Surface preparation can account for up to 40 percent of structural steel painting and repainting jobs. As Rosler’s Structural Steel FAQ series has already established, the life of anti‐corrosion coatings on a steel surface depends to a large extent on how thoroughly the surface has been prepared for painting.

Properly evaluating the surface of structural steel surfaces for coating before and after shot blasting will help balance the cost of preparing, repairing, and monitoring structural steel throughout its impressive lifespan.
This installment of our Structural Steel FAQ series will answer How are rust and mill scale evaluated pre‐ and post‐blast?
The Standards
Widely used standards were developed to visually assess the initial surface conditions and the quality of the required surface preparation relative to the initial steel surface conditions.
The dominant standards for evaluating rust and mill scale are ISO 8501‐1:2007 (based on the Swedish standard SIS 05 59 00), SSPC Vis 1‐89, and NACE. While different in some minor details, these standards are practically identical.
Continue reading Structural Steel FAQ, Part 3 – Evaluating Rust and Mill Scale Pre- and Post-Blast