On to cleaning things up

Well this evening I had the opportunity to stay home, and I took it. I used some time to do a little cleaning. I opened the rust remover I bought and decided the fumes were not bad at all. It's entirely too cold to do anything down in the shop itself, so since it was relatively fumeless, the bottle said nothing about ventilation, I decided to lay a couple sheets of wax paper on the kitchen table, spread out a crappy old towel, and do some cleaning of some rust off the new, old saw vise. While I was at it I decided to bring up the hand saws I have to do some rust removal from them. Seems fitting as the saw vise will help me rehab them back to real life again. I started with what is probably the oldest tool I have. An old Disston & Son's saw, when I got it the blade was brown, deep brown, I thought of it as a "patina" for a while, then I got to reading things over at the Bad Axe Tool Works website. Changed my mind completely about "patina." and hey as long as I'm in the process of scrubbing rust, might as well make a party of it. Besides I wanted to test the effectiveness of the Rustoleum rust remover on a flat surface before struggling with the odd angles, nooks, and crannies of the vise.

And damn did it work. The blade is not completely clean, like it came off the assembly line, the vise is not spot free, but both are clean, and primed for the rest of action. A little sandpaper, polish and wax and the saw blade will be set. The handle needs a little more work yet, I haven't made up my mind much on what to do there yet, if I'm going to do more than clean it. The vise is cleaned and oiled and set for reassembly, once the weather turns and warms up enough to use some spray paint I will give the vise a good coating of black Rustoleum spray to protect it in the future. Again, maintaining the supposed monetary value of the tools I have by maintaining the crappy remaining Japanning is secondary to getting these tools up and in working order for another lifetime. They are worth more to me usable and protected than they are on a shelf looking cool.

 Anyhow enjoy the pics, the saw pics are really amazing the difference between before and after.

Cheers!
Oldwolf