Pickling Metal At Home // Cleaning Metal with Vinegar // Blacksmith Tips and Tricks
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ส.ค. 2024
- There is an easy way to get the metal scale and rust off your forged projects, by cleaning metal with vinegar. Have you considered pickling metal at home yet? This is one of those blacksmith tips and tricks that not everybody knows!
I learned this pickling method from Thomas Latane. The way he does pickling metal at home is in a crockpot . It's great for small parts and pieces, just make sure you don't use the crockpot for food!
The pickling metal process makes the scale (or rust) soft, so that it can easily be brushed off with a metal brush or wire wheeled off.
Some notes from the video:
What is pickle? Pickling is using a material or method similar to making a pickle… just vinegar. I use 5% acidity standard vinegar. Also you will need a pickling tub such as stainless steel pot, specifically for this use.
This method is for cleaning rusty metal or metal with a lot of scale on it.
I use a turkey fryer. Bring it up to a boil. Let is boil for 1-2 hours. Time will vary due to the amount of surface area. You need the items to be cleaned completely submersed.
I use this method to clean my skillets. I learned this method from Tom Latane. Especially good for metal with which you will be doing some filework. You can use a small crock pot with vinegar for small parts.
You can use a wire brush afterwards, to clear the surface. Another option is a wire wheel. The scale will rub right off.
This is a good alternative to bead blasting or sand blasting, or just wire wheeling it straight off.
You cannot leave the surface as is… it will create instant rust. You will need to finish it or oil it shortly after wire brushing it.
Check out my downloadable pdfs and power hammer plans at www.blacksmithpdfs.com .
If you'd like to visit my youtube homepage, you can do so at / christcenteredironworks .
If you are interested in my forged pan videos, visit the playlist • How to Forge a Skillet - แนวปฏิบัติและการใช้ชีวิต
Good video, I use vinegar to remove scale but I never heated it like others have said. That wire wheel and that drawstring from your hood dangling right above it was making me nervous tho lol..I saw a 4 inch angle grinder with a cup brush climb up a coworkers neck in a hurry one autumn day because it grabbed his sweatshirt draw string..no life altering injuries resulted but he did lose some skin..all his drawstrings are now cut very short, maybe 3 inches hanging out of each side. Im not trying to be a safety Sally or or anything but that did make me nervous
I just plan ahead and soak it cold overnight works great rust mill scale just hoses off
I actually came up with my forge name from this video. Thanks
That is hilarious and I enjoy it! Names with a weird story are always the best!!
Good information
Awesome
Great information. God bless 📖✝
..A Very Good tip there Roy!! Now i have to find an old pot...
Ol James Thank you hope it will help :-) once you find that pot of course lol
You can also soak in vinegar at room temperature, but it takes a lot longer, normally 12-16 hours for most pieces. Heating makes it go a lot faster, but is much messier ;)
I use sodium bisulfite (pH minus for lowering the pH in swimming pools). I put it in a crockpot to heat it. Then, when making jewelry or whenever I need to clean oxides off brass, copper, sterling silver and iron.
You can leave the surface as is after the vinegar but you need to soak it in water with a generous portion of baking soda in it to neutralize the acid.
Pickling steel is a real thing. I worked for a metal distributor in my younger days and we used to get a type of metal that "hot rolled annealed and pickled" right from the foundry. In my state, you cannot buy steel from a mill, you must buy it from a distributor.
Damn, that's a shame.
@@LandersWorkshop What's a shame?
@@tarstarkusz That you can't buy direct from the mill.
@@LandersWorkshop Most people couldn't buy from a mill even if they were allowed. It is simply not viable for the mill to sell you a single 4x8 sheet of steel. You have to buy it by the (multiple) ton. The distributor I worked for spent virtually all the first shift doing nothing but unloading full 50 ton tractor trailers (from the mills) and cutting up pieces to be loaded on our own trucks for local delivery to fabricators, machine shops and the like during the evening. You just deal with enormous quantities of metal.
We used to get in gun extrusions. It's a 20 foot long extruded bar that when viewed on end looked the side view of a hand gun. We would chop it in to 2" wide pieces and ship to gun makers. It was pretty cool.
@@tarstarkusz Nice. My dad used to say it was a bad place for the health working close to the blast furnace etc as a puddler / ladler of the molten steel, but I guess now it's a lot more automated?
I also use an old crock pot bowl, as it is ceramic and the vinegar wont eat it, but I dont bother with heating, a few days soak at room temperature is all it needs.
As Salam Alaikum another great video Roy, whats the difference between using white vs brown vinegar?, the method i was told about also added some bicarb soda into the cauldron?
great tip as always, Gonna come in handy for someone.
Shan Moldovan thanks Martin.. the next video of this series will be up tomorrow morning! and I have a few videos of forging some Damascus/mokume here very soon. Thanks for watching
God bless
Sweet I will be watching for them...Are you gonna make the mokume from quarters?
Shan Moldovan yep it's part of a customers order I'm making so it will be a 4-5 part series. can't wait to share it with everyone! :-) it is a Damascus cross with mokume inlays!
As for the Makume I am needing to make somw for a knife build I am wanting to do in the future.The project you have mentioned sounds like it will be wonderful. Wish it were my crucifix . I would be honored to have the opportunity to were around my neck. Cant wait for the series. Are you gonna be using the revised Davinchi hammer?(Fingers crossed) I ask because at this time for me even the great mighty Hardy Hammer is out of my price range. I would love to see a great demo on the revised verson along with the use of the Hardy Hammer. Thanks, Sincerely Martin at M/S Blacksmithing and Blades
Shan Moldovan I'm actually going to be using both! the hardy hammer for the mokume and the revised Cam hammer for the Damascus. I don't think you would want this cross to be around your neck it being 12" tall lol but maybe :-) keep those fingers crossed it will be out soon!
Going to give it a try, just got to get a little pot! Oops, meant big pot. Ha ha. Pot to make acid. Don't tell the hippies!
Interesting video...
Vinegar does make for an excellent cleaning solution.
I'm not sure I agree with you though about the water boiling away and leaving the acid behind. if that were the case.. they wouldn't be able to distill vinegar at all.
Vinegar does make a nice patina on metal if done correctly. Every couple months I PB Blaster my steel tools and avoid the rust right off.
Thanks for the video..
Thanks for your comment! I haven't tested the acidity before and after, and I'm not too familiar with the process of making vinegar. However, I did find that I can purchase a stronger solution at home depot. Thanks for watching!
Water boils at 100C and Acetic acid (the acid in vinigar) boils at 118C. Because of this water boils off before the acetic acid (temperature doesn't increase beyond 100C until almost all the water boils off) making the solution more acidic.
It seems to me that when the pot is all frothed up at the end of boiling perion would be and ideal time to remove a lot of the suspended solids (impurities), kind-a-like drossing the top of melted aluminum or zinc pot.
To neutralize the acid from the pickle solution maybe try washing it off with baking soda then rinsing with clean water. It might slow down the rusting a little. It will still need some kind of coating once done of course.
very nice mate came up a treat always wondered if it did work or not but obviously boiling vinegar works best what about coca cola everyone says its nasty and will eat through metal will it clean or just leave a sticky mess
grayem pepper never used Coca-Cola but it might make a interesting video! thanks for the suggestion
I normally just use a flap disc where I can.
I'm always worried about hydrogen embrittlement when soaking metal in acids, especially hammer heads, molasses takes a lot longer for rust but its safe as it's bacteria eating the rust basically. I think the only way around it is to put the steel in an oven straight after the acid processing and it will cook out the embrittlement, there goes your hammer temper though!
No it wont effect the steel at all except for cleaning it
Shouldn't mess with the temper if it's on a low setting in the oven?
Hello Christ Centered Ironworks. What's the best way to polish high carbon steel darkened by a vinegar bath?
Neutralizing it right away after the vinegar bath with water and baking soda helps I believe.
What happens after a few days|?
Just leave my parts overnite and next day just wipe off the mill scale ,never seen that before seems like a lot of trouble to go thru but i guess if your in a hurry that speeds the process up
i use citric acid i think it works better.
Vinegar can definitely etch the surface of steel. I etch patterns on my carbon steel knives all the time using boiled vinegar and stencils, so your pretty wrong on that point. That's actually why I was curious to watch this video, because I use vinegar to etch/dull the steel, and curious how you were using it to shine the metal up, but I suppose it just get's the rust off, and the wheel is doing all of the polishing work
For 5 to 10% concentration of white vinegar it ought not to be enough for etching the metal.
You're using the wussy of the acid world. Use HCl instead.
HCI is illegal in some countries for purchase?