De-rusting a 4 jaw chuck?

[skotl]

I've been toying with the idea of playing with electrolysis but haven't really had a project up until today, when I found the 4-jaw that came with the old lathe I bought a couple of years ago. It's not seized so seems like mostly surface rust - would you try electrolysis or some kind of caustic paste?

 

[skotl]

Scratch that - I just watched this video and I'm going to try electrolysis!

 

[Screwdriver]

Keith Rucker just did a vid on precisely this topic.

But electrolysis is fun! I went through a period of it last year, in fact the weather has just come back again. It's an outdoor thing for me, I wouldn't have a big tank in the shed for lots of reasons. Used to really look forwards to getting up in the morning to check on the tank.

What the heck. Here's an early practice run for one day when I hope to set up a proper You Tube channel.

It will be a while yet I think.

 

[Turbo]

Here's my 4 jaw that was cleaned up using electrolysis.

It was coated in surface rust, dried grease & dirt. The electrolysis took most of the crud off the chuck & a green scotch pad took off the rest. Finished it off with a rub over of chain oil.

One thing to note is that the e-bath will ruin the 'Burnerd' sticker. I forgot to remove mine & it took off the writing completely!

 

[Parm]

If it's light surface rust you can get great results with citric acid dissolved in warm water. I used about a soup ladle full in a big bucket of warm water. It worked a treat on all the engineering tools I was given a while back. I posted some pictures of them all cleaned up

 

[brightspark]

cillit bang and a scrubbing brush

 

[Screwdriver]

I second that regarding citric acid. A small bucket of the stuff costs peanuts and you can make your own sherbet.