What the hell is TONVAL???

Re:ASAP Supplies

Well - here is one very satisfied customer - when we ordered an incorrect match of products for water intake (over the internet) we had a phone call asking us about the application and if that is _really_ what we wanted ... great advice ... great prices

PS do I get a discount now?! /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

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You have chosen to take the criticism of Tonval as a general criticism of ASAP Supplies Ltd. Let me therefore start by saying that I have used ASAP supplies both privately and professionally for a number of years and have found your staff and service extremely efficient and courteous. However I believe you do yourself a dis-service with many of your remarks which seem to be aimed at defending ASAP rather than addressing the issue which should concern you as much as your customers to whom you owe a duty of care.
Let me therefore take your points in order.

1. I have no doubt that your gunmetal valves etc are of good quality and have accepted your word that they are in fact what you represent them to be. Genuine Gunmetal. In fact I have fitted your gunmetal fittings not only to my own vessel but many others in a professional capacity. I have no doubt as to the honesty of your intentions. My first and main contention (on another thread) was that gunmetal fittings should be fitted below the waterline in preference to anything else. I remain of that opinion. I would suggest that in fact, to promote the use of these superior fittings you should advertise the endorsement of USCG, Lloyds, DNV or anyone else as applicable. I see no reference to this in your catalogue apart from one or two items which are Lloyds approved. This leaves the majority of your customers legitimately assuming that the others are not approved at all. Incidentally I would point out that on page 50 you confuse the issue further by stating that your Standard range of gunmetal through hull fittings are "shell moulded in tonval" this is obviously a mistake but hardly helps your case.

2. Why, if you recognise Tonval as being a type of BRASS, do you insist on designating it as Tonval BRONZE? It clearly is not only a brass but one with NO RESISTANCE TO DE-ZINCIFICATION and therefore inferior to DZR not to mention "true" bronze. You do not seem to dispute this fact so why not say it? You say you are not trying to disguise cheap brass with a fancy name. YES YOU ARE!!!! You are calling it BRONZE!!! It is not bronze. Bronze is a Copper Tin alloy. Brass is a Copper Zinc alloy. Certain types of zinc based alloy, while inferior to gunmetal (which is a true bronze) are formulated to resist de-zincification in salt water and are therefore acceptable. Others like Tonval are not and should never be fitted below the waterline on a seagoing vessel.
Rattling on about how many FRESH WATER boats on the Norfolk Broads have been fitting them for years is not only irrelevant, it is seeking to suggest that they are good for seagoing use and they patently are not. Not one of the classification societies will accept them as being so and as a professional Marine Engineer neither will I!

3. Your diatribe regarding people wanting cheap "boat jumble" bits is entirely misplaced. If the majority of amateur boat owners buy on the cheap, which I am afraid is certainly true, one should perhaps ask why? I would contend that it is mainly out of ignorance rather than design and not helped by a complete lack of information from the trade. If you want to hold ASAP up as an example of a quality supplier, which I think indeed you should as I am not dissatisfied regarding your products or services generally, you should in fact endorse the use of quality fittings, make it clear to your customers that you recommend their use, and try to educate them. I do not in fact object to you selling fittings in non DZR brass but believe you should make it clear what they are and not misrepresent them as BRONZE.

4. You say you publish all the specs of the items you sell.
Perhaps you would be good enough therefore to tell this forum what class of bronze is used for the PERKO range and GUIDI range? In some parts of your catalogue you have called the item "cast bronze". In your reply to this forum you have indicated that they are gunmetal bronze. Are they? Or are they in fact Manganese Bronze (which is another form of brass missnamed as bronze)? Or are they perhaps Aluminium Bronze, or Phosphor Bronze? Please don't think I am being deliberately rude, as it is not my intention to be so, but as retailers rather than manufacturers do you in fact know the difference? Or are you in fact, as I suspect, just repeating the manufacturers blurb verbatim and in the same boat as the rest of us in not having the slightest clue what the damn things are really made of in the first place other than a general generic description that tells us very little?

5. Stainless steel underwater is as you say a complex subject. On another forum you will find that I have taken a general view that 316 should preferably not be used below the waterline. I have also conceded elsewhere that there are many 316 propshafts about. Most of them, usually around the area of the shaft seal or inner bearing will exhibit some form of hydrogen embrittlement or crevice corrosion in time though and it is hardly the material of choice. A better material again is bronze with monel as a close second. Both these materials are in fact expensive and 316 is servicable enough as long as the owner is aware of the limitations and periodic inspections are carried out.
I have no intention for professional reasons of entering into a specific debate with you on open forum regarding the products of a particular supplier. I would however reiterate that I would never recommend the fitment of stainless steel fittings of any sort to the underwater sections of a seagoing vessel especially when there are many other viable alternatives.

Finally therefore may I end as I began by saying that I have used ASAP for almost as long as you have been in existence and am very happy with your service. I believe you try your best to give good advice and usually back up your products with information where called for. I do not expect you to become a free consultancy to the industry however and you are correct to point out that your customer base is both diverse and varied. What I do expect from you is that you are concise and accurate in your representation of what it is that you sell. There is clearly a need here to add a little value by supplying more detailed and accurate information.
What I think would impress me more than your current reply would be a clear answer to the questions I have asked you regarding the specific materials that your products are made of. "Cast bronze" and "Tonvil Bronze" should in fact be recognised as at best uninformative terms and at worst downright misleading.
Some statement to indicate that you will make some effort to be more correct in your description when the 8th edition of your catalog comes out would in fact be impressive and give you a further competitive lead in the marketplace. You have shown enough interest to become involved in the debate which I applaud. If you would now correct the errors suggested and illustrate your real interest by publishing the material specs involved as asked I believe we would all be grateful and truly impressed.

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You say ...down to ... ...incorrectly placed/lack of Anodes. Make sure the anode is in sight of the through hull fitting. Make sure they are all bonded.. That statement demonstrates that these components are not suitable for underwater use, because if they need protection it means that they are susceptable to dezincification.

An underwater fitting should be corrosion resistant such that cathodic protection of it is not necessary. Such a fitting should be able to be installed on frp or timber boats, especially, with no need for any bonding or cathodic protection whatsoever. In fact, in the accident report referred to in the previous thread that initiated the questions regarding the suitability of Tonval, it actually went further than that and stated that the bonding may have contributed to the failure of the fitting.

John

<hr width=100% size=1>I am the cat but I am only 6.
 
Agreed John. It will be interesting to see how this retailer responds to detail rather than simply protest that I maligned them, which of course was never my intention anyway.....
I have to say as a retailer, ASAP do a good job, but moving into the area of giving technical advice is in my opinion not a retailers job and they are digging a dangerous pit for themselves by trying to do so without seeking expert advice.
The thought that every skin fitting should have an adjacent anode is not only impractical but entirely the wrong solution. There is no need to fit anodes or bond fittings to them if they are made out of gunmetal as there is no zinc in gunmetal to be depleted in the first place. The argument that you save money by fitting cheap alpha brass fittings and then spend a small fortune plastering the boat with anodes to protect them is not only silly from a technical viewpoint. It would cost more than fitting gunmetal in the first place!

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OOOOOPS! That told us!

At no point did A.S.A.P. Supplies Ltd feel critercised. We merely saw our name mentioned, and thought we could help. Our reply was not intended to be defensive or to open a can of worms. It was infact passed round the office in order to ensure there were no offending or misleading statements in it. It seems our best intentions could have, in some eyes, been better. Apologies - no misleading intended what so ever.

As for specs in the catalogue. Unfortunately we have no more space in the 8th to add more than in the 7th. but.........

....... to correct......
We apologise that we don't respond to the forum questions on a next day basis, but we WILL ensure we get together all the specs of the items in question and let you know. We will also make sure that we add the answers to our FAQ page on our website. That way we will have at least provided the answer to your original question - better than we did at the first attempt. This info won't appear overnight as we will double check the suppliers to make sure the specs are exact.

We hope this will go towards showing that constructive critercism is always welcome, and if it is possible to do something better - then we will.

Best regards
A.S.A.P. Supplies Ltd

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Thanks for the reply, albeit an understandably interim one as you need your suppliers input before responding further I guess. But thanks for "hanging in there"
I am glad you have responded positively as I have no contest with ASAP as I said before, and if you can manage to get more information on the materials used by the manufacturers it will show an interest not shared by other retailers and reinforce my faith in you!
May I say that I have just placed an order with you for a number of items, and included in them are a whole load of "Tonval" fittings which I intend to use to connect my Eberspacher water heater and engine to my calorifier with so this illustrates that not only do brass fittings have a place in the scheme of things but I am happy to use them on a fresh water plumbing job myself!
No. Far from criticising ASAP, the original point was that the end user, represented by the ordinary blokes on this forum need to know what materials are used in order to make a valued judgement when fitting stuff to their boats. There are no text books I know of or internet sites that I have visited that actually tell me what tonval is. With great respect I think your catalogue should not refer to it as bronze and even the term ATD used elsewhere in your catalogue means very little to me as I don't know what ATD stands for! I feel somewhat like the little boy stood up in front of the Emperors coach in Hans Andersons tale.... ASAP are clearly not the only ones to have called tonval "bronze". Lots of people have and still do. You however, unlike some others, in addition to Tonval, list Gunmetal and other bronze fittings. It's only a thought but if you made it clear what the difference was in your catalogue I believe more people would be convinced to buy the more expensive kit where its application is justified and you would make more profit! So we are not coming at this from different angles at all. You can benefit!
As a chartered engineer, I have some knowledge of materials, but am not a metallurgist and don't know everything. There are several things I am sure of though which might be useful for you to consider.
True bronze is an alloy of mainly tin and copper. Gunmetal is a true bronze.
Manganese bronze is a missnamed alloy that contains zinc. It is therefore not a true bronze as gunmetal is. There are however forms of manganese bronze that are alloyed to resist de-zincification in sea water. These are very useful and applicable alloys because they have extremely high tensile strength and can be cast easily. Most "bronze" props are manganese bronze in fact for these reasons but they are not truly bronze at all. They are brass. Brass is primarily a copper zinc alloy. But we all know and accept that DZR forms of manganese bronze are "kosher" for use underwater in a seagoing boat. Likewise, there are other forms of brass, less sophisticated than manganese bronze that don't have this high tensile advantage but are still DZR and will resist de-zincification in seawater. That's why Lloyds approve them. Then there are the common brasses that are not DZR which we believe tonval to be a variety of. These are simply brass. Then there are other alloys which I won't confuse the issue with.
All we really need to know is which is which.

Then there is the question of bonding. Bonding fittings to an anode is an attempt to ensure that any electrolytic de-composition is concentrated at the point of the anode itself not the fitting. A good idea in relation to propellors etc. made out of DZR material but not such a good idea if the fitting has a high content of unprotected zinc. In fact what is possibly going to happen if you connect a brass fitting to the bonded circuit is that the fitting itself could become the anode and fizz away in a very short time! So please don't advise people to bond tonval to their anodes. It could be disasterous.... In fact there are lots of differing opinions regarding bonding skin fittings, but I believe that if they are made out of gunmetal they should not be bonded. I have personally never bonded gunmetal fittings to the anode but sometimes they are inadvertently bonded through say the steel reinforcement of the plastic hose that connects the skin fitting to the engine....
See how complex this can get? However, Gunmetal, having no zinc content cannot de-zinc anyway so is not at risk either way.
Hope this helps and that the further information promised will be forthcoming from your suppliers. Look forward to the details if and when!
In the mean time MERRY CHRISTMAS to all at ASAP supplies and thanks for all the help you have given me throughout the year.

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Re: ASAP

It’s always good to see a supplier put his head above the parapet. Even if they are spraying buckshot as their first salvo /forums/images/icons/wink.gif
I look forward to future inputs.


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Hello.
With Christmas and the London Show out of the way, we can make headway on this task. We are in the process of building the new page on our site with all the material specs as promised. We have a few blanks in the database, but it's getting there. In the meantime, back to the original question - What the hell is TONVAL??? Answer - 59%copper, 0.3% brass, 2.5% lead, 0.3% nickel, 0.05% aluminium, 0.4% ferus, 0.2% imperities trace, reminder Zinc.

As we said before, it's a type of brass - and it's been available for years. Some boat builders have used it under water - others won't. At least you now know what it is and can decide for yourselves.

We hope this helps - and with your permission will provide a link on the next post to the full data table once sorted.

All the best, and Happy Boating to you all

ASAP Supplies Ltd
 
But what the hell is "ferus"...........iron?. And what's the 0.3% brass supposed to mean.

I think you need to get a proper spec for this material giving percentages of real elements.
 
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But what the hell is "ferus"...........iron?. And what's the 0.3% brass supposed to mean.


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I noticed that too! Looking at it again, the Zinc content is just over 37%. Maybe the stuff could double up as an anode? /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif
 
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