Cleaning V-Steel

[throwaway723]

I recently bought myself a set of old Bahco V-Steel adjustable wrenches. They're in decent shape, but I'd like to clean them up a bit and try to get them looking really nice. There's a little bit of surface rust, some paint on one of them that I'd like to remove, and just general grime. But, of course, there's no point in making them look nice if I'm doing it in a way that's going to damage them.

I tried learning about V-Steel but I didn't find much information that made sense to me. And even though these wrenches are a bit dull, I assume they have chrome plating on them. So I'm wondering if I can clean them the same way I clean ordinary steel parts. Here's what I would do for ordinary steel:

- Distilled vinegar overnight
- Nylon brush to remove debris
- Water & baking soda to neutralize the acid from the vinegar
- Dry right away and spray with WD-40 before it starts to rust again
- If I want to put a bit of shine on it, hit it with a brass wheel, and then some more WD-40

I know there are numerous opinions on cleaning tools, but what I'm curious about is, will any of these steps be a bad idea for the V-Steel or the Chrome plating?

Oh, and for the red paint on the 6" wrench, I was going to use some paint stripper and lacquer thinner.

 

[Lesserstore]

"V-Steel" is simply Vanadium steel, and will be just fine in vinegar. I use evaporust because I did have one instance of chrome coming off on an old Challenger by Proto wrench when I used vinegar.

 

[Loga_3]

Hello again!
I can see you got yourself some Swedish good stuff!
The V in v-steel actually stands for Vanadium, witch today is industry standard for use in tools.
(You might recognize the term Chrome Vanadium more?).
As far as cleaning goes, i would just wirebrush them and then coat them in oil. They were once some kind of black oxide finish on them, witch have since long rubbed off. So they are now just plain steel.
Good luck!

 

[throwaway723]

Hello again!
I can see you got yourself some Swedish good stuff!
The V in v-steel actually stands for Vanadium, witch today is industry standard for use in tools.
(You might recognize the term Chrome Vanadium more?).
As far as cleaning goes, i would just wirebrush them and then coat them in oil. They were once some kind of black oxide finish on them, witch have since long rubbed off. So they are now just plain steel.
Good luck!

Thanks! Yeah, I kept seeing "chrome vanadium" in my google searches, so that just introduced one more thing (chrome) that I wasn't too sure about.

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll go grab myself a new brass brush to use on them.

It's been a while since I picked up some new tools, so I'm excited to get these.

 

[throwaway723]

"V-Steel" is simply Vanadium steel, and will be just fine in vinegar. I use evaporust because I did have one instance of chrome coming off on an old Challenger by Proto wrench when I used vinegar.

I used Evaporust on the mating surface of an engine block when doing a head gasket once and it worked great. But then I soaked some CR-V screwdriver bits in Evaporust and it left black spots all over them that I couldn't remove. I never understood why, so now I shy away from the Evaporust. I know it works wonders, but I lost a bit of trust in it with those screwdriver bits.

 

[throwaway723]

Hello again!
I can see you got yourself some Swedish good stuff!
The V in v-steel actually stands for Vanadium, witch today is industry standard for use in tools.
(You might recognize the term Chrome Vanadium more?).
As far as cleaning goes, i would just wirebrush them and then coat them in oil. They were once some kind of black oxide finish on them, witch have since long rubbed off. So they are now just plain steel.
Good luck!

Sorry, I was in a hurry when I replied before and I forgot to ask some things. So, as I mentioned, I do recognize the term "chrome vanadium" because I saw that when googling "V-Steel" and that's what made me think that maybe the tools were chrome plated. But you're saying that they had black oxide finish. So the "chrome" in "chrome vanadium" doesn't refer to them having chrome plating? Does it simply mean that there's chrome in the alloy?

 

[Shocker]

I would suppose it is missing the chromium in the alloy. Vanadium steel is basically an alloy that includes carbon, manganese, silicon and vanadium. Adding chromium increases durability against abrasion and corrosion.

 

[Lesserstore]

I used Evaporust on the mating surface of an engine block when doing a head gasket once and it worked great. But then I soaked some CR-V screwdriver bits in Evaporust and it left black spots all over them that I couldn't remove. I never understood why, so now I shy away from the Evaporust. I know it works wonders, but I lost a bit of trust in it with those screwdriver bits.

The black spots are usually where the rust was heavy or if the tool had high carbon content, it would be uniform. To get rid of it, you can use a hand wire brush, and use polish if desired, or you can wire wheel (on a bench grinder) if no finish is left.

 

[throwaway723]

I would suppose it is missing the chromium in the alloy. Vanadium steel is basically an alloy that includes carbon, manganese, silicon and vanadium. Adding chromium increases durability against abrasion and corrosion.

Got it. Thanks. I was making the assumption that all vanadium had chrome because I kept seeing "chrome vanadium" when I googled it. It didn't occur to me that v-steel would be vanadium without the chrome.

 

[BFBOB]

One tip on drying after your derusting treatment. Blow it dry - don't towel it or just set it out to air dry. I keep a cheapie HF compressor in the house right by my electrolysis setup and Evaporust bucket just for this purpose. Does wonders to prevent flash rusting, though of course if the plating is gone, it will still need some protective treatment.