Since I got into hand tools, I’ve been looking for an easy way to remove rust. I decided to try the WD-40 Rust Remover Soak because I was familiar with the WD40 brand.
I recently purchased a few used hand planes from eBay, and all of them had varying degrees of rust that had to be removed. I’ve tried removing them with a wire wheel, and while it works great, it doesn’t clean up rust in smaller areas.
Using The WD40 Rust Remover Soak
Using the WD40 rust soak is pretty straight forward. It is a non-toxic formula, but just to be safe, use a pair of gloves when handling the parts.
All you have to do is pour the solution into a bucket or container and drop in the parts you want to clean up. I disassembled all the rusty parts from my hand planes and dumped them in.
The first picture when I put in all the parts. The second picture is after about one hour. It has already removed quite a bit of surface rust, and you can see the solution start to darken.
Every hour or so I will flip the parts over just to make sure that the solution gets everywhere. I’m not entire sure that this is necessary, but I did it anyway. After about 4/5 hours, I removed all the parts and you can see the leftover solution is much darker.
According to the instructions, you can reuse the WD40 rust remover soak until it gets black, at which point is is saturated with rust and can no longer remove anything.
So how did it turn out?
Did The WD40 Rust Remover Work?
Yes it did. Once you remove the parts, you’ll need to wash them to remove any access WD40 solution.
Initially, I was surprised that so much of rust was still on the plane parts.
However, all you need to do is get a wire brush or a Scotch-Brite pad, and scrub the leftover rust. The solution has penetrated the rust and loosened it.
The instructions do say that for parts with significant rust, you’ll have to do another 4-5 hour soak. However, it was unnecessary for me. I did use a quick spray of regular WD40 while scrubbing the rust off, but soaking in the solution made this much easier.
Overall, I’m quite happy with the WD40 rust remover soak. It helped remove a lot of rust in tiny recesses, threads and other areas that were too hard to get to.
One word of caution – watch the clock and do not soak your parts longer than the recommended time. If you do this, you’ll find that it works exactly as promised.
If you cannot find the WD40 rust remover, a more well-known alternative is the Evaporust rust remover. It is very similar, also non-toxic, and has raving reviews on Amazon.
