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Ozone source?

I keep a small quantity of rubber bands in my garage that degrade rapidly. They crack and fall apart in ~2 months. The larger quantity which is in a plastic bag in the house stays flexible for at least a year or maybe 2.

There are no volatile chemicals except gasoline, oil, and a few cleaners and insecticides. The lighting is 1/2 incandescent, 1/2 fluorescent but is only on for ~2hrs/day. No direct sunlight, dark garage. There are no high voltage sources that I know of. A dormitory style refrigerator is running in the corner.

I will probably try some sealed container experiments, but was looking for any known issues with rubber storage. 2 months seems too short to be natural aging of a commercial rubber product.

Reply to
Stumpy
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Some rubber bands seem to degrade, even in the dark, so I don't know if it's even a light-related thing, probably more heat related.

I had a box of large rubber bands in a closet inside the house... after about a year they're crumbling. ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    | 
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             | 
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  | 
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     | 
              
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Reply to
Jim Thompson

My pencils have no erasers.

I use an eraser stick ;-) ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    | 
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             | 
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  | 
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     | 
              
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Reply to
Jim Thompson

It may be the various petroleum vapors.

You do not have a furnace in the garage, right? Oil furnaces use a HV spark to ignite, as do a few gas furnaces ("pilotless").

If you start engines -- cars, mowers, weed whackers, etc. -- in there you're probably releasing a bunch of partially-combusted hydrocarbons, which I bet are as bad as anything else.

Why not just keep them in a plastic bag in the garage? I have an old tea tin that I keep my rubber bands in, and they last and last and last.

--
My liberal friends think I'm a conservative kook. 
My conservative friends think I'm a liberal kook. 
Why am I not happy that they have found common ground? 

Tim Wescott, Communications, Control, Circuits & Software 
http://www.wescottdesign.com
Reply to
Tim Wescott

No furnace. The CFL bulbs have presumably

Reply to
Stumpy

and

only

I've always preferred the eraser stick dispenser to erasers on the mechanical pencils, since the latter tend to be weenie erasers... and, as an old style, do the design math on paper, kind of guy, I do a lot of erasing. Though, now, it's mostly CAD schematics >:-} ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    | 
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             | 
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  | 
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     | 
              
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Reply to
Jim Thompson

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        ...Jim Thompson
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Hmm "the pencil" by H. Petroski is a nice read.

George H.

Reply to
George Herold
< I keep a small quantity of rubber bands in my garage that degrade rapidly. < They crack and fall apart in ~2 months. The larger quantity which is in a < plastic bag in the house stays flexible for at least a year or maybe 2.
< There are no volatile chemicals except gasoline, oil, and a few cleaners and < insecticides. The lighting is 1/2 incandescent, 1/2 fluorescent but is only < on for ~2hrs/day. No direct sunlight, dark garage. There are no high < voltage sources that I know of. A dormitory style refrigerator is running < in the corner.
< I will probably try some sealed container experiments, but was looking for < any known issues with rubber storage. 2 months seems too short to be < natural aging of a commercial rubber product.

My grandmom used to take a wad of aluminum foil and wrap the rubber bands around that. They seemed to last well. Don't know if there is a relation/correlation.

Then again what is rubber and polyvinyl these days?

Reply to
Steve Gonedes

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