"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 15 Jun 2005 02:57:00 -0500, the opaque "bw"
spake:


"Grant Erwin" wrote in message
...
Richard J Kinch wrote:

Grant Erwin writes:


Stuff is tenacious!


Acid: CLR (mild) or muriatic (not mild).

OK, I'll bite, what's CLR?

A commercial name, Calcium, Lime, Rust. An acidic cleaner, probably at
Walmart.

It's quite similar to LimeAway, which should also work. Then again, a
gallon of muriatic acid was only $3.65 from the farm store here, and
it works well on stubborn toilet rust stains.

The problem with using HCL for such an application is that it will encourage
anything ferrous this in the proximity to rust, even when it never makes
intimate contact with the acid. When I refined, I used it by the drum.
In spite of the fact that I kept a negative pressure in the lab at almost
all times, there wasn't anything ferrous that didn't have surface rusting,
even stainless. It is correspondingly hard on aluminum, zinc and other
metals. Personally, I wouldn't use it on anything I cherished. It does
make a great rust remover, but it doesn't limit itself to oxidized iron.
Given enough time, it will completely dissolve steel.

Harold