[TheForge] Re: Pickling solutions

[Mike Spencer]

> After years of removing rust and trying about everything, I haven't
> found anything chemical that works better than phosphoric,....

Yeah.  Phosphoric or elecro-cleaning.  Or both together.

> I haven't had a chance to use the electro removal process yet
> though, always been too easy to sandblast so far.

Heavy sandblasting would, I assume, remove everything.  I had occasion
a couple of years ago to restore some indoor gates I had made in the
80s and which had been stored in a damp, dirt-floor Basement cellar.
Light rust fur with heavy rusting in areas near where they had touched
the dirt.

I blasted them with glass bead and got (what looked like) good results
-- clean steel without matting the detail forged surfaces.  Reblued
and waxed.  But now, despite no further exposure to excess dampness,
the worst-rusted areas -- the ones that had rested on the dirt in the
cellar and were deeply pitted -- have broken out in rust again.  I
wish I had used local application of phosphoric acid then.  I think
the acid would have purged the rust pits and the phosphate residue
would have protected them.

Now I'm going to try damming the rusted areas and pickling or maybe
eletro-pickling just those areas.  The hope is that the acid will get
into the tiny pits that eluded the glass bead and that subsequent
gunblue will even out the color.



- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^

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