Corrosion

[gary17]

Hey guys got a watch that's been left in damp conditions and is rusted mainly around the screws. 

I am using wd40 but it has left it tacky. 

Not sure what to use next. Oil which I have none or the watch cleaner I use in the sonic cleaning machine.. 

Suggestions welcome or even critism for using wd40 welcome. 

Cheers

Gary

 

 

[arnaudG]

Vinegar.

you can add pieces of aluminum foil to the bath in order to dissolve the rust.

 

Edited September 2, 2020 by arnaudG

[Nucejoe]

39 minutes ago, arnaudG said:

Vinegar.

you can add pieces of aluminum foil to the bath in order to dissolve the rust.

 

Would you elaborate more. 

[watchweasol]

Hi Gary   The vinegar trick usually works but you will need probably a fiber glass scratch brush to remove the heavier deposits,  Take it slowly and just let the vinegar work, Coke is sometimes used for the same thing.

[HSL]

1 hour ago, Nucejoe said:

2 hours ago, arnaudG said:

Vinegar.

you can add pieces of aluminum foil to the bath in order to dissolve the rust.

 

Would you elaborate more. 

In vinegar you have acetic acid, the acid converts the rust to water soluble Iron III.

The safest way to speed up the reaction is by applying some heat since it is an endothermic reaction.

If you really want to accelerate the oxidizing you could add something like hydrogen peroxide (not recommended for newbies). But this mixture might even dissolve copper.

One could therefor skip the aluminum strips. It will probably just be converted to aluminum acetate Al(C2H3O2)3

Guess the acetic acid creates the same process as your coke cure but with less calories

[gary17]

Thanks. 

Smells like a fish shop but working a treat

Gary

[Nucejoe]

24 minutes ago, HSL said:

In vinegar you have acetic acid, the acid converts the rust to water soluble Iron III.

The safest way to speed up the reaction is by applying some heat since it is an endothermic reaction.

If you really want to accelerate the oxidizing you could add something like hydrogen peroxide (not recommended for newbies). But this mixture might even dissolve copper.

One could therefor skip the aluminum strips. It will probably just be converted to aluminum acetate Al(C2H3O2)3

Guess the acetic acid creates the same process as your coke cure but with less calories

So is it just a quick brush with vinegar, not soaking, or are you talking adding vinegar to solution in cleaning machine?

[HSL]

I think it depends on the size of the object, small parts one could just dab it on, let it react for a while and brush of. One just repeats this until most of the rust is gone. For surface rust this might be the best approach.
Larger objects you could soak totally and brush it of periodically. If you soak it you should add some salt into the solutions to get some more ions and by that increase the speed.
Running a solution like this in a cleaning machine might not be the best of ideas since it takes away the oxide layers in an increased rate. I think everyone has run the cleaner for some minutes to long and seen what the result might be. Much safer to do it by hand.
Like with all cleaning solutions it is important to stop the process too, with acidic solutions you must add something like baking soda to neutralize the solution. Rinse off with isopropanol and it should be enough.