hand tool restoration - part 1

jambaloney here!

we had a couple of days of real blizzard - yowzah!!! no power loss though - i hope everyone else fared as well!

hey helga - here is a great sky!

okay - on to toady's topic - rusty tools!! i have a pile with the flood 2 years ago, the damp basement and some tools i found in the trash... my most prized tool is this old-fashioned hand mitre box and saw i got from my step-dad, ted:

it goes back to a time when things were made to last...

even through the rust, you can see the quality of the machining in the mitre box..

i FINALLY found blades for this saw - it is a very thin mitre saw that was left here by the previous owner - good for trim..this is an aluminum base, so it was easy to clean up.. not as fine a tool as the big saw, but nice to have for free...

here is the bottom, of the mitre box...

and the saw itself - this a  long box saw - 2 feet overall - i had to remove the handle first..

because the big issue is the rust, i looked and looked on the internet - white vinegar will remove rust, apparently all you need to do is  be patient and soak it - so here is my getup... 4 litres of vinegar, a bin, 2 old pillow cases and a garbage bag..

first off - fill the bin..

as the saw and box are too big for the bin, i had to "bathe them in the vinegar... i also soaked the pillow cases..

here is the mitre box being bathed..

and then wrapped in a vinegar-soaked pillow case, this is to keep the vinegar form drying out

i wrapped the saw in another pillow case and then wrapped it again in a garbage bag... the bin with the mitre box is covered with a garbage bag... the key is, apparently, to wait for the mild acid to do it's work - i left these as-is for 4 days... stay tuned to see what happens!! (i'll give you a hint, go get some vinegar - this is worth doing!!!)

and don't forget to store the pieces you removed from the saw in their own container ;-))

cheers all!!

(kymber edits: sorry i haven't been posting much lately...i've been busy with the super fun jobs of sorting seeds and planning this year's garden! i promise to be back to regular posting shortly.)