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This is what a 5 pound bag of citric acid looks like. I tore off the bottom left corner, and I pour the powder out from there.
Here is a mildly rusty Stanley #4C plane all disassembled and ready to go into the acid bath. The knob and tote will not go into the bath. I don’t know whether wood is completely safe in the acid. Most galoots think the acid does no harm to wood. I still don’t put wood in unless the wood cannot be removed from the metal. I always wonder if any residual acid trapped in the wood might cause rust later on.
Here are all the parts soaking in a galloon of fresh citric acid solution. Notice that the temperature of the solution is about 62 degrees. Rust removal is slowed down with low temperatures. I use a soft wire brush to speed up the process of rust removal, scrubbing the parts as they soak. In this particular case, all the rust was removed in under 25 minutes. There is no problem with putting your hands into the solution.
Here are the clean parts, all washed, dried, and oiled. It is important to oil the metal parts right away as rust will form quickly if you do not.
This is the plane after re-assembly. I do not think that it looks over cleaned. After a good sharpening and adjustment the plane cuts fluffy curlies, a la Steve Knight.
No polishing of any kind was done on the metal.
A small amount of rust remains in a few deep pits in the bottom, but this is unimportant on a corrugated plane. The pits down in the corrugations will never touch the wood being planed anyway. I hope this little tutorial has been helpful. Here is more info on how Citric Acid works. © James Thompson
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