Rusty Die Restoration

[Hugh Mann]

Long story short. Basement flooded. Reloading died were underwater and then sat wet for almost two weeks.

I was busy cleaning up sludge and debris, so I only took a glance at them, and they’re rusted to hell.

Wondering if these might be salvageable, and what is the best way to do it, since there’s about $500 in assorted dies.

Before anyone says “insurance”, they already told me to kick sand, and DFA doesn’t cover non-essential items.

 

[Hitzy]

Evapo-rust, $11 at CT, worth a shot, you just soak rusty #### in it over night and the rust is all gone, it's reusable too so it goes a long way. The dies may be pitted beyond use but worth a shot. I've used it on rusty gun parts and tools and it's pretty amazing.

 

[bearhunter]

Evapo-rust, $11 at CT, worth a shot, you just soak rusty #### in it over night and the rust is all gone, it's reusable too so it goes a long way. The dies may be pitted beyond use but worth a shot. I've used it on rusty gun parts and tools and it's pretty amazing.

This works, but liquid Wipe Out is better

I've got a couple of die sets that went through similar issues.

Both of them were submerged in water and fire retardent for appx 6 months in a basement after a fire.

I helped pumping out the water and with the clean up.

The owner had a similar experience with his insurance company and was going to throw them away

They were still in their boxes, which hadn't melted, but the tops had popped open and everything was full of black goo.

I soaked them in Diesel for a couple of weeks and that took care of the black coating and softened up the rust.

I used a brass brush to clean off everything I could on the outside and a wrapped some 6 "0" steel wool around a brass rod, chucked up in a drill press and polished the interior of the dies.

I used liquid Wipe Out to soak the steel wool and it definitely got rid of whatever had been left behind.
This worked well, there wasn't any visible pitting, but the dies were left with permanent black stains.

None of the stains effect anything, other than they're unsightly.

If the interior of your dies are pitted, you may have ''scratch'' tracks on your cases.

The scratches won't effect anything, other than visual appearance, unless they're quite deep.

 

[ryan]

Another fan of Evapo-Rust.