View Single Post
Old 6th Dec 2019, 12:39 am   #4
Argus25
No Longer a Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2016
Location: Maroochydore, Queensland, Australia.
Posts: 2,679
Default Re: Killing rust on a radio chassis

It depends on the result you want.

By far the best method is to strip the chassis completely and take it to the electroplater for rust removal and passivated Zinc plating. They will electrochemicaly remove the rust, or if its severe, fine glass bead blasting may be required that they will do for you. There will be pits left in the surface, but the rust will be totally gone. Then mask around the holes earth points/tags etc with sticky dots and spray it with Holts clear lacquer, this preserves the Zinc. The better places that deal with small custom electroplating jobs are used by the motorcyle restorers & they have platers that do this work.

If its not a practical proposition for such extensive disassembly, you will have to accept that some rust remains, however, you can completely deactivate it with organic rust converter. This converts the rust into a Ferric Tannate, a harmless blue black compound which does not progress to larger quantities over time. The converter I use for this is Fertan. It won't look attractive, but at least if you put a fine silver spray over it (Holts again) you will not have any problem with the rust reappearing under the paint, which always happens if the remaining microscopic rust crystals are not deactivated with the Fertan.
Argus25 is offline