Well, I found where the girlfriend stashed the lemon juice and found another one of those rusty brackets like I used in the Apple Cider Vinegar post.....so here goes. I put the bracket into the lemon juice partially submerged so we could compare before to after, as I don't have any more rusty ones to compare it to.
I put the bracket in around 1:00pm this afternoon and I'm taking the pics around 6:00pm..........so 5 hours in the sauce. How did the lemon juice work? Well as Gomer Pyle would say..........."Well Golly!" or "SHAZAAM!"....it worked pretty good......and fast. I'd say 5 hours of lemon juice equals about 5 days of apple cider vinegar. I think lemon juice is more expensive than apple cider vinegar, but I'll have to check the next time I go to the supermarket. Anyway....here are the pics.........you judge for yourself. But I think citric acid might be my new best friend.
You ought to see the parts now! I left them in for another night and they are pretty darn pristine. I'm surprised how quickly it works too........which means it can be diluted to reduce cost if one can afford to wait another day or so. I've got a bunch of snow to shovel now, but maybe later I'll get some more pics up.
I'd be curious how long one can use the same "batch" of juice before it loses its effectiveness. I can imagine the acid eventually breaking down after chewing through lots of rust.....keep us posted!
I sure will. Another cool thing about lemon juice...........I just came back from Family Dollar, a dollar store chain around here where everything they sell is a dollar. There I found they had quarts of lemon juice for..........you guessed it..........a buck. Needless to say the gal at the register looked at me kind of funny when I rolled up with a shopping cart full of lemon juice bottles. She of course asked why I wanted so much.........so I smiled, looked her in the eye.......and said because I really, really like lemonade.
So that makes lemon juice about $4 a gallon, vice Evapo-Rust which costs $21 a gallon and Esprit, which costs around $10 a gallon if you buy the 1/2 gallon concentrate and make 5 gallons.
I think I am headed to the dollar store! I bet they sell dilluted stuff but should still work. The best thing i have ever used to treat stuff I am not going to paint right away and dont want ot rust again is called Fertan. its a rust converter/metal treatment, works better than all the rest. non toxic, no smell, biodegradable, doesnt damage paint. a bit spendy but I dilute it with water about 30% fertan 70% water and spray with spray bottle. this pic is of my D300 frame after I stripped it to bare metal, treated withe fertan 3 or 4 times, then sat out all winter in Western WA. there is no paint just treated with ferttan. you can paint right over it with no issues. been using it since 89.
First, my bad.....it wasn't Family Dollar, it was a store called Dollar Tree. It's a franchise and might be in your areas as well. I go to so many "dollar" stores they all blend toghether.
Sorry about that. Second, I don't think they sell diluted lemon juice. Seems everyone is proud their product is 100% juice (from concentrate of course). But with the speed it works I think diluting with water is almost a no-brainer to make more liquid to cover bigger parts.
was developed decades ago for indutrial use. I read an independent study comparing many brands and this is the only one that goes in deeper into the metal with each application. if I left that frame out for a second winter it probably would have started to rust again a little bit.
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