I’ve heard soaking them in white vinegar over night, then taking a wire wheel to finish them off. Does anyone have a better way that works?

I used to have a "Tumble Vibe" which was a bowl filled with abrasive material and shaken by an electric motor. You put small parts in and let it run overnight. For larger parts I just use a blast cabinet.

Soak in Evaporust.

I just put them in the blaster with glass bead media, i can do a ground of fender and door bolts in a few minutes. cleans everything up great without taking good metal away.

Evaporust is quicker than vinegar and can work better on more heavily rusted pieces. But vinegar does work. I glass bead some and wire wheel some others. Just depends on the item, it's condition, and what it needs to look like in the end. Getting all the oil and grease off the piece before doing anything else is important.

Then there's the challenge of duplicating the original finish and getting it to live.

Same here , I have gallons of the stuff , works wonders on original hardware to revive it , as long as they are too crusty.

I am try to clean up some lightly rusted Super Trick nuts bolts and washers. I’m hoping to retain their original color when I’m done. Thanks everyone.

Don't leave them in evaporust for a long time , 1/2 hour at a time .

As long as it stays below the surface it shouldn't harm anything. The top surface is very active so it will leave an etch line if the parts are not fully submerged. That is about the only negative I've learned when using it so far.

I had some used chrome bumper guards that were rusty as can be on the backsides and I let them sit in Evaporust for weeks and it removed all the rust and didn't harm the chrome at all.

I've done the vinegar thing as well, but if you don't neutralize it you'll end up with an orange fog all over the parts again in a few hours. Same thing with muriatic acid. I stopped using that years ago as the fumes are off the charts. 💀

I went ahead and began soaking them in white vinegar since I had plenty on hand. When you say to neutralize it Neil after soaking them, I assume you mean in plain water?

Baking soda and water mixed.

i have so many cans and bins full of nuts and bolts saved over 60 years or so, i should just toss 'em all and buy new ones when i need one.
but of course i can't bring myself to do it............

Neither can I, buying new is a last resort for me.

Don't do it. I moved twice in two years, and gleaned down my coffee cans full of nuts and bolts....Just the other day I needed just two nuts and bolts, that would have been in the cans, but alas I had to drive to the Hardware store....

Let your inheritors be the ones who throw them away.....

24 hours later… I may go another day and see how they look.

I use lye to degrease my dirty iron and then use white vinegar for rust removal. Cheap and effective.

They’re done.

my "inheritors" already hate me for having too much "stuff".

I couldn't figure out how to post the image, so here's the link. Kinda funny IMHO.

www.reddit.com/r/ChildofHoarder/comments/nrmy4c/humor_one_day_all_this_will_be_yours/

Can you post an after pic?
And a step by step of the process you used?

I will.

i have two drawers of nuts and bolts and just hit them on the wire wheel bench grinder when i need one

any time i do that, they are flung into outer space, or as my old man uset'a say : "part's unknown.........."

The chemical method is just so much better even though it's slower. It gets all the threads inside of nuts cleaned up, which cannot be done with a wire brush by hand, for example. If you're in a hurry it's nor ideal it can take hours for Evaporust to do it's thing, but if you have the time to do it this way the final results are superior to the mechanical methods.

After soaking in white vinegar, hand wire brushing worked very well for me.

For fasteners originally phosphated and oiled or Parkerized, the next step is re-phosphating.

Keeping the temperature steady at 200 degrees without boiling is important and can be accomplished by using a double pot method. I used an electric frying pan filled with water as the heat source, and the phosphating solution was in another stainless pot sitting in the water.

results after phosphating.

For fasteners with phosphated as the final finish, RPM wax looks better than than "oiled".

After soaking for 48 hours, the hand wire brushing begins.

I’ve used vinegar in the past and it works. My go to now is powdered citric acid dissolved in water. It’s used in canning believe it or not, and I usually buy it in a 5 pound bag off amazon.

Y Citric by M Patterson, on Flickr

It seems to work quicker than the vinegar, and doesn’t have that nasty vinegar smell. I’ve used it on nut and bolts, small parts and I have a big tub and even used it on heads and blocks (Mostly to clean water jackets).

Y RP by M Patterson, on Flickr


H3 by M Patterson, on Flickr

Years ago I’d wire wheel the old nuts and bolts and throw them in a 5 gallon bucket then take them up to a commercial plater and he’d zinc plate them for me and I had a choice of clear or gold anodize as the final step. It was actually pretty cheap, but either OSHA or EPA shut the place down after a fire….go figure.

Anyone have photo samples of results of a "Tumble Vibe" on nuts, bolts, etc.,?

Thanks

Mike, how long does the citric acid take ?
how long was the block and heads soaked ?

I use many of the above chemicals AND in a sonic cleaner. Not much manual input needed then. Sonic cleaners have gotten very affordable.

Ive bad lungs so the heated sonic cleaner and simple dish washer pods also work great.

Set at 180 degrees and 30 minutes run time and thats it.

pretty impressive results 'tater !
never thought about using those dishwasher pods. [there is a container of them under the kitchen sink we use all the time]

Here’s how they look after a wire brushing session.