Sources and method

The rule

A figure appears on a page only if it can be traced to a source listed at the foot of that page. If a value has a range, the range is given with what moves it. If a value is disputed or the public sources do not agree, the note says so in the sentence rather than quietly picking one.

Three kinds of statement are never published here: a measurement we did not take and cannot source, a claim taken from a supplier's marketing material and presented as a measured fact, and a named person, company or customer used to lend weight to a technical point.

What counts as a source

Standards designations are used as identifiers, not as quoted text. When a note says that ASTM B733 covers autocatalytic nickel-phosphorus coatings on metal, that is the scope of the document; the requirements inside it belong to the document and have to be bought from ASTM.

For the physics, chemistry and history we use general technical references that are public and citable, and we name them. Where a reference itself marks a value as needing a citation, we say that the value is commonly quoted rather than establishing it as measured.

Dates

Pages carry the date they were actually written. We do not backdate a page to make the site look older, and we do not refresh a date without changing the text. When a note is revised, the date changes with the revision.

Corrections

If a figure here is wrong, write to contact@wear-cote.com with the value and the source. A correction is made in the text itself, not in a footnote, and the page date moves to the day of the correction.

Illustrations

The images are produced illustrations of generic finishing scenes: tanks, racks, coupons, test cabinets, workshop benches. They exist to make a long technical page readable. They are not photographs of documented equipment and carry no evidential weight, which is why every one of them is captioned as an illustration rather than as a record.