Thread: NAVAL JELLY Rust Remover

A while back I received a lot (5) of straight blades from ebay. They all need some good cleaning as well new scales. Some of the blades had some minor pitting on them and in talking to my dad he suggested that I try NAVAL JELLY rust remover. I picked some up at Home Depot, bent up an old hanger to use as a stand and gave it a try. Had some o.k. results but the main issue is that when it came time to rinse the blades (i tried this on two different blades on a couple different days) the steel had become almost black. I was able to go through and sand the blades back to being "steel" but it kind of killed the original intention of buying the stuff. All in all I was looking for something a little more aggressive then MASS or FLITZ but if I need to reclean the blades twice then that kind of kills it for me. Any ideas why this might have happened or another product I might want to give a try?

You might as well used acid. This has been discussed many times. Naval Jelly is phosphoric acid. Stay away from razors.

You want to remove the rust and pitting. start sanding. Depending how deep they go off course. You can always start with a higher grit sandpaper if needed. there is no miracle stuff. if you own a buffer or dremel you can use flapwheels, compounds,...

If not you will need to put some elbow grease into the removal of all those blemishes.

If it's only to surface clean and shine up a razor Maas is fine,

I had read the bottle before use and saw that it was phos acid. Not having any experience with it I figured that it could trash the razor (hence using one of the junk ebay's). I was just hoping that I would have gotten something else to put into the restoration "arsenal". I do have a dremel, actually I'm up to 3 at the moment. I've been playing with trying the felt pads/wheels with buffing compound but not really having much luck there. Dad says he's got a small buffer that he'll give me, if he can find it. He's got quite a bit of "stuff" but unfortunately his shop/storage/whatever you want to call it looks a bit like a junk yard. Anyway. I've seen the dremel flap wheel sanders but hadn't gotten around to picking any up yet. Also I think I've been a little wary since they don't look all that durable. How well do they hold up?
Anywho. I really appreciate the suggestions. If I get out to Ace H.W. this afternoon I'll check out what they've got in stock .

There is a ton of information in the Wiki on restoration of blades. It may be a good idea to take a look.

Agreed. I used Naval Jelly, thankfully on some non-razor oxidized steel and it was a crappy experience. I must not have used it correctly because I recall ending up thinking that it would work well to blacken steel, not polish it. I don't recall that I kept the naval jelly on the steel for very long either.

Chris L