Minor home disaster. Rust removal ideas ?

**Avi Ziv** · Mar-06-2009, 9:10am

I came home from work last night to find my dining room had turned into a tropical rain forest while I was at work. A heating pipe broke in the floor above, destroying my ceiling completely and flooding my dining room area. Most of the ceiling sheetrock was ("melted") on the floor, table and everything. Major amount of water was coming down like sheets of rain.

Lacking a workshop, I do my building on my dining room table. LUCKILY, my IV kit project was in another room for the day but tools were left out, as well as some wood samples in the midst of dye/finish experiments. Anything made of steel was covered with rust after less than one day.

The first two obvious "casualties" are a Parrot vice and the beautifully-restored #6 plane I bought just recently.

What is the best way to clean up these tools for "overnight" surface rust, given that it's not just simple flat surfaces ?

Anything that cannot be repaired easily will be part of an insurance claim

I guess I know what I'm doing this weekend...

Thanksl

**mandolooter** · Mar-06-2009, 10:41am

wow bummer...been there about 10 years ago...washer hose busted and went all night while I was asleep in the other end of the house!
What a huge mess...back then i didn't know what a mandolin was...

**Gail Hester** · Mar-06-2009, 10:56am

That's too bad. I would wipe them down with WD-40 and put a fan on everything or dry them off with a hair dryer.

**sunburst** · Mar-06-2009, 11:01am

You can probably clean most of the rust off with some elbow grease and steel wool. WD40 does help.
If there's some rust left after that, Navel jelly will take care of it.

**Rick Turner** · Mar-06-2009, 11:02am

And dry it all with navel lint...

**mdlorenz** · Mar-06-2009, 11:03am

I've heard coca cola will take just about anything off, but I'm sure there's better solutions... a rust removal product? & then a buffing?

**barney 59** · Mar-06-2009, 11:18am

First thing I would do is spray down the tools with wd 40. "W.D." means water displacement & was developed to store aircraft. You should be o.k. on the tools -your within a few hours of the soaking. They shouldn't have accumulated anything but surface rust and will still function just fine but might loose a little bit of their shine. I would not go at them with a wire brush as that will do more damage -fine emory cloth maybe. The oil on the tools you can clean up later and should as too much oil around can mess up a woodworking project. It's not the water that your worried about it's the air. That's why they call it oxidation.
The heating system blew so right now you probably don't have heat. The second thing I would do if the place is really soaked is rent from a tool rental place or maybe a flooring supplier a dehumidifier of industrial strength. Flooring guys use these to bring down humidity in houses before they install and I've seen them suck water out in bucket loads from new house construction that hasn't been flooded. I think you'll be fine after you clean up the mess.

**Fretbear** · Mar-06-2009, 12:41pm

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.a...at=1,190,43040

**barney 59** · Mar-06-2009, 12:52pm

Your getting suggestions for products like naval jelly. These products turn iron oxide into iron suffide and are great at converting accumulated rust which you should not have they also turn everything black- rust /metal etc. and is harder to remove than the rust. I would take my planes etc apart dump everything in a bucket and give them a good dose of wd and let them sit they'll keep that way and then attend to the house because your going to be busy.

**Avi Ziv** · Mar-06-2009, 1:04pm

Thanks folks. I have both WD40 and Boeshield that I can try and use them with steel wool. I've never heard of Naval Jelly and at first I thought it was a joke....but I did look it up.

Any opinions of WD40 vs Boeshield?

I appreciate the good suggestions

**woodwiz** · Mar-06-2009, 4:20pm

Naval Jelly's active ingredient is Phosphoric Acid, which turns iron oxide into iron phosphate which is water soluble. It removes rust, doesn't reduce it or turn it into sulfate..

I like Boeshield for long term storage. I forms a fairly substantial film.

WD-40 is good for driving water off and out, but for me the protection has been pretty short term.

**thistle3585** · Mar-06-2009, 5:50pm

After having gone through a flood, I was able to salvage most of my tools by soaking them in WD40. I constantly coated them so they were always "wet" with WD40. The rust came off everything with little residual staining. These were tools that were submerged for a couple days as well as sat in a pile in my yard for almost two weeks until I had a chance to sort through them. Yes, stay away from the Naval jelly for precision tools. Just my .02.

Andrew

**Duc Vu** · Mar-06-2009, 11:10pm

Originally Posted by mdlorenz

I've heard coca cola will take just about anything off, but I'm sure there's better solutions... a rust removal product? & then a buffing?

Coke contains phosphoric acid.

**Michael Lewis** · Mar-06-2009, 11:49pm

Clean up new rust with white vinegar. It doesn't take very long, and wash it off with clear water. dry it well and use either Boeshield or WD 40 and put the tools away in a dry place.

**Avi Ziv** · Mar-08-2009, 12:49pm

Originally Posted by Michael Lewis

Clean up new rust with white vinegar. It doesn't take very long, and wash it off with clear water. dry it well and use either Boeshield or WD 40 and put the tools away in a dry place.

I ended up doing just that - soaked in white vinegar, washed, dried and then Boeshield. So far so good.

Thanks all for the good advice

**blueridgemandolin** · Mar-08-2009, 3:19pm

For my two cents worth the Boeshield is the best, I use it all the time to displace and keep water from electrical connections. It seems to stay longer than WD-40 on things
Dan