Best way to clean the rust off this and restore?

personally i use CLR or 4% white vinegar [over nite dip]

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or

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++1 for white vinegar.

Don't spend your money on Evaporust, IMO. Vinegar does the same job, and is literally 10 times cheaper.

Just soak it in a cookie sheet, completely submerged for 48 hours, then give a light scrub with a wire brush to knock the remaining rust off. It'll come out like new, save for any pitting that might have happened if the rust was deep.

I usually wipe sheet metal with steel wool after the vinegar soak, just to give it a little more uniform sheen, but this is optional.

Works for bolts as well, and all other arcade metals. More people need to know about the vinegar trick IMO, as it's hugely useful for restoration work.
 
I used an EvapoRust clone... it worked well. I then tried a non arcade related piece of metal that had been out in the weather for 10 years in white vinegar .... it took longer.... I'd say around 4 times longer (but this could be due to that level of rust/etc more than the "derusting agent").

If you want to move faster, I'd say Evaporust.... if you want to go cheap, white vinegar.

Either way, killing the rust through chemicals is easier then sanding/griding/wire wheel.
 
Yea white vinegar works but takes a lot longer and you still need to do more work afterward. Evaporust works quicker and usually you have nothing left to do afterward. And since you can use it over and over its comparable in price to one use vinegar.
 
I used to use naval jelly, until I discovered vinegar.

Also FWIW, you can reuse the vinegar. I have a large tub of it in a plastic container with a sealable cover that I got from Walmart for like 6 bucks (which is big enough to fit a coin door), and I cycle parts through it regularly. The vinegar does get dirty looking, but still works. And a lot of the time, the cloudiness is just fine sediment, that will settle out if you leave it undisturbed long enough.

Evaporust is a great product, and I have nothing against it. For as much as I have my hands in the stuff though (which is pretty frequent), I feel better about the vinegar. And for $2.50 a gallon, it's great when you need a lot of it.

I soaked an entire frame from a 6100 (including the RF shield) that had been through a house fire, sat in a wet building for days, and was 100% covered in rust. It came out great, and is now my main bench monitor.
 
oxalic acid works very well also. Its available in home depot/lowes as a deck cleaner. read the ingredients very carefully to make sure its not some other acid. OXALIC. it reacts with the rust after soaking and brushes off easily. Will not remove stickers or paint.
 
Sanblast it, everything else is just fuckin retarted. Metal immediately starts to oxidize with any chemical even though you can't see it, unless you have several baths to clean, neutralize and seal the metal.
 
Good post. I have been using the evaporust (expensive) and have used naval jelly as well. Definitely going to try the vinegar.

Haven't tried this myself, but my dad would always soak old rusted chains in kerosene but not sure if that only works for iron.

Might eventually try electrolysis
 
oxalic acid works very well also. Its available in home depot/lowes as a deck cleaner. read the ingredients very carefully to make sure its not some other acid. OXALIC. it reacts with the rust after soaking and brushes off easily. Will not remove stickers or paint.



This sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out. Always on the lookout for new tools/techniques.
 
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