My house has an old iron coalhole cover near the front door. At the moment it's rather rusty and neglected and I'd like to get it looking shiny and clean. I seem to remember reading somewhere that soaking metal in vinegar will strip off the rust, quite happy to give that a go this evening. How should I stop it rusting again after I've cleaned it up? Lacqer of some sort?
You can get blacklead in a tube which will make it look very good and afford some protection but it it's out of doors and gets a lot of weather you might need to use it every few months.
Mary
I'd rub it down with a wire brush and Hammerite it, myself.
Christian.
It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember martin snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com (Martin Pentreath) saying something like:
Employ a small boy to shuffle over it every time he passes.
Oh - you must mean a horizontal cover. I only thought of the vertical ones which slide up and down in a framework in the wall. The coal is chuted down into the cellar when the cover is raised. To have a horizontal cover the cellar would have to extend beyond the building, I've never seen that.
But I haven't seen everything. If would be interesting to know.
Mary
"Mary Fisher" wrote | Oh - you must mean a horizontal cover. I only thought of the | vertical ones which slide up and down in a framework in the | wall. The coal is chuted down into the cellar when the cover | is raised. To have a horizontal cover the cellar would have | to extend beyond the building, I've never seen that. | But I haven't seen everything. If would be interesting to know.
Houses in Edinburgh have cellars under the street (the house basement and the pavement cellar are separated by the open 'area' ie front steps down to the basement) and so coal could be dropped direct from the coal-cart into the coal cellar.
There are also cellars which go under the street where there isn't an area, they're usually part of the main house basement and sometimes have glass blocks in the pavement to let in light.
Owain
Thanks for that explanation,
Mary
Electrolysis - You need Google, a battery charger, a suitable bucket and some washing soda. Works well on cast iron.
For treatment afterwards, try Liberon's black patina wax. This is wax with a black pigment in, rather than Zebo which is graphite in oil. It's not a particularly weatherproof treatment (you don't need one - cast iron is pretty robust) but it gives a better black.
Well, that last is a matter of opinion. Cast iron isn't black in itself, which is why I prefer the closer colour of graphite.
For our cast iron - er - castings (a variety - Spouse was a ferrous metallurgist in another life and made things) I used black shoe polish, it was excellent and the children had a lot of fun applying it and brushing it to a nice glow.
They wouldn't do their shoes though ...
Mary
Mary; one used to be able to buy 'Stove blacking' which I recall was rather more liquid than black shoe polish (in a bottle or tin with a screw top). I seem to rember it being used in the UK in the late 1930s on the black metal 'surrounds' of fireplaces etc. I remember we had a fairly stiff bristle brush (similar to a shoe brush) to apply it, and the smell when it was, to still warm metal. Also that it was available over here for use on wood stoves ec. Point being that brass trim on a stove would discolour and paint would burn and flake off. Terry.
I remember it well. The tin was yellow and black, I believe, possibly white and black and it was Zebrite or perhaps Zebro. We used it on my mother's range. There was no brass trim, we didn't aspire to such expensive luxuries. My grandmother's range was very old fashioned, just an open fire with an oven at one side and a boiler for heating water at the other. My mother had an Ascot heater in the scullery. There's posh! But Grandma didn't have a separate kitchen, they lived in the cellar kitchen during the day.
The modern Zebo is in a tube and more liquid than I remember but it's still good for finishing some of our products. It makes them look like burnished (but not shiny) iron and if well finished doesn't come off on hands. But I only found it two or three years ago, until then we had to use shoe polish to shine the fire castings.
Mary
Back when people used to polish their kitchen ranges, they used graphite AKA plumbago/black lead. Sometimes it was loose powder, sometimes a paste. Aquadag and Oildag may be worth trying to find, both trademarks of Acheson Industries.
Stovax looks promising;
Being so soft and subject to foot traffic, you may find this a regular procedure.
John Schmitt
Perhaps, but the tube of Zebo I have is lasting extremely well and my local hardware shop stocks it. I'm buggered if I'm going to bother looking for something else to buy.
:-)
Mary
>
Word on the street is that it has ceased production, and it is only stockholding in retailers that can be relied on. The two 'dags are too useful industrially at the moment to be deleted.
John Schmitt
For me, whose usage is low, I reckon that what I have will see me out.
Then I'll go back to beeswax and lampblack :-) Or nothing.
Mary, whose parents said suffered from idleitis.
Aquadag isn't so good for putting a patina onto iron - you want Oildag (if you can find it). Zebo is still in production, is visually better than either, and easier to apply. The difference is the shape of the graphite - the Dag products use a very tightly controlled flake, Zebo is more irregular (and thus closer to spherical).
The Dag products will give a lovely shine on glass, but you need a smooth surface and very gentle buffing. They'd work on machined steel too, but not on rough cast iron.
Liberon's wax is quite different. It's a black pigment in a wax. You've no hope of getting a shine with it, but if you want a solid black on a rough surface, then it's a better bet. It won't buff to a shine.
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