. This is comforting indeed but obviously of little consequence statistically relative to the problem of lead poisoning. Heavy metal contamination has been the subject of a great deal of discussion and of many articles in the past decade. For years paint was made with lead. There was no understanding of the fact that this lead could be harmful. Today we know that it is, and getting the lead and other heavy metals out of paints has become a major objective in the coatings industry.