The corrosion rates of metal fasteners in contact with alkaline copper quat (ACQ) treated wood with or without commercially available water repellent was compared to that of cedar. In this experiment, fasteners were sandwiched between two pieces of treated wood and exposed to a humid environment at a slightly elevated temperature. The use of a “sandwich” design allowed periodic examination of the metal fasteners, which were exposed to the typical chemical loading found at the surface of treated wood. During the experiment, visual observation, weight loss, and diameter loss were used to evaluate the corrosion rate. A one-way ANOVA analysis, confirmed that Stainless Steel 304 provided the best corrosion resistance and a common bright nail provided the worst corrosion resistance, in contact with either copper preservative treated wood or western red cedar. However, the performance of individual coated fasteners in copper preservative treated wood and western red cedar were insignificant on corrosion rate (P<.0001) at the 5% significance level. In a comparison of the wood samples, copper preservative treated wood are approximately two times more corrosive to metal fasteners compared to western red cedar.

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