Going through my late grandfather's things, I found a great smaller toolbox, but it's been sitting on a shelf since he retired in the 1970's and there's a bit of rust both on the underside of the lid and along the floor of the box. What can I do to stop the rust, seal things up so it doesn't come back, and not destroy the outer finish? My first thought is trolling through the POR-15 catalog and looking for a solution there, but I don't want this stuff leaching out and mucking up the outer finish & decals.
Ideas?
wipe down with a light coat of WD-40 and keep the memories of him alive knowing he was working from the same lightly rusted tool chest
Evaporust. Put it on (use some cheese cloth soaked with it) It should remove the rust and leave a light corrosion resistant coating behing with out damaging the painted finish.
You could go with Naval Jelly.
I've heard a lot of good things about Evaporust. You can get it from Harbor Freight if you can't find it at a local hardware store. It will remove the rust without damaging the paint; once that's done you could give a coat of wax, or wipe it down with oil or something similar.
To keep rust at bay inside the box (both on the box itself as well as the tools) use a vapor phase corrosion inhibitor. It's sort of a modern version of putting a piece of camphor in the box, which is what mechanics and machinists used to do in the old days. One good product is the Bullfrog emitter cup from Cortec: http://www.bull-frog.com/products/
stuart: Not seen the Bullfrog products before, sounds interesting, will have to look into those. Sounds like Evaporust and maybe a coating of some thin oil like chainsaw bar oil or similar would work pretty well.
The nice thing is that the paint on the outside of the box is in pretty good condition, most of the rust is inside just on the floor of the box, and it's not gone very deep so the bottom still seems pretty strong.
The thing that makes this box interesting to me vs. some of his other things (which I'll also be cleaning up and using myself) is that it was the toolbox from his last job before retiring, looks like he decided he needed a souvenir on his last day so there's the whole "Company use only" sticker on the outside, and now I work for that same company as well. Think they'll let me take home my workstation on my last day?
