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Re: Removing Rust
- To: meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com
- Subject: Re: Removing Rust
- From: ams000@aztec.asu.edu (STEVEN R. SCHONER)
- Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 10:12:04 -0700 (MST)
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- Resent-Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 13:13:50 -0400 (EDT)
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>
>
>
>I found that by letting a freshly etched specimen lay in a plate of baking
soda
>overnight, tedns to remove alot of the water within the surficial cracks
of the
>piece. I have a few irons from a well-known dealer that rusted and needed
to be
>re-etched. I sanded, polished, and etched them plus put them in baking soda.
It
>has been 2 years and they haven't rusted (yet!).
>--
The baking soda works for the same reason that caustic soda does.
Sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) reacts with the chlorine in the
ferric, ferrous chloride blebs, and produces salt. The rusting
stops because the chlorine is bonded with sodium.
I have always wondered how irons acquire chlorine from groundwater
and salts in the first place, being that the NaCl bond is so strong.
Try dusting your specimens with sodium hydroxide instead, it works
better than sodium bicarbonate. But the best way I have found is to
make the solution that I have already suggested.
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