How to remove surface rust from polished blades?

Bladenoobie1

Bladenoobie1

Joined
Jul 20, 2012
Messages
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There is a barlow that I may be purchasing from ebay. Its an older barlow and the blade appears to possibly have some surface rust. The blades are mirror polished, so preferably I do not want scratch them all up or refinish them unless I have too. I much prefer just to remove any surface rust with minimal damage to the original finish (mirror polished). How should I go about doing this?

Thanks,
BN
 
Mothers "Mag & Aluminum" polish. If its just on the surface, it'll take it off every time :thumbup:
 
The whole deal with rust is even if you remove it how do you keep it from coming back. Polish is a good suggestion.

What I do is clean the blade with baking soda, water and a wine cork. The baking soda will clean and remove the rust plus taking care of any acids on the blade. Anything you do your going to have to polish it again regardless. So after its polished by whatever means clean again with baking soda and water and lubricate with whatever you wish. Something with no solvents is what I've found to be best. I use Fluid Film.
 
The whole deal with rust is even if you remove it how do you keep it from coming back. Polish is a good suggestion.

What I do is clean the blade with baking soda, water and a wine cork. The baking soda will clean and remove the rust plus taking care of any acids on the blade. Anything you do your going to have to polish it again regardless. So after its polished by whatever means clean again with baking soda and water and lubricate with whatever you wish. Something with no solvents is what I've found to be best. I use Fluid Film.
 
Mirror-polished blades are the easiest to clean rust from, with... more metal polish. Will work on un-polished blades also, but the polished ones are the least likely to have their finish altered by more polishing ('satin' finishes or bead-blast/stonewashed blades will clean up as easily, but then will have noticeably 'brighter' spots left by the polish). As mentioned, Mother's Mag works, as will Flitz or Simichrome and most other metal polishes that work on steel.

After polishing, you might see some 'pepper spot' pitting (likely will) on a mirror-polished finish that's rusted a little bit; happens with any blade, but the pits will stand out more on the polished background. If the pitting is deep at all, it'll likely take re-sanding and re-finishing to get it to a complete unblemished mirror again.


David
 
You could end up removing a lot of metal chasing a particularly deep pit..

Why not leave the pits and polish over them? I'd imagine it would look cool for the mirror to have "black hole" distortions on it, especially if it was a natural process.
 
I do not mind the look of pits or black distortions. My goal is to simply remove harmful rust that can spread and shorten the blade's life. At the same time I do not want to change up the original finish..i.e put scratches all over a polished blade. Anyhow thanks for the suggestions everyone.
 
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