About the time of the American Civil War, a museum conservator hit upon a very clever idea. Bronze statues and limestone carvings in museums throughout the country were deteriorating at an alarming rate due to normal museum environmental conditions as well as the normal wear and tear of human contact. Replacing such objects is not cost effective. A protective coating could be applied to the object to absorb any damage that might occur, and then easily removed and reapplied as needed. This type of protective coating is known as a sacrificial coating in the conservation science world, and information on the use of such coatings is found under how sacrificial coatings are used to protect historic materials, a well-documented heritage conservation resource.
The industrial engineers who have been grappling with this problem for centuries have tackled the issue in much the same way as the museum conservators of Greek marbles. The body of a mill, the chute, the slurry pipe, these are all very expensive items. The aggregate, gravel, ore, etc. that are moved through these items are extremely abrasive and will wear almost any surface. You cannot make a harder surface, you cannot stop the materials from moving. But you can put a wearing surface inside the mill components that will wear down to an affordable point before the mill components are damaged.
That intermediary layer is known as an Abrasion Resistant Lining and is a component designed to wear down.
For Abrasion Resistant Lining, visit https://www.kingfisher-industrial.com/wear-protection/.
This has developed into a wide range of wear protection products for industrial applications of great abrasion resistance – far removed from the conservator’s wax. However, the principle of these products, such as for example the wear resistant tiles or the abrasion resistant rubber or polyurethane products, is the same as that of the wax: the damage is to be allowed to occur on something inexpensive, whilst the expensive component remains undamaged for long. The museum curators were first.
