Metal De-Corroder and its effects

RDGAC · 16th September 2010, 06:13 PM

Howdy all; forum's been a bit quiet of late on the gun front, but I have here a technical question which is puzzling me a bit.

Firstly, some background. Recently I persuaded my boss to cut loose on the string and buy some Renaissance Metal De-Corroder (please read the information therewith before responding), a handy little compound which seems to be very effective in killing rust without killing your object in the process and rather less deleterious to its appearance than wire wool. Full of cautious enthusiasm I set to work with this stuff on one of our swords. This particular sword was in a dire state; it had sat in its scabbard for something like 15 years, and the centre of the blade was one solid cloud of rust for about half the total length of the blade. It was a sorry thing, and I held out little hope of improving its lot in life. This was made especially sad by the fact that this particular blade was visible a fine example, inscribed with (just about visible) battle honours one one side and what turned out to be the 4th Dragoon Guards' regimental emblem on the other.

(And yes, I realise this is a European weapon - bear with me, neh?

)

So I went to work. Ideally one should simply immerse the affected metal in the solution, but being run on a shoestring we neither have, nor can afford, a tank of such a capacity (let alone the volume of solution to fill it), making it necessary for me to paint the solution onto the sword. This obviously necessitates constantly re-applying a thin layer to the metal, as well as accepting much greater evaporative losses. But still, it couldn't hurt, frankly. The photos included show a view of the untreated blade; all that brown gunk is rust. It wasn't at all pretty.

The results, therefore, surpassed all my expectations. As you can plainly see if the post-treatment pictures (the more normally-proportioned ones), the sword is one more legible, the text almost unmarred by more than a decade (at least) of neglect. All in all I was very, very happy - and extremely glad I'd bought that superb product. End of intro; more in post 2.

16th September 2010, 06:13 PM	#1
RDGAC Member Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: York, UK Posts: 167	Metal De-Corroder and its effects Howdy all; forum's been a bit quiet of late on the gun front, but I have here a technical question which is puzzling me a bit. Firstly, some background. Recently I persuaded my boss to cut loose on the string and buy some Renaissance Metal De-Corroder (please read the information therewith before responding), a handy little compound which seems to be very effective in killing rust without killing your object in the process and rather less deleterious to its appearance than wire wool. Full of cautious enthusiasm I set to work with this stuff on one of our swords. This particular sword was in a dire state; it had sat in its scabbard for something like 15 years, and the centre of the blade was one solid cloud of rust for about half the total length of the blade. It was a sorry thing, and I held out little hope of improving its lot in life. This was made especially sad by the fact that this particular blade was visible a fine example, inscribed with (just about visible) battle honours one one side and what turned out to be the 4th Dragoon Guards' regimental emblem on the other. (And yes, I realise this is a European weapon - bear with me, neh? ) So I went to work. Ideally one should simply immerse the affected metal in the solution, but being run on a shoestring we neither have, nor can afford, a tank of such a capacity (let alone the volume of solution to fill it), making it necessary for me to paint the solution onto the sword. This obviously necessitates constantly re-applying a thin layer to the metal, as well as accepting much greater evaporative losses. But still, it couldn't hurt, frankly. The photos included show a view of the untreated blade; all that brown gunk is rust. It wasn't at all pretty. The results, therefore, surpassed all my expectations. As you can plainly see if the post-treatment pictures (the more normally-proportioned ones), the sword is one more legible, the text almost unmarred by more than a decade (at least) of neglect. All in all I was very, very happy - and extremely glad I'd bought that superb product. End of intro; more in post 2. Attached Images