Tweet
I've replaced a number of fasteners but I've got quite a few that are in good shape that I'd like to reuse for my chassis reassembly. I just cleaned them up, wire wheeled them lightly and sprayed with WD40 before bagging. Some of these will need to get replated and or color treated before reusing. What's the best most efficient way clean them up? Has anyone tried tumbling? Eastwood has a small tumbler and two different kinds of media for this purpose. The tumbler looks similar to the kind rock hounds use to polish stones.
-
-
Re: What's the best/preferred way to clean fastene
Clare, bead blasting is the best way I know to clean larger fasteners, say 3/16" and larger diameter. Small screws can be difficult to bead blast because there is no way to hold them with your gloved hand. Tip Tools and others sell bead blasting baskets for small parts; I haven't tried it but I would think the efficiency would be pretty low (time consuming to get a good thorough job without spots).
The tumbling idea might work better than the basket for small screws. -
Re: What's the best/preferred way to clean fastene
When I did restorations for a living???, I would start by placing the fastners in a pan of phosphoric acid (the same that you would find in an auto paint store) and let them soak overnight. I would do most of the cleaning that I needed. Then we would glass bead them.Dick WhittingtonComment
-
Re: What's the best/preferred way to clean fastene
This may sound crazy, but if you get a glass jar, a large one like for sauce, put inside of the jar a number like fifty small stones about a 1/4 to 1/2 inche in dia. then your bolts about ten at a time and shake like crazy the shacking action takes off the rust and leaves a nice/paintable surface. Once cleaned i flush them with laqurer thiner then paint. This works best for smaller screws and bolts?Comment
-
Re: What's the best/preferred way to clean fastene
Bead blasting works good if you screw the screws/bolts into a piece of wood or 1/16" thick sheet metal scrap. The sheet metal should have threaded holes but the wood only needs tight fitting drilled holes. This holds say 25-30 pieces of hardware so you can handle them easily in the blasting booth. Keep them about 3/4 inch apart so the gun can get in and around each screw. Only screw them in enough to stay put as you blast. Then screw them in farther so they stick out the other end. Now you can blast the end that was in the wood/sheet metal. I then send them out for commercial plating.Comment
-
Re: What's the best/preferred way to clean fastene
What you describe is similar to what I am talking about but sounds like a good way to get cut if the glass breaks. Not very safe IMHO. The vibratory tumbler I referred to uses a media, (Eastwood sells two different types; a green cutting media to remove rust and a polishing media) and operates on the same principal. I don't have that many to do, at least not enought to justify buying a blasting cabinet and the tumbler seems like it might be an inexpensive compromise just right for cleaning those pesky nut and bolts. I had my larger stuff done for me, no problem but didn't want to worry about losing fasteners.Comment
-
Re: What's the best/preferred way to clean fastene
Clare,
I use glassbead blasting to clean all fasteners, but that is only part of the story. Most of the old fasteners were plated with Cadnium if they were plated, and failure to remove this plating completely will slowly but surely contaminate your plating tank if you are doing it yourself.
I soak all my parts that are being plated in muriatic acid after blasting and then plate the parts. You would think that the blasting would remove the old plating, but I can assure that it does not! After ruining two tanks of plating solution, I finally discovered the root of the problem and have had no problems for the last couple of years since I started acid cleaning the parts. When you put the parts in the acid, it will fizz pretty strongly, but this only the plating coming off. After the fizzing stops the parts are clean of all plating.
Just don't put any parts that have diecast parts in their asssembly as the acid will destroy diecast parts since they are mostly Zinc. I can't tell you how many C1 trunk latches have had the cam ruined over the years by platers.
The really nice thing about acid cleaning parts is that it does not impart the distinctive bead blasted look that is impossible to cover up with plating. An acid cleaned part will look just like it did 40 years ago if it is not pitted from rust.
Regards, John McGrawComment
-
Re: What's the best/preferred way to clean fastene
John,
Thanks for the info. You bring up a some good points that lead to a couple of questions.
"Just don't put any parts that have diecast parts in their asssembly as the acid will destroy diecast parts since they are mostly Zinc. I can't tell you how many C1 trunk latches have had the cam ruined over the years by platers."
I haven't done anything with my latch for two reasons, 1. it's in pretty good shape and cleaned up nice. I wouldn't mind having a fresh plated shiney new finish but 2.), I wasn't sure about plating an assembled piece and didn't want to try to take it apart. What do you recommend?
"The really nice thing about acid cleaning parts is that it does not impart the distinctive bead blasted look that is impossible to cover up with plating. An acid cleaned part will look just like it did 40 years ago if it is not pitted from rust."
Exactly why I don't want to bead blast parts to be plated. I figured with fasteners I could clean them on a wire wheel. In fact, I already a did a quick job after the initial cleaning and then sprayed them down with WD40 before bagging. It worked okay to remove light rust. Cleaning them up on the wire wheel is not only tedious but also a bit dangerous, I had a couple of pieces get away from me and launch. I tried holding them with vice grips, channel locks, etc. but it worked best with my fingers and I don't like getting that close to the wheel. Ultimately, I was looking for a better way. I was thinking tumbling might be the ticket.
Acid cleaning sounds like the way to go. If I understand you correctly, you bead blast first and then clean with acid to remove the plating. The blasting only imparts the profile to the plating, which is then removed by the acid? Why not just acid clean? Wouldn't it remove rust, grime and the plating, while saving a step? I don't plan to plate myself. I'm not set up and I don't have enough pieces to make it worthwhile. I assume parts would rust quickly after being acid dipped so they would need to go immediately to the plater. What would you recommend after acid cleaning to protect? Distilled water rinse, dry, then WD40? Would the plater have to clean them again with acid or a solvent to remove the WD40 before plating?
I know the plated finish is dependant on the surface to be plated. I haven't tried anything with my hood support, hood latches or hinges except the wire wheel. Should I proceed to acid, except for the rear trunk latch? Any suggestions for plating, i.e. cadmium, gold cad, or zinc, zinc dichromate?Comment
-
Re: What's the best/preferred way to clean fastene
Clare, You can take the latch apart, but if it is in good shape, why bother?
I blast nuts and bolts because there are limitattions to what acid will remove. It will not remove paint or grease very well, so I usually will blast them first. Bolts will usually plate out pretty nice without the bead blasted look being a real problem, but larger peices with large flat surfaces will usually show the blasted look. A lot of times I will use a non-woven abrasive wheel to smooth out a blasted or pitted surface before plating. This is not the kind of work you could expect from most platers, and that is why I finally just started doing my own parts.
Tumbling is a very good choice but is a very slow process. You really need to tumble the part to remove all the rust and paint, acid clean the part to remove the plating and follow up with another tumbling to shine the parts up and to help retard rust formation. Parts that were tumbled dry should be rust free for quite a while if kept dry and I would not put any coating on them that might not get fully cleaned off.
The appearance of the plating will vary from part to part and year to year.
On most C1 cars after early 60, the male hood latch and male decklid latch will show a light gold chromate finish while the hinges, female hood latches, frmale decklid latch and trunk latch will be a plain Zinc/cad plating. Keep in mind that the hinges and latches were in place when blackout was done, so they should be pretty much covered with blackout paint. The judges also look for bare fiberglass showing under the female hood latches which would have been that way as the latch protected it from getting painted underneath.
Zinc and cad are pretty much interchangeable in both function and appearance.
They are both sacrificial coatings and are a silver color, with the technique of the plater determining the final look. All the gold looking parts are passed tharough a chromate dip which imparts the gold hue.
Regards, John McGrawComment
-
Re: What's the best/preferred way to clean fastene
Chuck - I have the TIP tools basket you mention, it works very well. You have to be careful not to float the fasteners out of the basket if you are using a high volume air flow as I am though...CraigComment
-
Re: What's the best/preferred way to clean fastene
Use Muratic Acid (swimming pool stuff), Outside!!! Just take a bunch of nuts, bolts etc. and drop them in a plastic bucket. They will "boil" clean in less than an hour. You can water down the acid 50/50 and it takes a bit longer. I use a magnet to pull out the clean fasteners and dip them in a solution of water and baking soda to neutralize the acid. Then spray with WD-40, etc.Comment
Comment