Sparex or ferric chloride for old files.

[Shakudo]

the pickle used is basically sodium bisulfate,it can be found at any swimming pool chemical supplier.one pound will last forever.i use a $ 10 ceramic crock pot(5 quart),available from k-mart,walmart,etc.as the heating vessel.a plain piece of copper sheet of whatever you have handy will work.the pickle needs to be a good green color to be saturated well with the copper.heating the copper till it oxidizes ,then let cool and place into the pickle bath.it will take a while for the copper to go into solution,just repeat the process till a green color is achived.this happened naturally in our shop over time and was not done purposelly,so i can't give you a timeline.

[Khyber]

For cleaning old, rusty tools and parts, like files, or anything with grooves full of rust.. theres one great solution. Evapo-rust.

www.evapo-rust.com is the website.. go there and see some of the pictures. Its a water-soluble non corrosive rust remover. I know it sounds crazy, but it works. I've seen it used and even sold some at gun shows. The pictures on the websites are for real. It can get down into the grooves and pits of things and make them move again. We use it at work to soak a frozen, corroded firearm. It makes the firearm move again. It's an amazing product. I have several quarts available, and will give one to anyone who's knife shop I visit.

Charles.

[Don Robinson]

Originally posted by Shakudo
the pickle used is basically sodium bisulfate,it can be found at any swimming pool chemical supplier.one pound will last forever.i use a $ 10 ceramic crock pot(5 quart),available from k-mart,walmart,etc.as the heating vessel.a plain piece of copper sheet of whatever you have handy will work.the pickle needs to be a good green color to be saturated well with the copper.heating the copper till it oxidizes ,then let cool and place into the pickle bath.it will take a while for the copper to go into solution,just repeat the process till a green color is achived.this happened naturally in our shop over time and was not done purposelly,so i can't give you a timeline.

Thanks. I'll try that.

[brad90049]

Sparex is sodium bisulphate. A good source for this your local hardware or swimming pool supply company. It's used to adjust the acidity of a pool. Check labels for their active ingredients. One brand that we use in jewelry class is called PH-Minus. It's even more pure than the Sparex brand. Expect to pay about 1$ a pound.

- Brad Smith, Los Angeles

[Fox Creek]

This is one of the best threads I have seen in a while! 'Brings back memories of the Crock pots of sparex in the jewelry lab at College. Or even better, cheap red and white enamel chamber pots on a hot plate. The old watch and clockmakers used to keep a ceramic jug of dilute nitric, that they would pour into a pickling pan (like a flat bottomed ladle) and heat it up on the gas burner or an alcohol lamp to pickle small parts, then let it cool and pour it back in the jug. kept it fresh longer. Its not uncommon to accidently flash plate a metal onto another metal out of an acid solution, Just remember your old activity chart of metals from high school chemistry class. A saturated aqueous solution of copper sulphate rubbed on clean steel will plate out. Old time machinists uded this to help show scribed layouts before Dychem came along.

[KandS_KNIVES]

I've found that you can use 50/50 diluted muriatic acid to clean and sharpen files. Just have to be sure and keep an eye on them.