Corn cobs or walnut shells, not aggressive enough, good for polishing though. I had a
friend over today and he says that’s what he uses to clean his shooting brass, but brass
tarnish is a lot different than steel rust.
Vinegar----is just a real mild acid.
Evaporust----NG, way over rated, very slow, about the same strength as vinegar, a waste
of your money.
I did some comparison testing a few months ago using similarly rusted fasteners.
Evaporust in one container, Phosphoric acid in another vinegar had it’s own and Kano
(Kroil) Exrust in the forth. A couple of years ago I got stiffed for a gallon of concentrate
that was supposed to make 10 gallons of deruster. Paid a lot for that gallon and it worked
pretty good, that is, for the first few pieces then the bath quit working.
My phosphoric acid bath is 80% concentration and it out performs the other stuff ten
times over. it works great, it’s fast, leaves an nice thin paintable conversion coating on the
parts will keep on working till it all evaporates and will even strip paint if left over night or longer.
The object of the vibrator was to throw the parts into the bowl after they came out of the
chemical soak to finish off the cleaning rather than stand over the sink with a scrub
brush and scrub the scum off each and every little clip, washer, nut or bolt.
I was thinking of using Black Max which is coal ash and very aggressive as a sandblast
media. Think I might give that a try in the morning and let it Shake-A Shake for a few
hours. The end product is going to be blackened so I’m looking for that nice satin finish.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
