Rusty bolt cutters saved from the local dump

[scooternut]

Grabbed these rusty old 24 " Ridgid bolt cutters from a scrap metal pile at a local dump, looked like they'd been living in the river.

I just soaked them in diesel for the initial clean up, then vinegar for rust removal, with frequent wire brush treatments.

Was pleasantly surprised to uncover the USA on them.




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[kell0026]

Very cool. Nice find bro.

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[kell0026]

So that vinegar trick really work?

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[smalltown]

Very nice clean up !

In our smalltown there is no trash collection we bring everything to the town dump ourselves. Quite often I am surprised by what I see people just throwing away.

 

[Jeff Ivers]

Nice save!

 

[txbruno]

Nice find and a great job on the clean up.

 

[C_F]

Wow, that cleaned up really nice, from what it looked like originally!

 

[gearheads78]

great work!

 

[landlord30]

Holy ****! Nice job.

 

[555]

Great save!

 

[Scumbag Contractor]

I often swipe tools from my employees, you can use Evaporust to clean them up better.

 

[sld961]

Looks great. I'll have to keep that in mind for garage sale finds. What was the approximate total time soaking?

 

[scooternut]

Thanks everyone. This was a real easy project just using some of the tricks I've learned on the forum cleaning up old vises. The vinegar works pretty fast on tool steel especially if you pull it out for the occasional wire brush. I think total time was about 36 hours for the soak. I only soaked the tooling, the handles are stamped steel and were easily sanded down.

New to vinegar? Be careful on your duration, it will begin to attack the steel. Seriously pitted out a REED vise mainscrew end for me one time when I was forgetful for a few days. Also, give it a quick baking soda mixture bath when you're done to neutralize the acid, then hit it with boiled linseed oil or similar depending on what you like.