rust removal

[Joe in Canada]

I heard about this new way of removing rust and had to Google it. Has anyone tried it out yet? I also hear the price tag is equal to a new car. 

 

[John348]

WOW, I'm sold. Beats sand blasting. Seems like it saves hours upon hours of really dirty toxic work

[trini]

WOW, that is great. Where can I buy one. May be I can set up business.  Fantastic job.

 

Cheers.

Harry. 

[John348]

3 minutes ago, trini said:

WOW, that is great. Where can I buy one. May be I can set up business.  Fantastic job.

 

Cheers.

Harry. 

 

Harry I thought the same as you did. I just looked it up where I could buy one, I figured for a couple of grand it would be great, set up a business and go to town with it...nope $325,000.00 buys it. The real kicker is that it is made in China!

 

I did like the Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers looking spray gun

[trini]

Well, John, our dreams are shattered. There is a small market in Canada. It might be possible for club members banding together , purchase one and charge fees to recover cost. A long shot. Do not surrender until the fat lady sings. 

Cheers and have nice day.

[Restorer32]

What can it do that a $500 glass bead cabinet can't?

[trini]

Large pieces cannot fit in the cabinet for one. Flying sand if sanding outside of cabinet is a hazard , messy in the shop and not permitted in some municipalities to sand blast in the yard. The negative side with sand blasting (glass bead) is losing metal and case hardening of metal. Warping of flat areas . pockets of rust remains ,which cannot be seen most times with the naked eye. This pocket rust will later bubble up . Corners and areas impossible to reach remain half done at best.

The same with the new gadget. It will miss out in recesses and may well leave pockets as well. We have not seen the finished product here in North America and no reviews. The major problem  of any sort is hidden joints and folds where the nozzle cannot be aimed. WHO SAID THE WORLD IS FLAT ? From my experience small irregular pieces can be cleaned  with Vapor Rust. Some says it is a mixture of water and molasses. Muriatic Acid works great. It is messy and dangerous. Make sure you are properly protected.  Do not leave the object in the acid for too long. The metal will absorb the acid. Just long enough to remove the rust .Wash  thoroughly    with soap powder or neutralise with baking soda.  Wet with WD40 until ready to paint. There is no easy way out.

To weaken muriatic acid lace it with zinc 

 

    

[Restorer32]

We would never use chemicals to remove rust. Too much chance of the chemicals bleeding out of a joint after the car is painted and damaging a very expensive paint job. Glass beads don't remove good metal. Our glass bead cabinet has been used probably an average of 8 hours a week for 37 years and we have yet to replace the metal screen in the bottom which is hit with media constantly. No danger of work hardening if you are careful. To each there own of course but we won't guarantee paint work if a car has been dipped.

[Joe in Canada]

The biggest concern I have is there any warping like you can get from bead blasting. That is besides the price also being more than most collector cars.

Edited April 19, 2016 by Joe in Canada (see edit history)

[trini]

Restorer32, good point. small hard parts like brackets and bumpers can be safely bead blasted but there are left over in minute pockets. A tiny hole will get bigger . Look at it through a magnifying glass. May be the bead blasting works, a rim for example. There is always a chance of bleeding from acid. There used to be a company here in  Toronto in the early eighties called Canada Metal Laundry . There were three 20 foot tanks. One for removing grease, the next one was for removing paint and the last one was for  removing rust.

The last tank contained a green liquid like antifreeze.. Completely  surrounded by a copper  cable, looked like one inch in diameter, and every 2 feet or so a 1 foot square copper blocks hanging in the liquid like a giant necklace .The work pieces  will hang from a giant basket  from the ceiling  into the liquid. There were zillions of rust bubbles moving towards and sticking to the copper block. Like coffee ground. .  I had a 28 Chevrolet sheet metal cleaned there and some pieces stored unpainted for more than 5 years with no issues .He was shut down by the  environment department.

How to blast  inside a reinforcing channel  spot welded to a sheet metal  is a challenge, short of removing the channel . I came across an article in the Old Autos newspaper in Canada. This fellow suggested going to the farmers coop store and buy a gallon of molasses and mix with water. Soak the parts in that. Is that what  Vapor Rust and Coca Cola consist of ?   I do not know. But I will  try a piece and let you know. Soda blasting ?  Pieces needs  thorough  washing and then deal with flash rust after.

Here is a new one. "VAPOUR  BLASTING" darryl@sodablast.ca . advertised in the latest issue of the Old Atos newspaper.

I would like to hear from others on this subject

[R Walling]

 I have been using a large tank filled with molasses to remove the rust from a 56 chevy that was sandblasted about 25 years ago and left to rust. It took about 2 or 3 weeks to remove all the rust from my sheet metal parts. (at a temp. of about 45-50 degrees)

 

 Yesterday I was in a hurry and I used a product called ZEP Rust Remover on the inside of the hood. It worked pretty fast but left some very hard scaled deposits that were very resistant to sanding with 80 grit sandpaper on a DA.

 

 Not wanting to warp the sensitive hood panel, I used the rust remover and pored Black Beauty grit onto the panel and used the DA to "grind it in". It worked very good, getting down into the deep pits with out excessive heat that would damage the panel.

 

 Ps,

If you have some chrome parts that have minor rusting, you can soak them in the molasses for about a week and it will remove the rust . It will leave very small pits where the rust was, but it will at least be a silver color. By giving them a good coat of wax, they may be serviceable without re-plating them.

  

Edited April 20, 2016 by Roger Walling (see edit history)

[JACK M]

I had my 37 Desoto totally disassembled about 15 or 20 years ago.

Dipped it all in a set up like Trini describes.

Absolutely do problems after all these years.

They still do this in Portland and I use them on occasion.

The process includes a pressure wash that is very thorough. I would suspect that there may be some bare spots that didn't get painted.

Probably the same spots that were not painted from the factory.

I had a rusty old engine block done a few years ago and it is holding up well also.

[John348]

I remember reading this thread on the GM "H" Body site (H bodies were Vega's, Astre's, Sunbird's, Monza's, Skyhawk's, and Starefire's) One thing these cars were not immune from was rust, so these guys have tried a lot. This thread is about using a mixture with potato's. Much of it reminds me of "Mr Wizard" or "Professor Marvel" (I think the name) the TV show from the 60's trying to get kid's interested in simple chemistry using common household products. 

Anyway if you guys are looking to try something new for rust it is worth a read.

http://forums.h-body.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=43446

[Hudsy Wudsy]

This use of lasers isn't really new technology. The Klingons have been using it on their Battle Cruisers for a millennium.

Edited April 20, 2016 by Hudsy Wudsy (see edit history)

[John348]

54 minutes ago, Hudsy Wudsy said:

This use of lasers isn't really new technology. The Klingons have been using it on their Battlecruisers for a millennium.

 

True, but I think the "gun" in the video looks like they stole it from Flash Gordon

[trini]

The  " METAL LAUNDRY" I  refer to was a franchise from somewhere in the U.S.  Called electrolysis . Some body  must know a chemical used as a medium that will react to electricity  in such manner. Similar to home chrome plating somewhat.

[Restorer32]

Our opinion and this is just our opinion, most of the chemical or electrolysis or "miracle" rust removal techniques are just the long way around the barn. We no longer do our own blasting but for 20 years we blasted everything from Model T parts to Duesenberg parts, frames, bodies, everything. Blasting does not remove metal nor does it cause warpage if done by an experienced person using the right grit medium. You can't beat it for efficiency and cost. We have a '60 Cadillac Biarritz body leaving for the blaster this morning. Years ago we had a customer who took a set of wood wheels to a sandblaster (not us) and instructed them to blast the paint off the wood, with predictable results!

[60FlatTop]

Trust is something I am not very free with. When I took my '64 Riviera frame to a sandblaster I cleaned and degreased every square inch for fear Bobo (check Charles Lamb Dissertation on Roast Pig) would hold the gun in one spot for an hour trying to remove a fly speck. When I dropped it off the guy asked "Why is this here?". I told him "Just give it some tooth." I did a lot. They did a little; very good balance. I had them epoxy primer it and supplied them with satin black polyurethane for the finish coat. That was 1994. It looks great today.

My level of trust is less today.

Bernie

[JACK M]

I had a 66 Plymouth shipped a few years ago. It had had a rotisserie restoration done in the not so distant past but had been driven a few hundred miles.

It was shipped on the back of the hauler and at a fairly steep angle.

When I opened the trunk there was a bunch of the blasting media on the trunk floor. I can only surmise that it had been living in that trunk lid and the trip across the country at that angle shook it loose. The fact that it was a convertible may have had some drafts to help blow the stuff loose.

Vacuumed it out and no signs since.

[Restorer32]

Yea, it gets everywhere. Many years ago when I did the blasting myself I would find media in places on my body where you don't really want an abrasive. We blasted all kinds off stuff including the air frames and landing gear of Stearman Biplanes that were being build up from surplus parts by a company here locally. I enjoyed blasting. Instant gratification, unlike many operations in restoration. The last car body I actually blasted myself was a '53 Skylark back in the '90s. We now send anything that won't fit in out glass bead cabinet out to be done.

[Amphicar BUYER]

They key is finding experienced blasters. I had a guy do an Amphicar for me. gave him specific direction and "no go zones". When I came to pick it up, he said "I did you a favor and blasted the entire thing for you". It was no "favor" as now the body has more waves than when it's in the water! It was warped badly from the front to the back. Cost me significant time and labor to repair the stretched and pitted metal. Fought him over the cost (even if he did me a "favor") and in the end he finally realized a law suit was not going to work out in his favor. Months later I found out he lied about his experience, rather than 10 years as he said, it was 4 months!!! Word got around and the last I saw he was selling his equipment on Craigslist.

[mdh7475]

The unit running the laser is about the size of a car also. Three phase 480 volt will keep a lot of shops out of the market too.   The video of laser seems to show it being almost hand help, but in reality the unit doing the removal is about 3 feet long.  You wont be getting into tight quarters with it!

[Restorer32]

We would use fresh media to do frames. wheels, axles and such. Then as the media broke down we would use it on door jambs, hood bracing, etc. Only when the media had broken down to little more than a fine powder would we use it on bodies and even then if faced with a broad flat panel with little contour we wouldn't blast it.

[trini]

It is nice reading the comments of the members. They are polite and gave honest views on the subject. I am sure  readers out there all learned something. Given the situation on the most cost effected way is, as Restorer32 said, is sand blasting. It has its drawbacks though. It does not matter what method, flash rust is a problem. I  LIKE ROGER WALLING METHOD. I have a 1928 Dodge Brothers 4 door Senior with minimal or very little rust. I will get the frame sandblasted and the sheet metal using Roger Walling method.  If you come across any new method let us know.

Cheers, fellows, and enjoy the hobby  

[Willy]

I am very happy with using molasses, like Roger Walling does. The garage even smells nice! Willy

[JACK M]

2 hours ago, Willy said:

I am very happy with using molasses, like Roger Walling does. The garage even smells nice! Willy

 

And totally environmentally safe.

A little mold doesn't hurt anything.

[dix40]

I've seen/heard/tried probably all the rust removal techniques. The one I use works in 3-5 minutes and is simple.

Actually there are 2 ways to deal with rust.

1- there are a few products out there that chemically react with the rust and changes it to another compound. Ospho, POR15 and Corroseal all change the red rust to a black compound that acts as a sealer vs further rusting. good if the rust isn't too deep.

2- To remove rust for clean steel. muriatic acid from the hardware store($6/gallon) will remove the rust in 3-5 minutes. small parts can be dipped. larger parts I brush it on several times. I like this best for the speed, cost and efficicency. Becareful however. the fumes are dangerous and outside with a respirator is mandatory. also, as soon as the metal is clean, rinse with clean water and dry. Be careful however. the acid will continue to dissolve the steel if left too long. watch it and as soon as it is clean.rinse with water. If you don't dry it quickly, you will get some flash rusting. Flash rust is a good sign. it means your steel is absolutely clean. ready for primer(it is already etched now) or tank sealer. I've used this process for painting and tank sealing. The culpruit in painting and sealing is not rust but water/oil/gas/dirt film. paint primer and tank sealer can't bond to these.

I have done gas tanks for many years and this process works and is fast. At my tank sealing demos I show the results.