Some time ago, I was sent a goodie bag of refinishing chemicals to evaluate and play with. One of them grabbed my attention in particular and has made itself a frequently referred to, permanent fixture in my shop.
It is a phosphoric acid-based
metal prep distributed by Mastercoat. Much like Ospho only better, Metal Prep also contains a detergent for cleansing action of your dirty parts as well as a higher concentration of phosphoric acid. Oh, and it's REUSABLE. Its presentation is a yellow liquid and it is pretty potent stuff. It has a sweet smell and some noxious fumes associated with it. Personal protective equipment should involve safety glasses, gloves, and a respirator, which are standard fixtures in my shop. Before I continue, I should include the disclaimer of always follow the
tech sheet of any products you are using, including the metal prep, and
especially other products that may be used in conjunction with phosphoric-acid containing metal preps.
This is especially great for cleaning up rusty bolts, nuts, clips, etc, to like-new condition in as fast as an hour. I keep a small Gladware container in the shop with a few inches of depth of the Metal Prep. When I need to clean up some bolts I just toss them in there and check on them in 30 minutes to an hour, if not sooner.
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| Here I have some rusty clips soaking. |
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| This is a 'before' and 'after' with a comparative sample. The clip will go from rusty and grimy on the left to clean and like-new in under an hour. |
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| These are the same rusty clips shown soaking above. They now look new, and are nicely prepped for Parkerizing. |
But this also has other ways I put it to use to besides soaking small parts. It's especially useful for removing heavy rust in hard to get areas, especially where you couldn't fit a sander or a blaster. For instance, on the inside of this door:
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| This was the inside of the driver's side door skin. |
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| I wiped the area down liberally with the Metal Prep, then laid out SATURATED paper shop towels, smoothing them out as much as possible to make full contact. I occasionally continued to add more solution to keep the towels wet. |
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| After sitting overnight, I peeled the towels off the next day and the majority of the rust was gone. The remaining rust you see was black from the chemical conversion process that occurs with iron oxide and phosphoric acid. The paper towels were quite difficult to peel off the next day as they had mostly dried and then stuck to the metal. After it was completely dried, I brushed on two coats of the Mastercoat Silver permanent rust sealer. |
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