I am looking at getting new anchor chain. I have heard a lot about Peerless ACCO chain but have also seen hot dip galvanized G43 chain from Laclede. Anyone have experience with Laclede and how it might compare to Peerless?
Laclede chain
- Thread starter Hayden Watson
- Start date
We have had Laclede chain since 2021. Still looks like new, and we are anchored full time for at least half of the year.
It replaced completely rusted out 3yr old Peerless ACCO chain that had 25% of the usage the 4yr old Laclede has had so far.
This was our second experience with ACCO chain (different boats - I would never have bought it again for this boat). The first ACCO chain lasted a year before rusting to the point of not being able to fit the windlass.
Outside of Chinese no-name chain, I think Maggi, Titan/CMP, ACCO, and Laclede are the only manufacturers of galvanized windlass chain.
ACCO chain is the worst on the market. Maggi was exceptional chain, but I think they stopped selling in the US. I've never used Titan/CMP, but it seems to have good reviews. Laclede has been making commercial chain for a very long time, and was talked into making a batch of anchor spec chain by a distributor that sold into the marine market. I think we may have been among the first customers of that distributor, and took a chance on it because it was local and available. It seems to have been a success, and others are selling it now.
Mark
It replaced completely rusted out 3yr old Peerless ACCO chain that had 25% of the usage the 4yr old Laclede has had so far.
This was our second experience with ACCO chain (different boats - I would never have bought it again for this boat). The first ACCO chain lasted a year before rusting to the point of not being able to fit the windlass.
Outside of Chinese no-name chain, I think Maggi, Titan/CMP, ACCO, and Laclede are the only manufacturers of galvanized windlass chain.
ACCO chain is the worst on the market. Maggi was exceptional chain, but I think they stopped selling in the US. I've never used Titan/CMP, but it seems to have good reviews. Laclede has been making commercial chain for a very long time, and was talked into making a batch of anchor spec chain by a distributor that sold into the marine market. I think we may have been among the first customers of that distributor, and took a chance on it because it was local and available. It seems to have been a success, and others are selling it now.
Mark
An interesting observation on the Peerless ACCO chain. But what concerns me is that both Peerless ACCO and Laclede claim both use hot dipped galvanizing. HDG chain is what you want. HDG will not behave as you've described.
Can you say when you bought the poor performing chain? I ask because there was a significant move to use mechanical galvanizing a few years ago and lots of manufacturers tried it - until they realized it doesn't hold a candle to HDG....
dj
Hi Hayden. No Laclede experience, but bought new ACCO brand hot dipped galvanized G4 chain in 2015 with lots of sea water exposure since. It looks the same today as when purchased with no signs of corrosion. Purchased it from the industrial chain company in Seattle. Mark's comment regarding his ACCO experience seems quite different from ours. Electro galvanized will rust out in a year with heavy sea water use.
Peerless bought out Acco in 2006 and shut down Acco's manufacturing plant and moved production. Before the buyout, Acco had a great galvanization process, and their chain was very good. We had chain from before the buyout and it lasted many years.
Our second batch of Acco chain was purchased in 2008. This was the batch that rusted within a year, and I personally met over a dozen other people complaining about the same. I've heard on forums even more complaints. Acco said they would replace it, then went silent and stopped communicating. We bought Maggi chain then, and it lasted many years.
We bought our current boat December 2018 with chain from 2016. It had only been used a couple of times in those 2yrs and looked like new. We used it from 2019, with no use in 2020, until it rusted completely by end of 2021. Less than 3yrs, and that's generous since it wasn't used at all one year.
To head off the inevitable questions: Yes, it was genuine. No, it was not the cheaper/economic version of Acco's chain. Yes, it was bought through quality dealers (Defender and Budget Marine). The first batch was 5/16" G4 and the second batch was 3/8" G4. Pretty much all usage was in Caribe tropical waters, with a few months in Florida/Bahamas being the coldest.
While it is hot dipped galvanized, I suspect the specific process details make a difference in quality, and when they moved to Peerless's plant and process, it was different than the old Acco ones.
Mark
Washington Chain & Supply
WCS maintains one of the largest inventories of domestic and foreign, new and used anchors, anchor chains, and fittings in the United States
wachain.com
Mark makes some interesting points about the ACCO changes that might have affected their quality. Worth a telephone discussion with their chain expert before making the trip. Please let us know what you find out.
I looked on their web site and they do not list HDG G4 chain. I will give them a call. Right now, the best I have found is $371.70 for a 90' pail of Laclede 5/16" G43 HDG with free shipping.Washington Chain & Supply
WCS maintains one of the largest inventories of domestic and foreign, new and used anchors, anchor chains, and fittings in the United States
Mark makes some interesting points about the ACCO changes that might have affected their quality. Worth a telephone discussion with their chain expert before making the trip. Please let us know what you find out.
Your response sounds like you are expecting me to like attack you or something - not the case.
Anyway the 2008 date would indeed correspond with the big push to mechanical galvanizing in the industry. But your second date does not. So I don't know what to make of that.
There is basically no real process change in hot dipped galvanizing that would produce such a poor behavior. Hence, I can only conclude that the chain was not hot dipped galvanized. I'm not saying it wasn't sold to you as HDG, but what you ended up with was not HDG...
Short of doing a metallurgical examination of their chain, not much more I can say.
dj
Not sure what I wrote that would make you feel that way. I was attempting to lay out my experiences chronologically. The "heading off questions" part was in general, not you. Every time I've described this to someone, I get those questions, so I thought I'd save time by answering them in advance.
Mark
I would be surprised if Acco would risk selling chain as HDG when it wasn't. I would be equally surprised if major resellers would risk swapping out HDG for something else in an order. The first chain came in a sealed barrel from Acco. The second chain was on the boat, but there is a receipt for the Acco chain purchase.
There were definitely changes in HDG processes in the early 2000's for environmental reasons. I don't know whether these changes were uniformly applied throughout the industry, nor if everyone's process is exactly the same now. Google leads me to believe that although the basic process of dipping metal into molten zinc is the same, the processes of pretreatment, zinc alloy, grade of zinc, and coating thickness differ among manufacturers.
I had some anchors regalvanized in Guatemala recently, and they were part of a batch that included hundreds of feet of chain, and the resulting galvanization was thicker and different looking than what I see on new chain from the US.
Mark
Like I said, short of doing a metallurgical analysis on the chain links, there is not a lot more I can say.
The physical external appearance of the chain cam vary. We used to make HDG nuts and bolts - there were tricks to getting the outside surface right in terms of smoothness and the consistency of the coating thickness so they would thread together correctly.
I'm on my cell phone at the moment so I'm not sure how well I can drop in info... Let me see....
Ha! Got it! OK - that shows the metallurgical structure of HDG. Note a couple things: the approximate compositions and the hardness values. O don't know how familiar you are with different hardness scales, DPN is diamond pyramid hardness. It is really the only "universal" hardness scale which is why it was used on this photo. Eta is what is formed in all galvanizing processes. 70 DPN is very soft. It's actually below any hardness value in the Rockwell B scale which is below the Rockwell C scale. It is the lower layers, the Zeta, Delta and Gamma layers that make HDG unique.
Those layers will not form iron oxide that would appear as you have described swelling and not allowing the chain to run through the gypsy. In fact as the Zeta layer wears, and in chain it will do so rather quickly especially at the link to link points of contact, these harder lower layers still provide corrosion protection. They will get a rusty appearance, but it will just look like surface rust which in fact it is. It is the small iron content of these layers turning the surface into a rusty color. But your chain links are in fact still protected because of the zinc content. These lower layer are much more wear resistant than the Zeta layer and can last quite a long time.
It doesn't matter what the HDG process is - every single one of them produces this structure. You can increase or decrease the size of the Zeta layer, you can adjust your costing parameters to change the appearance of the Zeta layer, you can add finish coatings to that Zeta layer, but you aren't changing the existence of those lower layers. They are a fundamental part of the process.
dj
I didn't say they swelled - only that they no longer fit the gypsy. The problem was the link size got to be outside the margins of the gypsy pockets and it would skip and bind. Eventually it did rust to the point of flaking off and binding into a ball that needed to be pounded apart.
Forget Acco for a moment - how do you explain chain going bad at all? If the bottom layers are so hard and protect against all but surface rust like you describe, why do we ever need new chain? Why does almost every anchor locker that has seen a change of chain have flakes of rust on the bottom?
If instead, chain can indeed rust out to the point of being unusable, why does cheaper HDG chain do so faster/worse than more expensive chain? For example, Peerless sells an economy version of HDG chain that demonstrably (from reports and reviews) lasts shorter than their more expensive HDG chain. If this is all true, then why couldn't Acco chain be less robust than say Maggi or Laclede?
I'm not buying that all HDG chain is the same quality and will last almost forever. Every single piece of usage evidence supports the opposite.
Mark
First, I never said:
A) All HDG chain is the same
B) I did not say HDG chain will last forever
C) Your statement "Every single piece of usage evidence supports the opposite" is simply wrong.
So if you want to back off the superlative bull crap, we could have an intelligent discussion. But if you aren't interested in that, I'm not going to waste my breath.
dj
I have never seen Peerless offer an economy version of HDG. They do sell an economy galvanized chain but that is electroplated galvanization which is a completely different animal from HDG.
Will you better explain this statement?
"Those layers will not form iron oxide that would appear as you have described swelling and not allowing the chain to run through the gypsy. In fact as the Zeta layer wears, and in chain it will do so rather quickly especially at the link to link points of contact, these harder lower layers still provide corrosion protection. They will get a rusty appearance, but it will just look like surface rust which in fact it is. It is the small iron content of these layers turning the surface into a rusty color. But your chain links are in fact still protected because of the zinc content. These lower layer are much more wear resistant than the Zeta layer and can last quite a long time."
It is confusing, as it implies that all HDG is the same, and that chain can't rust out because the lowest layers are too hard to be removed. Or at least it takes many years.
There is sufficient evidence that some HDG chains last far less than others.
I laid out some arguments in the form of questions, then stated that the answer couldn't be the extreme that all chain is the same, because there is a body of usage evidence that it is not. This is not "superlative bull crap" - it is a rhetorical device used since the ancient Greeks. My apologies if you didn't recognize it as such.
You seem to quickly project contention on me where none exists on my end. I'm fine if you don't want to discuss this further. I've had the practical experience with this specific chain discussed, as well as others in identical usage to know what is happening on a higher level.
Mark
"Those layers will not form iron oxide that would appear as you have described swelling and not allowing the chain to run through the gypsy. In fact as the Zeta layer wears, and in chain it will do so rather quickly especially at the link to link points of contact, these harder lower layers still provide corrosion protection. They will get a rusty appearance, but it will just look like surface rust which in fact it is. It is the small iron content of these layers turning the surface into a rusty color. But your chain links are in fact still protected because of the zinc content. These lower layer are much more wear resistant than the Zeta layer and can last quite a long time."
It is confusing, as it implies that all HDG is the same, and that chain can't rust out because the lowest layers are too hard to be removed. Or at least it takes many years.
There is sufficient evidence that some HDG chains last far less than others.
I laid out some arguments in the form of questions, then stated that the answer couldn't be the extreme that all chain is the same, because there is a body of usage evidence that it is not. This is not "superlative bull crap" - it is a rhetorical device used since the ancient Greeks. My apologies if you didn't recognize it as such.
You seem to quickly project contention on me where none exists on my end. I'm fine if you don't want to discuss this further. I've had the practical experience with this specific chain discussed, as well as others in identical usage to know what is happening on a higher level.
Mark
They used to. I think it was imported and called "Boaters Choice" or something "branded" like that. West Marine used to sell it along with the higher quality version. I'm pretty sure it was HDG and not electroplated, and I think it may have been G3. I could be wrong about that, and it might not be sold anymore.
Mark
Well, obviously as you've explained above, it was not my interpretation of your statement. Certainly in these short forms of communication a lot can be lost in “translation”... My apologies. I'm more than happy to talk about it. It may get rather technical.....
Didn't mean for it to be confusing. First, I did not say the lower layers cannot degrade, they do. But they do not abrade away as the Zeta layer does due to their higher resistance to abrasion. There is also a known degradation process of these layers that does not fit your description of the problem you had with your chain. ALL HDG product has these layers.
How do they degrade? In very simple terms, the zinc component goes away through galvanic corrosion, and the iron component goes away through oxidation – rust.
Let's see. Now lets go to how does zinc protect steel in a marine environment. As I'm sure you are aware, the zinc component is an active element on the galvanic scale. Let's start with anodes. We put anodes on our boat in various places to protect metallic parts. We use different “zincs” depending upon if the boat is in salt water, brackish water, or fresh water. These “zincs” (technically they are sacrificial anodes) all have different actual chemistry – none them are 100% pure zinc. There are additives in varying amounts for several reasons. They allow the sacrificial anode to slow down it's galvanic corrosion, allow the corrosion product to not inhibit the continued anodic protection, and additions of like aluminum and magnesium are used to make the specific sacrificial anode chemsitry for the three different applications mentioned above.
Now, say you are putting an anode on your prop shaft. You don't put a sacrificial anode covering the entire shaft, you put one on that covers some small contact area of the entire shaft. But that small area of direct contact protects the entire shaft. Why? Because there is an area of effectivity around that anode where it's affects are sufficient to protect the metal structure it is attached to. In steel ship building, the placement and number of anodes used on the hull is a complex science. You need to design the number and placement of anodes such that the effectivity of those anodes cover the entire hull structure.
OK, now lets get to your chain. Chain is a very difficult application of galvanizing (creating a sacrificial anode over the entire surface) because of the abrasion and contact stresses chain is subjected to. The Zeta layer at the link connection points will wear away fairly quickly. You won't see anything there for a long time because of several reasons; the underlying layers are much more abrasion resistant, the zinc component of that layer continues to work as a sacrificial anode, and the Zeta layer present on other areas of the link also serve to protect that area. In this rather complex chain structure, we superimpose the fact there can be minor additives in the zinc used in the baths that specific manufacturers have developed to make their specific process “better” than a competitors. There can be coatings added to the chain after hot dipped galvanizing.
The truth is there may be some differences, but not major ones. HDG is a very well achieved process.
My fundamental problem with this statement is you have 0 evidence. You do not have a single metallurgical report that supports this claim. Nor does anyone else that you may have heard it from. It's all just hot air and people being pissed off – justifiably so, mind you. They thought they had HDG chain and it sucked. But it is highly unlikely that in fact they had HDG chain. Now, I can't say that with absolute certainty as I've never been asked to examine a case of this nature, but until someone can actually supply a correctly done metallurgical report that shows me the contrary, I'm not even remotely convinced. There are far too many other methods used on chain.
There may well be some HDG chain manufacturers that have some proprietary formulas that work a bit better than other formulas, but highly unlikely it would be to the extent that as an end user you would ever be able to notice without a very controlled scientific experiment – contrary to whatever marketing claims they may have....
I'll be sure to keep this in mind: “You seem to quickly project contention on me where none exists on my end.” My apologies.
Regarding this statement:
“I've had the practical experience with this specific chain discussed, as well as others in identical usage to know what is happening on a higher level.”
Practical experience without the fundamental knowledge of what you are looking at, does not support the blanket statement that HDG has huge variation in performance. The fundamental problem is that there are many other methods of galvanizing chain that are widely distributed/sold.
Frankly, if you want to blast some manufacturer or other, you really should have the data to support it.
dj