On 7/31/2011 8:44, Ignoramus11951 wrote:
I need to clean 60 lbs of rusted 5C collets. They are not badly
rusted, but they are rusted. At first I thought to hire a kid to do
it, but now I think that it would not help much with their insides,
anyway.

My current plan is to just dump them into a bucket of diluted muriatic
acid,then quickly washing in soda solution, then in hot water, then
letting them dry under the hot Illinois sun.

I wonder what you think about this approach.

Well, might work, might corrode the collets more.. And they
might rust in the final step, unless you dump them in oil..

One easy way is to take vineger, dump more tablesalt in it than
will dissolve (saturated solution), and put the collets in that
solution.. Rust will disappear in a few hours. It won't corrode
steel so only the rust is removed.

Another way is to get a derusting chemical ready-made.. Like
"oxide remover" ultrasonic liquid.. It will remove rust and leave
a nice gray surface that won't rust so easily..