Wood vs Aluminum/Paper vs. Plastic
There are certain things in life that guarantee a lively discussion and the "no wood, no rot" construction mantra is no exception - at least it is in the boating industry. Seems like there is a simila...
Forum Discussion
Jfet wrote:
8000 threads in here about wood rot with some ghastly pictures. I am not sure I could find 10 threads showing failed aluminum weld joints...
Not disagreeing with you, but I do imagine there have been many more years of wood campers than aluminum ones, so more old campers that are wood and have rotted than old aluminum framed campers that have failed. Time will tell whether that situation changes, depending upon the quality of the aluminum frames.
If I remember correctly, the one set of pictures I did see were not shocking because they showed a fatigue failure of aluminum welds, but due to the appalling quality of the welds pictured. Hopefully these were just a one off, but they appeared to be tack welds that were never finished off; they had a lot of contamination, but the main problem appeared to be a complete lack of penetration - the weld was just blobbed onto the two pieces of metal and looked like it could be cleanly dislodged by a quick blow from a screwdriver. It clearly indicated whoever did the welding on that camper had no idea what constituted an acceptable weld. In fact it looked like someone had accidentally used carbon-argon mix as the shielding gas. Hopefully this was an early one / one off. If not then there will be a lot of problems stored up.
Steve.
