Removing Galvinized Coating

[Bear Knifes]

Hello,

About two years ago I made a homemade brake drum forge, and have used it many times since. When making it I realized that I used Grade 8 bolts that had a rainbow/golden looking coating. (correct me if I'm wrong) I believe that these bolts were galvanized, and, obviously, I'm pretty sure that the coating has burned off, BUT, to finally get to the question, I was wondering is there is anything else that I need to do to fully remove the coating.

 

[Sosa]

I think those are cadmium coated. You usually have to grind galvi off.

 

[Bear Knifes]

Thank you for replying so quickly sosa. Do cadmium coatings let of gasses or anything else dangerous when heated/grinded/etc like a galvanized coating. One more thing, are all grade 8 bolts coated, and I read that they can also get that appearance form heat treating.

 

[Sosa]

I wouldn't worry about fumes unless you breathed the stuff daily for years or something. You can get plain hardware but the coated ones are common.

 

[mete]

Zinc fumes are dangerous - immediately !! You can remove zinc by grinding or use an acid .

 

[Bear Knifes]

Do you think that after a lot of using the forge for about two years that the coating would not have burned off yet? Thanks.

 

[PiercedBill]

Most of the zinc would have burned off the first time you brought it up to forging temps.

 

[Sosa]

I'm still alive a glass of milk does the trick.

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

As far as metal fumes go, cadmium is far worse than zinc. Cadmium is poisonous and very bad to breathe. Luckily, there isn't much cadmium on most cadmium plated things. ....but don't breath the fume.

Zinc ( galvanized) gets a lot of bad and scary info passed around on the internet. No fumes are good to breathe, but the fumes from galvanized coatings are not deadly or poisonous. Breathing them can give you "metal fume fever" which feels like the flu. Fresh air, a days rest, and drinking milk will take care of the symptoms. Not breathing the fumes is always the best procedure.

On your forge, whatever the bolts were coated with is long gone by now.

 

[J W Bensinger]

Muriatic takes it off. I worked for an ornamental blacksmith who used galvanized bolts and spikes for some forging stock-always dunked 'em in muriatic to get it off.