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Cleaning the Brass Nuts and Finishing Up the Blade

Sun, 04/04/2004 - 1:38am — Leif
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General:

Looking at the brass nuts that hold the handle to the saw, I could see there was both a bit of corrosion and tarnish.  Kind of hard to see in this picture, but you get the idea.  So it's a trip to the grinder that has a buffing wheel charged with tripoli.

The result is a nicely polished nut.  I use a rag to hold the nut in a pair of pliers, so the pliers don't damage the nut.  Be careful, as the wheel can grab the nut and send it flying if you're not careful.

 
Finishing Up the Blade

It's the next day, and time to get the saw out of the electrolysis bath.  Here, you can see what's happened to the cookie tin used as a sacrificial anode, as well as the rust in the container that I used.  There's a pretty thick layer of it on the bottom (hard to see just how much, but a pretty substantial amount for just one saw) in the picture.

My battery charger is a 10 amp car battery charger.  I would really love to have one with a little more torque - its tough to get a large area like a saw, a few more amps wouldn't hurt here.

Next, I get out the razor blade and scrape it again, to get the blade as clean as possible, then use some 220 grit sandpaper to finish it off, using the sandpaper in the same direction as the length of the saw  I screwed up the settings in my camera, so the pictures I had of this stage turned out too blurry to use.  I hope nobody minds that I don't show anything for that part, because its fairly substantial - but then again, it is just sanding the thing. Use a block, if you have one - one of those rubber blocks like this one:
These work great - I recommend you have one for all general sanding work.  If you can't find one at the local hardware store, look into auto body supply stores.  If 220 grit isn't getting the job done, I will go to 150, but try to limit using coarser grits - its best to let the electrolysis bath do the job, if possible.   Here at least is a photo of some scraping I did during the process somewhere to give an idea of what I'm doing.

Here you can see the results in the next stage, where I apply some paste wax to the saw as a rust preventative.  The wax will come off fairly quickly on the exposed parts of the saw, but will remain under the handle for years.

The end result isn't going to fool anyone into thinking it's a new blade, but should still work quite well.

Comments

Bencuri (not verified) - Fri, 03/11/2011 - 1:18pm.
Comment: 

While trying to clean a handsaw today with sandpaper, I found myself facing the difficulty of removing the rust from the teeth. I noticed that when I am sending around them, the tip of the teeth (the tip towards the outer sides) is being sended more than the sides, because of the setting on the teeth. So I decided to skip sending them, because I feared until I manage to clean the teeth sides, their tip will get very dull, and I need to file a lot of material off when sharpening them. What is your technique of cleaning them to avoid making the tip dull?

Leif - Fri, 03/11/2011 - 3:09pm.
Comment: 

After block sanding as close to the teeth as I can get, I use steel wool to get it as best I can - then sharpen it.  You won't likely get it perfect, but use will wear off any corrosion that's left...

 

Leif



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