old padlock - vinegar? Evapo Rust? toothpick?

[funkman]

Hello all,

Took a group of Scouts out to my dig site for archaeology merit badge and they had a blast! One did so great as to find three padlocks in a 4 ft area. I knew there was more finds here and wanted them to get the thrill of finding them.
My Scout was KIND and COURTEOUS and gave me one of the padlocks. I would like to restore it if possible and saw some posts about vinegar, apple cider vinegar, electrolysis, and a product called Evapo Rust. Based on the pics and your own experiences with restoring items like this, what would you do if you had the artifact? Post before and after pics of your process please if you can. As you can see the lock is not too bad but still has some rust deposits on the body.

Thanks

Funkman

 

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[pa plateau hiker]

Electrolysis. I've tried vinegar, but it takes a tremendously long time to get the rust off. And the iron always flash rusts with vinegar. Iron cleaned with electrolysis doesn't flash rust.

 

[sjvalleyhunter]

Electrolysis is probably your best bet, but of you don't have a set up then I would suggest a molasses soak. It does take a good amount of time, but the results for me have been impressive. There are plenty of online sites and threads here that discuss it, but it's basically 1 part molasses to 9 parts of water.

I recently found an old, super rusted over folding pocket knife. After a two week soak most of the rust was gone. It still wasn't anywhere near the point where I would be able to open the blades, but it was tremendously better than before the soak.