I don't know if anyone here has ever made cages or aviaries with wire mesh treated with vinegar.
I did that in the past and it worked very well.

Ths time I bought this huge 30mt mesh roll, soaked it in the vinegar and now the wire is blackish is some spots.

The roll was kept together with wire, and I didn't remove the wire before soaking. The black patches are exactly where the wire was.

Has this ever happened to anyone?

I am about to scrub the whole mesh with a metal brush, hoping that the blackish spots will disappears, but I am worried that some kind of metal reaction has happened making the mesh i those blackish laces unusable.


mesh before soaking





after soaking







Do I discard all the blackened parts if the black doesn't come off after wire brushing?

I haven't run across this problem before so I did some research, and found an answer in a strange place. Apparently soaking galvanized wire in vinegar is a method used to blacken chainmail, for people who are into that sort of thing. At http://www.dagorhir.com/forums/index.ph ... 530.5;wap2 it says "The downside about blackening galvanized chain mail is that the acid in the vinegar wears off the zinc and the chain mail is then prone to rust as though it were regular steel chain mail. But with proper upkeep it can look very spiffy."

Other sources seem to agree although none of them put it quite this clearly. It sounds as though you may have permanently removed the zinc coating from the wire, which is a good thing in a way because we don't want our birds eating zinc. Hardware cloth is made of steel wire (non-stainless) galvanized with zinc, and if the zinc is gone the question now is whether rusty steel is safe for birds. I'm going to go looking for the answer now.

Steel wire is 98 to 99.999% iron, and the rust is going to be iron rust. Birds are more iron-sensitive than we are so you'd think this would be a toxicity hazard but I'm not sure that it actually is. Many sources say that rust (iron oxide) is insoluble and non-toxic because our bodies can't absorb insoluble minerals. Other sources say it can become soluble under the right circumstances.

Toxicity aside, it's generally agreed that rusty wire isn't good in an aviary because the metal quality deteriorates and you could easily end up with holes in the wire. The standard solution for wire that's still in reasonably good condition is to paint it or powder coat it. Powder coating has to be done professionally and it's expensive. Here's an article on safely repainting bird cages: http://www.avianweb.com/refinishingcages.html

I'm not 100% convinced that this is the only possible solution because the references are scattered about and mostly about something else, so good luck trying to just simply wash the black stuff off. I just remodeled an aviary so I know how expensive hardware cloth is - a roll that was 4 feet wide and 50 feet long set me back eighty bucks, and that was actually a bargain price!

I think you are spot on there.
The tub i used to immerse the wire was a tad too shot, so I kept one side in overnight, then turned it upside down and forgot to take it out after the recommended 6-8 hours.
So basically one side is like a normal wire colour which will just need to be metal brushed.
The other side, as seen in one of the pics, is blackened and there's even some rust on the edge, not much but enough to make me think that the zinc coat is gone and the rust happened because that part of the mesh was at the bottom and got the water drips
coming from the top of the roll.

A few days ago I contacted a few local companies that do powder coating jobs. The price for a cage is £40 which is not much, but they have no idea how huge the cage is, so the £40 is probably gonna become 120 if i'm lucky, which at the moment is not an option. Unless they make me pay less if I bring the panels and not the cage already built.

I guess I can still use the half that's not gonna rust, such a shame because my plans were all based on panels 60cm wide.

I might get in contact with the eBay guy who sold me the wire and ask him to replace it because it rusted... you never know.

Worth a try he may just change it for you..
Fingers crossed..