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Originally Posted by Ibrahiim al Balooshi
Salaams Stan S. ~ Coke is at the lower end of corrosion remover chemicals. Drop the sword in for a couple of days and check it ... it may need longer in which case 2 more days and so on. For rust spot use aluminium foil which works at sub atomic level to remove the spots... It needs a lot of rubbing but is about as non invasive as you can get...Use the foil folded like you use 00 grade paper... Use Coke and aluminium foil and save the planet.. Try these before you step up the abrasives to 00 and also look at pineapple fruit juice and or tomato paste and or lemon salt which I found very effective. Again apply in one or two day submersions and check for effect. Half the trick is to build a decent container or tube in which to immerse the object and so you dont use gallons of coke etc ... I have a long shallow aluminium tray in which swords can be dropped ... That works.. Hot soapy water will neutralise most of these low acids but you can use vinegar as well ... you will likely discover the surface goes a bit grey looking on a lot of these treatments but after a good rub down with aluminium foil and a few gun oil applications it usually helps the patina ~ as normal tread carefully..  Ibrahiim |
Namaste Ibrahiim
I've conducted quite a thorough test with aluminium foil and I have to say that it is effective although only in limited circumstances.
It is good for disguising light staining and does remove very light oxidisation, but I've tried this on a sword where there were actual encrustations on the blade and even the small ones are not removed by the Aluminium foil.
The foil coats them with aluminium but doesn't remove them. You end up with silver coloured bumps.
I've found that this foil technique is best for very minor staining or disguising light pitting.
To illustrate here are some pictures.
The small one shows the 'proved' mark on an 1845 sabre prior to cleaning. The aluminium foil technique isn't really like any other to be honest.
If you used an abrasive cleaner-cream with aluminium in it, you'd polish the surface of the steel starting with the high points. If you use steel wool (no matter how fine) you do start to eventually burnish the surface or leave scratches, and so on.
But a combination of techniques can produce excellent results. The best thing about the using aluminium foil is that it doesn't seem to burnish the steel or leave any scratches or otherwise polish or abrade the steel in any way.
Even on an etched design like my 1845 the foil will remove very light surface rust while 'lessening' any sub-surface rust and leaves the high points of the design completely intact without producing any noticable wear at all.
It seems to be a gentle and effective method that on the face of it has no downside.
However, that said it needs to essentially be the final step in the process, but if you add it to the 'arsenal' of cleaning methods in the 'most delicate' position, then it's certainly going to be something to bear in mind.
I've found that folding the foil so it's 4-6 layers and rubbing quite hard produces good results.
After a while it does wear through and disintigrate. The foil is good to use because it takes whatever shape you want. It does turn your fingers black after a while though.
So, back to the illustrations. I found that the aluminium foil was having no effect on the visible encrustations, so I abandoned the foil and used an Xacto knife/scalpel with a 45 degree cutting edge, to carefully slice the surface rust off.
This is NOT a technique that I would recommend unless you practice it on worthless articles first as the surgical steel can leave horrible scratches on the blade if you are not VERY careful.
As I wanted to remove the rust without damaging the etched designs, it was perfect as it is 100% controlable and I could avoid abrading the high points of the raised design.
Once I had scraped/cut off the majority of the rust, I then used fine wire wool to achieve the result in the second picture.
Finally (and I hope these pictures show in the right order) I used aluminium foil to give the blade a final clean up. As you can see the aluminium impregnates the sub-surface rust and almost 'fills' the minor pits.
I would recommend the technique as a final step in a cleaning process. Or for use on steel items to delicate for other processes.
Interestingly if you rub the finished surface with WD40 it sucks some of the aluminium back out of the surface. The result is still good though.
Best
Gene