Re: [Was: Con Find] WARNING!

At 23:30 2002-06-07 -0400, Wilson, Glenn M. wrote:
>Bad news - My Fed ships have what may be corrosion/lead rot/whatever on
the
>more involved ships - I assume a garage is not the best environment to
store
>them in... I get a gray powdery residue when I rub the affected areas
(not
>tooo many spots and I am not complaining,

That's bad news indeed! Your minis have contracted pewter plague. The
gray 
powder is tin in it's non-metallic form.
Metallic tin can spontaneously convert to non-metallic tin at lower 
temperatures, one should never store one's minis cold.

The worst part of it, and the reason it's called 'plague' is that it is
an 
autocatalyst, i.e. the presence of non-metallic tin spreads! YOU DON'T
WANT 
THAT 'POWDER' TO TOUCH ANOTHER MINI!

In fact, the best thing to do is probably to get rid of all minis with
gray 
spots, and put all the other minis in qurantine.
Make sure that you have a good covering varnish on all your minis.

This is, in my experience, mainly a problem with a few older miniature 
manufacturers, most manufacturers these days, I hope, inoculate their
minis 
with a small amount of antimony, which at least slows it down so that it

hardly is a problem, if it does not stop it entirely.

A friend of mine had this problem a couple of years ago. It ended up
with 
him throwing away a couple of hundred rather nice 25mm vikings. No to 
mention spending a long and nervous time watching and inspecting his
other 
couple of thousends of minis!

____
Henrix