Corrosion Control Options

[William Worth]

Does anyone here have experience with using VCI (Volatile Corrosion Inhibitors) for their; guns, rifle balls, etc.?   That would be the little treated piece of paper or cardboard that you find in a new set of dies, or wrapped around a new reamer or whatever.  It looks like it could be a good suppliment to other corrosion control.  It would penetrate places that you can't otherwise reach and not have to be removed to use the piece again like you do a grease.

I'm just afraid to put a bunch of VCI paper in the gun safes, only to find that everything in there has crumbled into something resembling old parchment paper a year or two later.   

There are a LOT of varieties of the stuff marketed.
 

 

[Daryl]

William- it is common for guys with large safes with valuable gun collections to buy desicants by the bag.  I thought they were for moisture only, though. The paper wrapps are used by gun companies as well to wrapp modern rifles in. They can remain in the wrapp inside a box for many years, without the gun's deteriorating.  Couple years back, I bought a rifle from a local shop that had been thus stored since it's manufacture in 1990.  It had been not removed from the box, was wrapped in the anti-moisture, anti-corrosion paper for 16 years - no damage, so I suspect it would work in a gun safe.  I'd the mfgr for details, I suppose.

[William Worth]

That's the neat part. 

VCI works the opposite of dessicants.  VCI vapors enclose the protected item(s) with a molecular level (sometimes a single molecule thin) protective layer that seals it from water and water vapor. 

Dessicants work by trying to suck up all of the water available.

Reactivity (compatibility) testing sounds expensive.

I once had a sealed glass jar of iodine crystals that I kept around for water purification purposes.  Despite the sealed glass jar being itself inside a sealed plastic bag, a urethane coated rainsuit that shared the box crumbled like old paper with an ugly yellowish, brown stain in everything around the offending jar.