On Tue, 18 May 2004 06:30:01 GMT, Jim Wilson
posted:

Sandy wrote...
Dropping a rock on your foot is a simple process, whereas derusting a
rusty article is a complex process with many decisions to make.

Analogies aside, de-rusting a rusty article is not really a very complex
process, nor are there "many" decisions to make, at least not in my
understanding of "complex" and "many." Hyperbole, perhaps?

Nope, comparative. Cf dropping a rock on your foot

For the derusting, you must decide what vinegar to use, how long to
soak, how much salt, what is that black sludge in the bottom, what
sort of steel is it, how much to rinse afterwards, what to apply
afterwards, and do you dry it, and how? And those are just a few
decisions/questions that occur off the top of my head.

I have at the moment on my kitchen sink two tumblers with half an inch
of vinegar in each and excess salt in one of them.
I have placed several very rusty nails in both tumblers.
They have been there for five hours so far.
Nothing much is happening, except for a very pale yellowish tinge to
the solution. The non-salted one seems a little darker yellow than the
salted one, but this could be an optical illusion from the white salt
sitting on the bottom.
I will leave them there until the nails seem to be clean where
treated, and then rinse in tap water, and place out in the weather
again for however long. See what the subsequent corrosion is on the
cleaned areas. I do hope I get some cleaned areas to compare

My conclusion so far is that using vinegar to clean off rust is a
waste of bloody time

To derust some historic old very rusted horseshoes years ago, I
consulted the conservation technicians at the local museum.
The technical discussion was fascinating, and I learned a lot from it.
But you had to have a basis in chemistry.

Yep. Close, but not my reading. His context was a complaint that this
discussion was irrelevant to this forum, and because he was not a
chemist, and couldn't follow it, it should not be discussed here.

You must have misread, then. Alexy nailed it:

"That he is not a chemist, and that most woodworkers are not
chemists, and are probably more interested in whether it works than
how it works."

In the context of whining that our discussion was OT for this forum.
Otherwise, what was the aim of his message?

Additionally, Charlie's suggestion was that the discussion had drifted
far enough afield to warrant an "OT" in the subject line, not that it
shouldn't be discussed.

Nope, strictly speaking, OT subjects should not be discussed on
newsgroups. Of course they are, but as at least two of us thought our
discussion was on topic, I suggest Charlie was out of line.
Look at the subject header.

Your "reading" goes a good bit beyond hyperbole;
it teeters precipitously toward mischaracterization.

So why did he say that he was not a chemist and most woodworkers were
not chemists? Just idle chit chat? Sorry, I thought he was trying to
make a point in his context of complaining about our discussion.
The point I received was that because he didn't understand the
discussion, it was irrelevant on this forum.
Otherwise, you are saying that Charlie makes silly comments, out of
context, and is therefore perhaps a bit loopy?
I thought he was just a busybody wanting to have a moan about
something. Could he not just have ignored what did not interest HIM?

What really was the point of Charlie's interjection?
It contributed nothing except to complain about what *his* message was
even more guilty of. If he was not interested, he should have just
ignored it.