Can a Vibratory tumbler be used to remove rust

Of course. What will you be using as media?

Id STRONGLY recommend against using sand. While it works very well..you will find that that vise feels very Crunchy for a long time afterwards

Gunner

Save yourself some trouble, get a plastic barrel and fill it half full of muriatic acid 30%. Get another barrel and fill it half full of a heavy concentration of Baking Soda. Degrease the vice, drop in acid for at last an hour, maybe overnight. Remove, rinse with a hose and drop in the soda barrel for an hour. Remove and hose down, blow off the water with air and then oil. This works a treat, but be careful, use rubber gloves and a face mask at least.

The answer is yes for a tumbler, but probably not for yours. I think yours is way to small. If you do, you must use the correct media for the job. Steve

The tumbler came with three different media. Some look like fish food, kind of cylindrical pellets (one box more coarse and one box fine), and some is triangular ceramic.

I would tumble it all disassembled, each piece separately, but I see your point.

i

I have a bucketful of half diluted (appx. 10%) muriatic acid.

I could pretty easily dip the vise in it, indeed.

i

way to small. If you do, you must use the correct

Keep everyone upwind of the bucket Iggy!

DAMHIKT. Dayum!

--Winston

What I forgot to mention is two things:

1) Rusted things look very weird when they come out of a muriatic acid bath. I derusted a few things in muriatic acid, the key is wash them in soda right away and then bake in oven or barbeque immediately so they dry before rusting, then oil. Everything comes out looking very strange, looking more like potmetal than like steel.

2) I wanted to try and see how the tumbler works. I thought that it might make those vise parts look kind of nice.

i

muriatic acid 30%. Get another barrel and fill it half

acid for at last an hour, maybe overnight. Remove, rinse

, blow off the water with air and then oil.

I'd substitute 'wax' for oil. You'll want to heat the parts to dry 'em, and while they're hot, brush some beeswax (or cheese wax, or paraffin wax if that's all you've got); it'll fill all those little etch pits with something that won't attract moisture and start rusting again.

The acid removes blueing and (protective) black oxide as well as that crumbly brown rust.

Good point......Iggy, think shotgun! Steve

muriatic acid 30%. Get another barrel and fill it half

for at last an hour, maybe overnight. Remove,

blow off the water with air and then oil.

I'd substitute 'wax' for oil. You'll want to heat the parts to dry 'em, and while they're hot, brush some beeswax (or cheese wax, or paraffin wax if that's all you've got); it'll fill all those little etch pits with something that won't attract moisture and start rusting again.

The acid removes blueing and (protective) black oxide as well as that crumbly brown rust.

That will indeed work well enough. But it will take a while longer to clean up.

Gunner

way to small. If you do, you must use the correct

If you're not in a hurry, I'd recommend electolytic rust removal - I was pretty sceptical, so tried it on a small drill chuck that was rusted solid, a couple of days in a washing soda (sodium carbonate) bath, chuck connected to the -ve of a 12v DC supply (max. 5 Amps was all I had around), an old steel exhaust clamp to the +ve as the "sacrificial" anode, and it's a) rust free; b)freely rotating; c) back to the original steel surface (apart from the pitting that was already there - nothing can replace the steel it lost!). Once it's cleaned up, oil/wax as normal after a bit of oven time to dry it off, as the surface will be vulnerable to rust otherwise.

I did find I had to clean the crud off the anode fairly regularly, a quick wire brushing every time I passed, but much more pleasant than messing with strong acids etc! I'm told that a carbon rod works just as well but doesn't fur up, so when I can find some I'll try that instead.

HTH, Dave H.

I did it once and did not like it, it was messy. This vise has a lot of nooks and innards that may not be cleaned properly. But, I might as well try, as the weather is nice.

i

We use a couple of tumblers at work mostly to deburr little 304SS brackets and stuff, with cylindrical ceramic media 1/4" diameter with the ends cut at a 45 deg bevel so the ends are pretty sharp. Twenty minutes or so rounds the edges and smoothes everything out, and leaves the surface covered with little "dings" that you really can't feel but can see. These are 1-4" by

1-4"-ish, 20 and 16 ga, sized pieces. If something is too heavy it drops to the bottom and doesn't "tumble", so you will have to experiment with yours to see what the limit is - I doubt if the vise body itself will work. I've done some small pieces of hot rolled and cold rolled with scale and rust (just before we were throwing away the media so I didn't get screamed at :-)), and it took off the rust but didn't really cut the scale. Our media won't go into small holes, but smaller media cuts a lot slower. Those flat triangles would probably be better if you have small nooks and crannies. Anyway, should work for the hardware but not the body and the moveable jaw.

----- Regards, Carl Ijames

I use a 5vt dc power supply. 11 amps and a square poly tub, with steel plates series connected around the inside of the tub with a flat in the bottom as well.

Hang Stuff from a rod across the top.

Ive done micrometers, mill bits, drill bits, lathe parts, old engine parts from the desert and all sorts of Stuff.

Works pretty damned well. But you HAVE to make sure the part is totally emersed..or it will etch a line along the "water line"

Gunner

Yes, the body will not work. I think that I will just throw this into the muriatic acid bucket and will play with something else in the tumbler.

OK, I am sure that I will find some uses for it. Does tumbling ruin threads on bolts?

i

Have you considered Evaporust? Easy to use, safer than muriatic acid, re-useable...

...

Phosphoric acid is a better choice. It leaves a surface just like a primer coat on the metal. Actually retards further rusting. its the active ingredient in many rust products from naval jelly to rusty metal primer. Buy it as "lime away" for $4/gal at farm fleet stores.

Karl

Well, actually Lime Away, CLR and other hard water stain removers use citric and sulfamic acids. They are much less hazardous. Naval Jelly and many others sold for rust removal do have phosphoric acid.

That would be a good excuse to go to a Farm and Fleet store. Does it evaporate, like muriatic? I suppose I can dissolve it in water?

i

Would that be "Runnings Farm & Fleet", "Norby's Farm Fleet", "Blain's Farm & Fleet", "Mills Fleet Farm", some other farm fleet unknown to Google? Just what does the "fleet" part refer to? Truck fleet? How did farms & fleets come to be associated? Just curious.

Anyhow, none of these farm fleet stores have "lime away", at least that they'll admit to on the web . Trying to find it gets worse: there is a "Lime A Way" (3 words) that's sulfumic acid & "Lime Away" that's phosphoric. And the places selling them don't always get the name right (different manufacturers). Worse yet: it's "Lime Away" on the MSDS at the manufacturer's, but called "Lime Way" on their product list:

About the only place I could find Lime Away (Way) was at the manufacturer, Rite-Kem. Where they had 4 gallons for $64. $4/gal is a REALLY good price - I got a gallon of plain phosphoric acid for $15 from a local dairy farmer & have never seen much better online.

But I much prefer muriatic - it's faster & keeps forever. The phosphoric crystallized and became ineffective (after couple years(?)).

My $.02, Bob