The ins and outs of stainless steel.

What's behind the stainless steel door and why they're so "hot" with dealers, distributors, builders and architects

My other Jim and I had a successful business producing a traditional line of hollow metal steel doors and, like many other manufacturers, we dabbled in stainless steel units from time to time. Then, seeing a void in the market, we decided to expand our stainless steel production.

As we looked at our opportunity in stainless, however, it became apparent that stainless steel had totally different production, engineering and service requirements from our hollow metal business. To go all the way with stainless, we realized that we needed to establish a separate, independent company, with special procedures and equipment and people with specialized skills and experience.

Stainless is a different metal and needs different care

Picture a stainless steel door in your mind for a minute, and you'll see one of the important differences right away. The first thing you picture is its surface - it's stainless steel, not painted. That means you can't fill in scratches or dings with putty and paint over your mistakes. Obviously, more care has to be taken with the door from beginning to end. The finish has to be delivered intact and looking good.

You can't do much remedial work with a stainless steel door in the field, either. It has to be right and fit correctly the first time. These units arc more expensive than traditional hollow metal, so they can't be discarded and replaced if there's a problem.

Another big difference you can't see, is the state of the specs for stainless steel doors. I hate to say it, but the majority of the specs I see arc incomplete, incorrect or nonexistent. Specs have to be reviewed carefully, and we often end up making voluntary options or offering alternatives in bidding these specs. It's an important service to our dealers, who need to get a perfect product to their contractors.

Stainless and carbon steels: they don't work well together

Manufacturing stainless steel doors isn't just different from manufacturing traditional hollow metal doors, it's actually incompatible. That's why we opened a new high-tech plant in Miami.

Manufacturing these doors requires more quality control at every step, starting with the shop drawings. Every detail has to be worked out and set down, so the end user will have absolutely no question about the unit. For example, let's look at a detail like a surface closer reinforcement. In hollow metal work, its application is taken for granted, but in stainless steel doors, the way it is designed and applied is critical to the performance and appearance of the unit ... therefore the specs must not leave any room for guesswork.

Another incompatibility is tooling. To make a quality stainless steel door, you can't use tools, bits or tooling that are also in contact with carbon steel, because even minor traces will be picked up by the stainless product and will eventually show as unacceptable rust spots.

Even if we could use the same tooling, we would have to use it differently, since stainless steel "work hardens." It takes about twice the force needed to bend the same radius as a comparable gauge of regular steel. So it has to be handled differently all down the line.

Welding is an entirely different matter. You can't have spot welding on an exposed surface; you have to engineer the doors and frames around that requirement. A good manufacturer will also insist on having welders who are stainless certified. Stainless is much more heat conductive, and reacts differently in welding, thus requiring special skills and experience, as well as special equipment (such as TIG units).

And when a unit is finished, it needs extra care in packaging and crating. The surface has to be protected from scratch cs and abrasion in transit and installation. Crating has to offer special protection from freight damage.

Finally, since stainless is such a high-service item with specialized requirements, we firmly believe a good stainless manufacturer should never sell direct to contractors, only to qualified dealer/distributors who can engineer, deliver and service a total opening. Therefore, even he marketing is different. Our decision was to develop a tight national network of qualified manufacturer's representatives, and offer plenty of service, information and communication.

Get ready for tremendous growth in the stainless market

If you think about it, it makes sense. Labor costs are going up all the time, and once a top-quality stainless unit is installed, it doesn't need a great deal of attention ... no painting, certainly. It's durable and maintenance-free. Look at the stainless steel dome of New York's Chrysler building, completely exposed in a harsh environment since 1930. It still shines and looks great.

Stainless steel is a "wonder metal" for architectural use. It stands up to corrosive environments better than any other type of heavy-duty, custom-fabricated door. That's why it's specified for environments like waste water treatment plants and swimming pool enclosures.

Actually, the United States is late in adopting stainless as a widespread building material. In Japan, about 20% of the stainless steel they produce goes into building components; in the United States, it's only around 4%. Our architects and builders have yet to exploit its real potential.

Public housing: A case history in stainless steel entryways

Public housing is a good example of stainless steel at its best, especially in the North. Storefront entryways arc exposed to salt from ice-melting compounds on the outside, and to corrosive sweeping compounds on the inside. They get other types of abuse and harsh treatment, as well.

When our public housing customers used standard steel doors, they only lasted two or three years at the most. They installed aluminum entry systems, but these couldn't take the abuse either. Aluminum's a soft metal. With its inherent weakness, exposed seams and corrosion, the aluminum units only lasted five years or so. Our company is now replacing many of these units with state-of-the-art stainless steel entry systems that have a service life of 40 years.

In terms of life cycle costing, stainless steel doors beat everything else hands down. The Specialty Steel Industry of North America (SSINA) offers a pamphlet and free software that compares the life cycle costing of stainless to other materials.

People like the way stainless cleans up, too. It's hygienic; that's why you see it used in kitchens, "clean rooms" and pharmaceutical plants.

"Clad" doors are a big problem

If I had one wish for my customers, it would be that they "just say no" to clad doors. But the truth is, they're specified, allowed and used quite frequently. There's a misconception in the market about these doors. Many dealers and distributors believe you can take a door that's fire rated, wrap it in a sheet of stainless steel, and still have a fire-rated door. But it's just not true, according to UL.

Even the highest-rated standard steel door loses its fire rating when modified, which call be a huge liability in some circumstances. Unless a particular assembly is tested and rated, it has no fire label at all.

Just as important, a door made this way is an inferior product. Because it's laminated onto a substrate of a different material, it's going to delaminate in time. It's also subject to an unsightly condition called "oil-canning." Contact between the stainless steel and carbon steel can also cause a serious corrosion problem from electrogalvanic action.

In addition, clad doors usually have mechanical fasteners on their edges, such as rivets or screws. These are bound to work loose sooner or later. By definition, edges can't be seamless if they're clad, and they'll always have an unsightly exposed edge of metal. There's only one way to make a superior stainless steel product, and it takes time and expertise.

Even stainless doors will corrode, if you're not careful

I think it's widely believed that stainless steel will never rust, and that's not true. I already mentioned the possibility of contamination with carbon steel in manufacturing. This creates "contact" corrosion. The most common form of corrosion is galvanic corrosion, which occurs when a large area of stainless steel comes into contact with carbon steel, such as in cladding or the use of non-stainless reinforcements. There's also inter granular corrosion, pitting and pinhole corrosion, stress corrosion, sensitization and crevice attack.

There arc also several types of stainless steel, and to increase resistance to corrosion, a more durable grade might be called for in some circumstances. In most cases, "stainless steel" refers to Type 304 stainless. It does an excellent job of withstanding rust, and stands up to dyes, organic chemicals and many inorganic compounds. But there's an even tougher grade, Type 316, which has slightly more nickel in it, and 2% or 3% molybdenum. This is what's needed in really harsh environments like chemical processing environments or swimming pool areas where chlorides are present.

But as I said, most stainless steel door specs are either incomplete or inaccurate. Very often, we see Type 304 (or no type at all) specified when we think Type 316 is called for, and occasionally we see specs calling for Type 316 which we think are "overkill," where a less expensive Type 304 will do the job. A good stainless manufacturer should read between the lines and let the customer know his options through common-sense voluntary alternatives and bid notes. In many cases, this can prevent a lot of trouble later. It's especially important to let a customer know when the quality specified may not be up to the task.

How to tell quality in a stainless steel door

First of all, look at the outside: One way to make a top-quality door is to make it completely seamless, welded shut. The welds should be ground and finished to the same surface characteristics as the face of the door. Then it should be assembled and matched to the jamb. When you get this type of door, you won't have any problems with fit or installation.

If the door doesn't have welded seams all around, it should have mechanically interlocked edges - definitely not an outer veneer of stainless fastened onto an existing door, with exposed edges.

The inside is just as important. Every piece of componentry has to be the same alloy of stainless steel as the outside, or you'll get corrosion. I recently saw a set of recommended stainless steel door specs from another manufacturer in which they allowed carbon steel components. They arc selling a product which is going to corrode from the inside out, and that defeats its very purpose. Customers should be really careful about this practice.

A wide variety of finishes, textures, colors and patterns

When most people picture a stainless steel door, they see a plain, satin trait and jamb - attractive, but bland. Actually, the possibilities are incredible. We're seeing more and more architects specifying stainless steel doors for design possibilities as much as durability. Recently we made a stunning set of entry doors for Arquitectonica's South Beach, Miami headquarters which used textured stainless steel with a custom pattern of embossments on the surface. Since they're a trend-setting architectural firm, we take that as a good sign.

A stainless manufacturer can produce doors with anything from a #2B paint grade finish right up to a dazzling #8 mirror finish, with jambs to match. When we replaced the lobby doors in the Vista Hotel, for example, after the World Trade Center bombing, we used a special set of #8 finish labeled doors, with special transoms.

Stainless steel doors arc available in hundreds of deep textures or patterns. The surfaces can be etched with logos or other design elements. They can have spectacular colors through anodizing, and all sorts of custom visions. The list goes on and on.

Plenty of manufacturing options - inside and out

The most common, and probably the most important option, is the type of stainless steel alloy used in the door, which I mentioned earlier. But inside the door, there are several options, too. Our standard interior construction uses a solid polystyrene slab; some manufacturers prefer a honeycomb core. Stainless steel doors are also available with steel stiffened cores. We offer all three cores, all with fire ratings up to three hours. Other options include acoustic sound-rated stainless steel doors up to STC 51, doors that are both fire and sound-rated, and bullet-resistant stainless steel doors.

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Don't be afraid of unfamiliar territory

Some dealers and distributors shy away from bidding stainless steel doors because they're afraid of unfamiliar territory. That's a shame, because stainless steel doors are a great high-margin opportunity, and a natural extension of the lines they're supplying now. It's a growing field, and their customers are going to want more and more of them.

And when you deal with stainless steel, you're really dealing with the total opening - because all the hardware literally has to work together, or the customer will end up with a unit that doesn't perform up to expectations. Contractors rely on a good dealer/distributor to make sure they're getting the fight package. Stainless steel doors aren't easy to fix in the field either. Since there's less margin of error, a contractor needs to rely more on the dealer to make sure sizing, hand and swing are just right.

That's why a stainless steel door manufacturer should never sell direct to contractors. It's not a commodity business like hollow steel, and the relationships need to be different all the way down the line. The manufacturer needs to deliver a high level of support to the dealers and distributors, and they, in turn, have to make this support available to their contractors.

Stainless steel is like anything else if you work closely with people you've come to trust, your experience can be hassle-free . . . and very profitable.

* A copy can be requested from Brian Leslie at SSINA, 202/342-8630.