One of my awesome neighbors noticed my Craftsman vise restoration and offered me some vintage tools. Amongst the tools was some pipe wrenches. A Craftsman, Ridgid, Ben Hur, and a few other older wrenches. They had a significant amount of rust on them, but were in pretty good shape still.
I didn’t want to spend $30 for a gallon of rust remover from Harbor Freight, so I made my own home remedy. The solution was common vinegar and salt. Stuff you can find in your pantry. Then, to neutralize the acid on the tool, you add baking soda to water and rinse, then dry. It worked quite well as you can see in the YouTube Episode. Hey, that’s $30 I can spend on another tool!
After getting the rust off, I used my Hercules bench grinder to get the deeper rust off. I used a variety of wire wheels and brushes from Benchmark Abrasives to get inside the small areas. They cleaned up well.
I taped all the areas I wanted to leave bare metal, for operational purposes. Like the cogs and grooves. I chose Cherry Red Rustoleum paint. It was the closest I could find to a common red color you see on pipe wrenches. The other older ones I chose a solid black. The contrast between the red and black looks super nice and they came out sharp! Now, I don’t have to worry about rust anymore and they are nice functional tools. I wanted to say thanks again to my awesome neighbor who entrusted me to restore these great tools! Check out the photos and episode below.
YouTube Episode:
