Entomology and origins of phrase "Copper Plated Bitch"

cthia wrote I'm a lab manager. I remember reading somewhere about the history of electroplating.

A Brief History of Electroplating: The original nanotechnology.

Did you know that we just passed the 200th birthday of Electroplating.....

etc etc

Wow -really nice info- thanks

Oh my... On page 2 already, and nobody has nailed a definitive answer for this one.

I'm assuming that since RFC used the term in some of the Honorverse books, that he must know where he got it from.

BarryKirk wrote:Oh my... On page 2 already, and nobody has nailed a definitive answer for this one.

I'm assuming that since RFC used the term in some of the Honorverse books, that he must know where he got it from.

I'd always assumed he made it up, actually.

BarryKirk wrote:Oh my... On page 2 already, and nobody has nailed a definitive answer for this one.

I'm assuming that since RFC used the term in some of the Honorverse books, that he must know where he got it from.

It is quite possible he got it from his father in the 1950s, the same place I did at that time. During that era, it was fairly common. It has been around for a while.

Ok, on the origins of 'Copper plated bitch' Yes it dealt with coppering the hull of a ship, which was a difficult at best task, but it also referred to the coppering coming off when iron nails rusted away from galvanic corrosion. The copper plates would almost always come off in patches and sometimes during storms it would 'zip' off.

Trivia

Paul Revere supplied the copper plating for the USS Constitution.

Copper reacts with sea water to produce copper chloride, which prevents barnacle larvae from gluing themselves to the hull, and also repels teredo (shipworms). Iron and steel hull ships used to be painted with a copper-bearing paint for the same reason, but I think the practice has been discontinued as an environmental measure. They had to be repainted every 8-10 years because the copper leached out of the paint - which was what made it work. The ships left a trail of copper chloride wherever they went.

I don't remember what they replaced it with but it's less effective.
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The world would be a much better place if people understood the difference between cost and value.

Imaginos1892 wrote:Copper reacts with sea water to produce copper chloride, which prevents barnacle larvae from gluing themselves to the hull, and also repels teredo (shipworms). Iron and steel hull ships used to be painted with a copper-bearing paint for the same reason, but I think the practice has been discontinued as an environmental measure. They had to be repainted every 8-10 years because the copper leached out of the paint - which was what made it work. The ships left a trail of copper chloride wherever they went.

I don't remember what they replaced it with but it's less effective.
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The world would be a much better place if people understood the difference between cost and value.

Nope they still do use 'copper' paint but they used to use arsenic based paint. As to hull painting Navy ships paint their underwater hulls every 3-5 years and scrape the hulls about every 6 months. Civilian ships do it less frequently on the order of 5-6 years with a hull scraping about every 9-12 months

Grew up spending summers on Long Island Sound off the CT shore. One annual treat was scraping the hulls of 5 boats including two small (in the 16' range) sailboats, an 18' workboat, a 16' flat bottomed skiff and a 13' Boston Whaler. Scrape off the weeds and anything else that was on the hull below the waterline when the boats came out of the water in the fall. That was partucularly interesting for all except the Whaler since you also could get down to bare wood which gave you a nice dose and coating of anti-fouling paint which used copper as an active ingredient. Late April, sweat pouring off you and dust from something designed to kill waterplants and other critters in every pore. Then paint below the waterline with copper based anti-fouling paint.
Got to hall everything out (over several days because we could only do one a day) on a protected tidal rock (with relatively flat surface) to careen them in mid summer to repeat the scraping and put on a fresh coat of anti-fouling paint.

People who didn't do this found themselves slower because just putting a boat back in the water after the winter without at least scraping the barnicles off had a lot more water resistance. By the early part of summer, all sorts of stuff would be growing on unscraped and unrepained bottoms, further slowing things down and pushing up fuel costs. You could find some very nice looking boats that didn't get a lot of activity that would be streeming several inches of weeds. Not good.

I'm sure that breathing and wearing the dust from anti-fouling paint for years starting about age 12 didn't do me any health favors.

Brigade XO wrote:Grew up spending summers on Long Island Sound off the CT shore. One annual treat was scraping the hulls of 5 boats including two small (in the 16' range) sailboats, an 18' workboat, a 16' flat bottomed skiff and a 13' Boston Whaler. Scrape off the weeds and anything else that was on the hull below the waterline when the boats came out of the water in the fall. That was partucularly interesting for all except the Whaler since you also could get down to bare wood which gave you a nice dose and coating of anti-fouling paint which used copper as an active ingredient. Late April, sweat pouring off you and dust from something designed to kill waterplants and other critters in every pore. Then paint below the waterline with copper based anti-fouling paint.
Got to hall everything out (over several days because we could only do one a day) on a protected tidal rock (with relatively flat surface) to careen them in mid summer to repeat the scraping and put on a fresh coat of anti-fouling paint.

People who didn't do this found themselves slower because just putting a boat back in the water after the winter without at least scraping the barnicles off had a lot more water resistance. By the early part of summer, all sorts of stuff would be growing on unscraped and unrepained bottoms, further slowing things down and pushing up fuel costs. You could find some very nice looking boats that didn't get a lot of activity that would be streeming several inches of weeds. Not good.

I'm sure that breathing and wearing the dust from anti-fouling paint for years starting about age 12 didn't do me any health favors.

Sounds like a Copper-Plated Bitch of a job....

Sorry, someone had to say it....


I'll get me coat...

Hutch wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:Grew up spending summers on Long Island Sound off the CT shore. One annual treat was scraping the hulls of 5 boats including two small (in the 16' range) sailboats, an 18' workboat, a 16' flat bottomed skiff and a 13' Boston Whaler. Scrape off the weeds and anything else that was on the hull below the waterline when the boats came out of the water in the fall. That was partucularly interesting for all except the Whaler since you also could get down to bare wood which gave you a nice dose and coating of anti-fouling paint which used copper as an active ingredient. Late April, sweat pouring off you and dust from something designed to kill waterplants and other critters in every pore. Then paint below the waterline with copper based anti-fouling paint.
Got to hall everything out (over several days because we could only do one a day) on a protected tidal rock (with relatively flat surface) to careen them in mid summer to repeat the scraping and put on a fresh coat of anti-fouling paint.

People who didn't do this found themselves slower because just putting a boat back in the water after the winter without at least scraping the barnicles off had a lot more water resistance. By the early part of summer, all sorts of stuff would be growing on unscraped and unrepained bottoms, further slowing things down and pushing up fuel costs. You could find some very nice looking boats that didn't get a lot of activity that would be streeming several inches of weeds. Not good.

I'm sure that breathing and wearing the dust from anti-fouling paint for years starting about age 12 didn't do me any health favors.

Sounds like a Copper-Plated Bitch of a job....

Sorry, someone had to say it....


I'll get me coat...

Calm, you probably just accidentally discovered the etymology of copper-plated bitch!