Thread: Flash rust

Originally Posted by Mountain Ash

Hi all. This week just gone had a couple of days of extreme humidity. Apart from being "life sapping" on site, I was shocked to discover the havoc that had been wreaked in my workshop. The cast iron top on my table saw was covered in tiny orange dots but the most affected were the bench planes. Stored in an open till at the rear of my bench, they were as seen in the photo below - "heartbreaking". Fortunately, the handsaws (stored in another open till) have escaped. Even driver bits are now covered in a rusty sheen and one of my lathe chucks........ My workshop is under the original part of the house, with no solid walls, just existing baseboards, and now, after many extensions, some distance from the weather. This is the first time this has ever happened!!!


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That does suck, quite badly, but I’m surprised you have seen that soon considering we’re you live(high mountain train)unfortunately steel only ever wants to be carbon(I think I have that right).
Considering your location, tho I’m yet too be given the Full tour [emoji6].
Maybe a old sheet or something draped over the important toys while not in use, think dust sheet.
Maybe even some wax on some of them.

Hopefully the rust will clean up with some light steel wool(if it’s not rusted as well) or even scotch bright pads.

Cheers Matt.


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Originally Posted by Mountain Ash

Hi all. This week just gone had a couple of days of extreme humidity. Apart from being "life sapping" on site, I was shocked to discover the havoc that had been wreaked in my workshop. The cast iron top on my table saw was covered in tiny orange dots but the most affected were the bench planes. Stored in an open till at the rear of my bench, they were as seen in the photo below - "heartbreaking". Fortunately, the handsaws (stored in another open till) have escaped. Even driver bits are now covered in a rusty sheen and one of my lathe chucks........ My workshop is under the original part of the house, with no solid walls, just existing baseboards, and now, after many extensions, some distance from the weather. This is the first time this has ever happened!!!


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It's no fun fighting rust. How's your dust levels? Degrading saw dust will release acids which promote corrosion. I use a 3M scotchbrite multifinish wheel to clean off tools and wax with paraffin wax after a good heating in the sun. For cast iron tops I haven't found anything better than Liberon Black Bison neutral wax after a good wire cup brush.
cheers
M

That was an all-too-familiar sight to me when I first moved back to Brisbane, MA!

I had most of my tools sitting on shelves on a semi-open veranda. Fortunately, a fresh 'bloom' like that is pretty easy to clean off with any sort of scouring pad and some kero/WD40/turps or whatever hydrophobic solvent you have to hand. A smear of wax will keep the dreaded stuff at bay for a little while, but if leaving them for weeks at a time as I had to do, I slathered them with light oil, which is better at keeping the moisture off, but messier to clean up when I next wanted to use them. Fortunately, I now have a nice, water-tight shed and all tools in cupboards, so apart from an occasional bloom on the stationary machine surfaces in particularly poor weather, I have no further issues with rust.

Matt, sorry to be pedantic, but the iron just oxidises, i.e. combines with oxygen - the propensity to oxidise is increased by the carbon content in ways that I can't explain (wrought iron, which has very little to no carbon resists rust much better than steel, for e.g.), but maybe Michael can...

And as Michael says, wood dust is baaad stuff for bare steel because as well as some woods being acidic, it's hygroscopic, i.e. it absorbs water from the atmosphere, so it's a double-whammy. It's a very good idea to keep those metal surfaces well dusted....

Cheers,

It's a bugger, my commiserations. years of experience and suffering have taught me the following:

a) As mentioned, dust is an enemy. Cupboards/boxes etc help a lot.
b)Semi-open or exposed jobsite locations risk overnight condensation... Avoid!
c) Any light oiling helps - the Chris Schwartz 'woobie' is a good idea (Paul Sellers has an article somewhere on the same idea using an old vegetable tin and rags).
d) I make up my own 'shopwax' from beeswax and mineral oil, and slather it on whenever I put a tool away for a while. Messy, but really holds it at bay.
e) The only thing that seems nearly bombproof against rust is good old phosphoric acid ('Jenolite'). I buy it from Bunnings, and use it on all my drill bits and user planes. It reacts to give a gunmetal dull gray colour, so not to everyone's taste, but (as an example) that has kept some drill bits and my table saw (cast iron) top rust free for over 2 years without issues - and I'm in a warm maritime environment... Nothing else has ever matched it for me.
d) A good generic oil that doesn't spoil finishes is 'Ballistol', a German military derived general purpose light oil. I use that and a microfibre cloth as my daily wipedown ('woobie') equivalent.

Gecko poop is even worse. I have had to resort to covering my machinery with BBQ covers to stop that issue.

Originally Posted by Mountain Ash

Hi all. This week just gone had a couple of days of extreme humidity. Apart from being "life sapping" on site, I was shocked to discover the havoc that had been wreaked in my workshop. The cast iron top on my table saw was covered in tiny orange dots but the most affected were the bench planes. Stored in an open till at the rear of my bench, they were as seen in the photo below - "heartbreaking". Fortunately, the handsaws (stored in another open till) have escaped. Even driver bits are now covered in a rusty sheen and one of my lathe chucks........ My workshop is under the original part of the house, with no solid walls, just existing baseboards, and now, after many extensions, some distance from the weather. This is the first time this has ever happened!!!


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did all of this occur in a few days? My shop can reach 80% humidity or higher, sometimes 90%, which is rare in open outside air unless it's raining. 63% is what people used to say is rust inducing, but flash rust is a matter of a layer of coldness around a tool that is met with warm humid air that's saturated at the tool temp creating condensation. you only have to have enough rust protection to outlast the transition.

I had rust problems aplenty before switching to oilstones and a fair bit of wax (anything decent mixed with a solvent). at this point, the only thing that rusts in the shop is my steel bar stock, which admittedly is rarely addressed until use. If you wax a saw from time to time with use, it'll probably never rust. the use will drive the wax into the saw grind and polish so deep that you'd have to put standing water on it in more than a haze of flash condensation to get rust to occur- and the saws themselves are low mass per surface and transition temp wise faster than bigger cast stuff.

rule of thumb for rust protection without getting sucked into snake oil like "carbon method" or whatever else is the sucker affiliate marketed crap of the day:
1) hydrotreated oil (which is what is used for sewing machines, baby oil, good honing oils, etc). It never destabilizes and will not be gone unless it's rubbed off
2) wax mixed with hydrotreated oil (paraffin, beeswax), or paste waxes on something that needs to be dry
3) if the first two don't do the trick, a very fine coat of highly thinned light or clear shellac buffed with wax afterward. the shellac shouldn't need to be left in a built up layer on a tool, but rather dribbling down into the recesses of the grind or whatever making the metal inaccessible to moisture other than the tips that touch stuff. it can be so thin that it's basically invisible.

if you don't like the result of #3, it comes off with alcohol without issue. I've never had anything treated with #3 ever rust at all, and with #2, I had two instances of rust - one standing salty water (oops) - and the other was a tool left on a rack with some kind of soap supply above the tool dribbling out of a container. whatever it was, it was a moisture attracting product and wherever it clung, the result was a superficial but brilliantly colored rust bloom.

Before switching to oilstones for tools, finding little rust blooms (minor, but there) on irons, chisels, chipbreakers, etc, was constant. didn't switch to oilstones to find rust protection, but later pictures of things through the microscope showed just how little oil you need to have on your hands to create a barrier. It gets on everything you handle without having enough on your hands to leave an imprint on wood.

https://i.imgur.com/OPRmS9s.jpg

I tried on all of my plane iron test pictures to have no oil by wiping the irons only with one dry section, then another dry section - like five different dry sections of cloth to remove what each wipe would spread. Still some got through like that. You couldn't see or feel oil that shows up like this, but you can see the tiny droplets. if there's so much a tiny bit of oil on the side of an iron somewhere, one accidental contact with a dry cloth and then everything the cloth touches gets a film like this.

https://i.imgur.com/evpThwB.jpg

if the oil isn't that stable (like camelia oil or something) it will eventually dry. hydrotreated mineral oil never seems to stop working, even for stuff hanging on my racks for years that was otherwise wiped free of oil after honing.

Thanks all. Spent yesterday afternoon with steel wool and mineral oil cleaning up. I do use a "rag in the can" on my saws infrequently (usually when ripping - every bit of assistance counts) but this is not systematic. I do like the idea of the Jenolite because I have issues with the storage shelf I made from plywood for my forstner bits. The holes for the shanks seem to encourage rust but this part of the workshop is closer to weather too. Still finding rust blooms in odd spots.

Just be aware, if you use the phosphoric acid, it can 'bubble up' as you apply it - leaving swirls and white bubbles on the metal. It's unsightly and can be 'sticky' with your wood. I wash off with oil/wax and steel wool, and that leaves an impervious surface.

Originally Posted by jpdv

Gecko poop is even worse. I have had to resort to covering my machinery with BBQ covers to stop that issue.

Possum p!ss is the killer, I don’t mind the poop but when they p!ss on stuff I Uber them off to the other side of bicentennial park.
H.

The holes for the shanks seem to encourage rust but this part of the workshop is closer to weather too.

Yes - I am always uneasy about my tools touching wood for the long term in storage. I have bought dirt cheap plastic chopping boards from Kmart, and cut them up as inserts/bases that sit under my planes on their shelves etc. I have a set of reclaimed hardwood blocks for all my drill bits, driver bits etc: l fill the holes for the shanks with oil of some sort before using them, and I always oil the block itself as well, so that its not raw, damp wood the tool steel is touching. Its a constant battle...