Hi All,
My wife's Speed Queen washing machine has developed a rust spot up by the plastic hole labeled "bleach".
If my memory serves me, there is a chemical treatment that will eat and stop the rust, as well create a primer coat that you can paint.
Any recommendations?
Many thanks,
-T
Used to be something called "naval jelly" but that was decades ago. Like phosphates in the detergent, and DDT for pest control, the EPA has probably taken out all the active ingredients.
Nah, they still make it, just the same as always.
Can you paint it?
Todd:
Naval Jelly is just phosphoric acid. There's a chemical reaction whereby phosphoric acid reactos with iron oxide to produce ferric phosphate, which is a black material that you can paint over.
'Phosphoric acid - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia'
You don't have to buy Naval Jelly. Gelled phosphoric acid is the active ingredient in most toilet bowl cleaners. If you go to your local home center, and read the contents label on the toilet bowl cleaners, you'll certainly find several containing phosphoric acid.
However, there's a better way in my opinion to fix a rust spot on metal.
The first thing is to dissolve the rust using hydrochloric acid. Hydrochloric acid is the active ingredient in toilet bowl cleaners. Most toilet bowl cleaners that don't use phosphoric acid will us the very much more aggressive hydrochloric acid as the active ingredient.
You dissolve the rust with hydrochloric acid. Then you wash the bare exposed metal with water.
Now, to remove the water COMPLETELY, dry with a paper towel, and then rinse the exposed bare metal with any rapidly evaporating solvent that's soluble in water, such as isopropyl alcohol, methyl hydrate or acetone.
When you introduce the alcohol, methyl hydrate or acetone, any water on the surface of the metal will dissolve in the alcohol, methyl hydrate or acetone. When you then absorb that solvent with a paper towel, any H2O molecules dissolved into the solvent will be absorbed into the paper towel along with the solvent. So, rinse 2 or 3 times with alcohol, methyl hydrate or acetone, dabbing up the liquid with a paper towel after each rinse, and then let the solvent evaporate. Now you have the bare steel without any moisture on it at all.
Now, mix up some epoxy, and put it on a small piece of cling wrap. Turn the cling wrap over and center the epoxy over the bare steel and set the epoxy down onto the bare steel. I prefer using marine epoxy because it has a 60 minute working time, and that gives me plenty of time to work with it.
Now, dip a finger in dish washing detergent and smooth the epoxy patch under the cling wrap. The soap will act both as a lubricant and a shock absorber so that you can form the epoxy under the cling wrap into a very smooth patch. If you feel the patch is too big or thick, simply pull the cling wrap off (and some epoxy will come off with the cling wrap) and put another piece of cling wrap down on the remaining epoxy and keep smoothing with a soapy finger.
Then, allow the epoxy to cure with the cling wrap still on it. Once the epoxy is fully cured, you should be able to peel the cling wrap off of it easily. If the cling wrap doesn't come off the epoxy easily, just scrape the cling wrap off the hardened epoxy with your fingernail.
Now, paint the hardened epoxy.
The above is how I repair chips in enamel steel bathtubs in my building that are starting to rust. Bathtub chips are critical to repair well because that chip could eventually rust through and cause a leaking bathtub.
So, phosphoric acid will work, but you can do a better job if you use hydrochloric acid to dissolve the rust and then use epoxy to coat the bare steel to prevent further rusting.
Sound good, except for the $ 159.00 (4 gallons per case)
Go to a good hardware or marine supply. You can get it in a small bottle.
Auto parts store. $10
Greg
No, this is good. Xmas is coming up and you can give a gallon to each of your best friends. If no friend is worth $40, you can rebottle the stuff in quart-size bottles (You and your neighbors should start saving them now). That's only 10 dollars a quart. Surely you have 15 friends worth that much.
What you're thinking of is most easily found in an auto-parts store, in the body-work section. A popular brand comes or came in a small brown plastic oval-shaped bottle, when viewed from above, With an oval-shaped cap.
I've used it and someoen I know has and it seems pretty good.
Can't find my container or brand but this looks pretty good
I'm recommending against a spray, especially for inside the house. Very bad. But if you can't get a bottle, you could go outside and spray into a bowl, and use a brush or Bounty paper towell to apply it.
Rust converter seems to be the name of it.
Probably has the same active ingredient as ospho, but check. Or
I've found some 9interestign stuff looking at the ingredients of toilet bowl cleaner. Unfortunately, I've forgotten what they are, so you all will have to look yourselves.
It might have been that the same brand used a different acid some of the time, or it might merely have been that sometimes the same brand called it hydrochloric acid and sometimes they used a more harmless-sounding name. Or it might have been both.
Hydrochloric acid is also called muriatic acid.
You can paint it after it removes the rust and you remove it.
So get a little can of Naval Jelly...both use phosphoric acid to turn the iron oxide - aka "rust" - to iron phosphate.
Yeah, but fwiw that wasn't one of the names used on the containers.
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