HELP!! Wrought Iron ?

sharpeknives

sharpeknives

Joined
Jan 13, 2006
Messages
1,655
I forged a guard from WI. Prior to forgeing I sandblasted off all the rust.
now that its done it looks like its bleeding rust. I have tried cleaning with WD40 and a wire brush. WI was etched in Fc/ viniger mix.
I even wire brushed it and cold blued it. With-in an hour it was showing rust. The funny thing is you can wipe the rust off with your finger.
Anyone know why this is happening.
 
Your sand blast media probably has a lot of steel particles in it, especially if your box just recirculates it. You may have forced small particles into the surface of the blade that are more prone to rust - IE mild steel. Perhaps an extra long etch would help? It may eat through the foreign particles at the microscopic level and get you back down to the WI base steel.

Similar issues can occur with Stainless. We used to see it in the boating industry all the time. Work on a piece of stainless with a tool that has been used on non-stainless and you'll get rust there eventually - especially with sandblasting, buffers and sanders. We had to scratch our heads in the engineering department until I did some controlled tests and actually found that it was the tooling that was causing the stainless to rust. Actually, it wasn't the stainless that was rusting, rather it was non-stainless contamination on the microscopic surface layer that was making the stainless appear to rust.

I might be wrong, and someone else will undoubtedly chime in, but think your blasting media needs to be changed.
 
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I've been thinking about this issue and you might want to soak the guard in windex or some other base for a while after the etch. The WI might of soaked up the etchent solution.

I have had issues like this with old vinegar. Changing it out made it go away.
 
You might have residue of the etchant in the silica pockets . Try boiling in a baking soda solution after etching.
 
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