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Originally Posted by Danny D.[_8_]
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OK, thanks anyhow. By the time I pay shipping charges, brokerage fees to get it across the border and provincial sales tax on it, it'll cost three times as much. I'll just stick with the 40 percent stuff I can get easily here.
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I'm thinking of buying the stuff, just to experiment with it.
With shipping, it should come to something like $18 a liter which
would be compared to 3 liters of Naval Jelly to have the same amount
of Phosphoric Acid, which would come to about $24 or so.
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You don't really need to buy 85% phosphoric acid. I've never needed anything stronger than the 14 percent stuff I buy in the form of a toilet bowl cleaner, and you can get that almost anywhere.
Phosphoric acid is handy to have around the house because:
1. It's the active ingredient in many toilet bowl cleaners. Given a little time, it's strong enough to dissolve anything you'd expect to find in a toilet bowl.
2. It's also commonly used as the active ingredient in bathroom cleaners because it'll cut through soap scum like a hot knife through butter, but won't harm chrome or chrome plating, even at high concentrations. So, you can use it to clean the soap scum off a bathtub without concern that it'll attack the chrome plating on the brass drain at the bottom of the tub. It WILL dissolve cement based tile grout though, but only very slowly at a 14% concentration like you find in toilet bowl cleaners, and even less slowly at the 6% concentration you find it in in bathroom cleaners.
3. And, of course, you know that it reacts with rust to form iron phosphate, which is a stable compound that somewhat protects the underlying iron from further rusting.
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One thing though, that Naval Jelly is THICK STUFF, which I presume
the phosphoric acid isn't as thick - but either one would work for my
tools.
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Ungelled 40 % phosphoric acid is no more viscous than water. 14% gelled phosphoric acid based toilet bowl cleaner is about as viscous as pancake syrup. Both would convert rust to iron phosphate.
Ungelled 40 percent phosphoric acid can be purchased at any place listed under "Janitorial Equipment & Supplies" in your yellow pages phone book. Just phone around to find out who sells "Buckeye International" cleaning chemicals and ask if they stock "Sparkle" bathroom cleaner. If not, they should be able to order it in for you. I wouldn't use Sparkle bathroom cleaner at 40% concentration on cement based ceramic tiling grout without diluting it significantly first.