for those of you with steel tanks...

[john j]

Wow! only $7.50 to blast the tank! I'll have to keep that in mind. In the past I have spent hours cleaning up old steel tanks with wire wheels, paint stripper and sandpaper. Big pain in the butt and it makes a big mess. I'd gladly pay $7.50 for someone else to do it and I'd bet they'll do a really great job too.

That's the trouble with tank boots on steel tanks. I bought some new OMS steel tanks several years ago and even though I knew better, I put tank boots on them. The boots are really handy because they allow the tank to stand upright of course, but in less than 2 diving seasons, the tanks were completely rusted under the boots, even though the paint looked excellent in other areas. When I took the boots off for annual visual inspection, the paint just fell away revealing rusted and pitted metal underneath.

If the rust is really deep, you should bring the tank in to a good visual inspector because there is a spec for maximum external pitting due to rust. If the rust gets too deep, it thins the tank walls significantly and can create an unsafe condition. How much pitting is allowed depends on the kind of tank and the manufacturer.

A suggestion...When you paint the tank, get a junk tank valve that you don't care about and install it with an old, used tank to valve o-ring. Then hang the tank from the valve using some wire or a hook and paint the tank. If you use a junk valve you can get overspray right on the valve and not even worry about it. You can even put a few PSI of air in the tank to keep paint fumes out, but I don't always do that.