Stainless Steel Boat Hinges Rusting

The hinges mount flush with the deck so there's a shallow pocket they sit in in the fiberglass. When we wash the boat, this area can never be fully dried by hand. So the water sits and the hinge rusts a little and when the water evaporates, the rust residue is left on the fiberglass. You can see it along the edges.

Here's a pic of the hinge. Those tiny scratches cause the issue:

I'm no expert by any means but that looks normal for SS. SS is not impervious to rusting, its just resistant.

It's not the cleaning that ilm worried about, I know I can get the rust off. It's the fact that it will continue to rust. You can't clean it unless you completely unbolt the hinges.

The screws looked brand new, no issues whatsoever. It's the hinge that looks cheap.

What would you take "stamped stainless" to mean? Stamped out of stainless?

it could be stainless coated or it could be just a lower grade of stainless that still puts off corrosion. its usually the screws though

clean it and then put some really good wax on it and keep the wax fresh.

Personally I think that it's BS that they say that if the SS is scratched it will rust. Stainless is stainless. There are different grades (I believe it's based on chromium content) but scratching won't effect it.

Maybe dip them in varnish or something if you're going to pull them all?

Stainless steel= stains-less

Sounds like you have a lower grade of stainless steel. I bet a better grade wouldn't rust/stain. I've notice on my boat that some stainless stains and even rusts and some doesn't.

But there's a difference between spots on stainless and stainless actually rusting and bleeding.

I plan on changing them out with better quality hinges, hopefully on their dime.

The hinges on the boat have the gemlux logo. On the gemlux website, the only flush hinge they have in the size of my hinges is listed as "stamped stainless". I have a call in to gemlux but I assume this means they were stamp formed. It doesn't say anything about plated or coated. Just stamped stainless.

I need to go with the same type hinges because everything is drilled to that bolt pattern.

What's also disappointing is as soon as I mentioned "hinge rusting" on the phone with the boat manufacturer, the rep tells me about crevice corrosion and starts reading from a website about what causes it. I'm talking about within seconds of me mentioning it. Them he says "I don't really know much about it but this article explains it". This leads me to believe that this is a recurring issue and their canned response to customer complaints is to reference some obscure corrosion issue rather than fix the issue with their product.