Willie Sutton
Member
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2013
- Messages
- 2,025
In November 2012 my home was inundated by salt water from Hurricaine Sandy. I was able to move all of my guns save for one that I forgot from harms way. Sadly I had a complete machine shop with Bridgeport, Lathe, and five full Kennedy machinist tool boxes of precision tools, fixtures, jigs, and cutting tools as well as 2 large mechanics tool boxes that went completely under salt water. There was 8 feet of it thru my shop... everything got fully soaked with salt water.
The day after the storm I surveyed my shop, and it was a disaster (the house was gone...). I had 10,000 things to do, so was only able to do the very bare minimums before I needed to seek shelter elsewhere. Fortunately we still had running fresh water (!!) so I hosed off the milling machine and lathe, sprayed them with 2 gallons of WD-40, then sprayed on a half case of white lithium aerosol grease and hoped for the best. Of far more importance to me were my tools and tooling. Much of it is made of high carbon steel (read that "easy to rust steel"), and there was about $15,000 worth of it.
I happened to have two things floating in the muck (mud, salt, diesel fuel, sewerage, etc.,) in the ruins of my shop that I saw "might" be of use: A half dozen commercial fish-shipment tubs, and a case of Ballistol. Ballistol, for those who don't know about it, is the WW-I and WW-II German CLP, and when mixed with water forms a white emulsion that looks like milk.
I tipped each box of precision tools and tooling, as well as my mechanics tools, into the fish tubs, filled each with water to nearly full, and dumped in two quarts of Ballistol into each. Stirred it with my hands, snapped on the tops of the boxes, and walked away.
18 months has now passed and I have finally opened up the boxes today.
In one, the plastic fish box fractured, probably due to a freeze. The water emulsion leaked out, and the box was filled with a mass of rust, with tools literally falling to pieces. Drills were actually gone, and it's all a 100% loss. Naturally this is the one I opened first. I was literally sick...
Opened the other boxes, and guess what? Under an oily slimy brown layer on top of the water I found my tools, fixtures, jigs, micrometers, and all of my other tool-steel items as shiny as the day they were made. Oily, to be sure, but everything is in 100% perfect shape.
The next job is going to be to remove the oil, which I will accomplish by running them thru the dishwasher, spraying with WD-40, and then sorting them all into new Kennedy boxes.
The lathe and milling machine survived as well.
Moral to the story: IF you ever need to preserve firearms after this sort of horrific trauma, USE BALLISTOL with about 2 quarts to 20 gallons of water. Immerse them, and if you can't deal with them right now, LEAVE THEM WET and forget about it.
Ballistol... it's the stuff. The key is not how it works when undiluted (it has 1000 uses like that), but how well it maintains it's emulsion when mixed with water. I'm sure glad I had a case of it, as I use it regularly mixed with water for cleaning black powder arms.
It's... good... stuff....
Willie
.
The day after the storm I surveyed my shop, and it was a disaster (the house was gone...). I had 10,000 things to do, so was only able to do the very bare minimums before I needed to seek shelter elsewhere. Fortunately we still had running fresh water (!!) so I hosed off the milling machine and lathe, sprayed them with 2 gallons of WD-40, then sprayed on a half case of white lithium aerosol grease and hoped for the best. Of far more importance to me were my tools and tooling. Much of it is made of high carbon steel (read that "easy to rust steel"), and there was about $15,000 worth of it.
I happened to have two things floating in the muck (mud, salt, diesel fuel, sewerage, etc.,) in the ruins of my shop that I saw "might" be of use: A half dozen commercial fish-shipment tubs, and a case of Ballistol. Ballistol, for those who don't know about it, is the WW-I and WW-II German CLP, and when mixed with water forms a white emulsion that looks like milk.
I tipped each box of precision tools and tooling, as well as my mechanics tools, into the fish tubs, filled each with water to nearly full, and dumped in two quarts of Ballistol into each. Stirred it with my hands, snapped on the tops of the boxes, and walked away.
18 months has now passed and I have finally opened up the boxes today.
In one, the plastic fish box fractured, probably due to a freeze. The water emulsion leaked out, and the box was filled with a mass of rust, with tools literally falling to pieces. Drills were actually gone, and it's all a 100% loss. Naturally this is the one I opened first. I was literally sick...
Opened the other boxes, and guess what? Under an oily slimy brown layer on top of the water I found my tools, fixtures, jigs, micrometers, and all of my other tool-steel items as shiny as the day they were made. Oily, to be sure, but everything is in 100% perfect shape.
The next job is going to be to remove the oil, which I will accomplish by running them thru the dishwasher, spraying with WD-40, and then sorting them all into new Kennedy boxes.
The lathe and milling machine survived as well.
Moral to the story: IF you ever need to preserve firearms after this sort of horrific trauma, USE BALLISTOL with about 2 quarts to 20 gallons of water. Immerse them, and if you can't deal with them right now, LEAVE THEM WET and forget about it.
Ballistol... it's the stuff. The key is not how it works when undiluted (it has 1000 uses like that), but how well it maintains it's emulsion when mixed with water. I'm sure glad I had a case of it, as I use it regularly mixed with water for cleaning black powder arms.
It's... good... stuff....
Willie
.
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Basically the citric acid seems to do a pretty good job of reducing the active red rust to black "stuff", the metal looks like it's been, well... "blackened". Not too much different than cold chemical gun bluing/blacking, to tell you the truth. 
