Citric Acid

[Cobbs]

Hello all,

I recently acquired a bench shear that is more than a little rusty, but salvageable. I've stripped it down to its component pieces and intend to clean them up with citric acid. The only foreseeable snag is the maker's nameplate, which is aluminium and riveted in place. I've read somewhere or other that only one kind of metal should be in the acid bath at any one time - is this correct?

It's not a huge issue to remove the plate and re-fix after treatment, but if I don't have to, I'd rather not.

Any advice would be appreciated...

 

[Chickenjohn]

If it's easy then remove the plate!
Citric acid is great stuff, far cheaper to buy it from EBay than certain "B#" bottles containing 500g of the same stuff for 10x the price!!

 

[MattF]

Far as I know, you should be safe with citric acid in that regard. Aluminium doesn't like caustic solutions, and will have a reaction in those with or without other metals present, (good way of cleaning silver apparently, incidentally), but I've never yet encountered a problem with citric acid in that regard whch I can recall.

The safe method is as mentioned above though. If unsure, remove the plate.

 

[Cobbs]

Cheers for that - maybe I'll conduct an experiment with some scrap aluminium and steel before I commit.

I learnt my lesson with caustic and aluminium a long time ago when I tried to use a garden sprayer to apply caustic to some slate that needed cleaning. The spray wand was made from aluminium...

 

[MattF]

Cheers for that - maybe I'll conduct an experiment with some scrap aluminium and steel before I commit.

Let us know the outcome of that test, if you do try it. Always good to know for future reference.

I learnt my lesson with caustic and aluminium a long time ago when I tried to use a garden sprayer to apply caustic to some slate that needed cleaning. The spray wand was made from aluminium...

I know I shouldn't laugh but.... Definitely not the best way of finding out about that little quirk of aluminium.

 

[BChild]

Cheers for that - maybe I'll conduct an experiment with some scrap aluminium and steel before I commit.

I learnt my lesson with caustic and aluminium a long time ago when I tried to use a garden sprayer to apply caustic to some slate that needed cleaning. The spray wand was made from aluminium...

don't feel bad as a teenager I decoked 2 stroke exhausts with caustic, worked great till I did it to a set of very expensive dep silencers..... Alloy skinned.....

 

[Cobbs]

Lessons learned the hard way certainly stay learnt!