Taking rust off iron or steel
Ran into this and thought that it deserved a wider distribution.
If you have something that is rusted, you can remove the rust by using a battery charger, a plastic tub, some scrap steel and some Washing Soda or Baking Soda.
There are some other techniques -- Phosphoric Acid (Naval Jelly) and Coca Cola work but they can eat into the good metal and they leave a "pickled" surface. Using this technique transforms the rust back into granular metallic iron which can be scrubbed off after treatment; it will not attack the good metal.
I am building a coal forge using a very rusted brake drum as the body and will be trying this technique tomorrow.
UPDATE 11-12-2005: Do not have the brake drum set up quite yet -- I will start this tomorrow.
Also
this site has a good graphical explanation of the setup and the process including some before and after pictures.
Posted by DaveH at November 11, 2005 10:20 PM