Hi Guys,

BobL, you might be particularly interested in this post.

As some of you will recall I spend some time wandering around in the local scrap yard among various other places, and pick up some interesting and often useful items. I posted some pictures recently of some items I obtained, among them these...

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They are a set of number stamps in a wooden holder. Based on the age of the tin of other bits that were with them, I would estimate that these are early post war, 1946 ish. As you can see, they are quite rusty having been out in the weather, but they don't look to have been heavily used. The stamp size as near as I can guess is 6 mm and the cross section is just less than 8 mm. They are approximately 45 mm long.

I did say in the earlier post that I was going to try and de-rust them.

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I happened to have one of those yellow squeeze bottles of natural Lemon Juice that you can buy for 30 pence or so from the supermarket and an empty 250 ml drink bottle. So in they went along with the lemon juice. There was just enough to cover them. A good shake and left in the sun for the day and overnight. Another good shake the following morning and you couldn't see the stamps because of the very dark brown of the liquid. Another good shake and left in the sun for the rest of the day.

By tea time, the stamps had been in the liquid for about 24 hours, the lemon juice had become very dark and looked to have lots of debris in it so I emptied it out and washed the stamps in warm water, and gave them a scrub with a nail brush. That first picture is how they came out. Just a few dark spots, but absolutely no trace of rust at all. Even the numbers cleaned up nicely.

A wipe with an oily rag and this is the result. I'm quite pleased with them.
I didn't have any number stamps before, but I have now.
Attached Images




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