For those of you who deal with humidity rust in your un-A/C'd garages and storage rooms, how do you handle it?I've tried preventatives, but they don't seem to work much better than doing nothing. I've also done de-rusting things with chemicals, but I don't want to have to do that constantly.What do you do anons? I have airtight boxes and bags but that simply doesn't protect everything.Thanks.
>>2888791Bare metals get a wipe down with a light oil.Precision metal surfaces get a coat of thick and sticky gearbox oil.
Get fans and move the air around. thats what I do
>>2888794Cool beans.That's as a preventative right? How long do you find it lasts?
>>2888794>>2888811Both of these. Fluid Film was on clearance at HD a month or two ago. Also working on dirty as fuck cars will get a coat of grease on stuff, my 10mm wrenches don’t rust. My 10mm won’t rust
Put a camphor block in the enclosed storage area you keep tools in, it should work
>>2888791I put a rag in a can and saturated it with motor oil. I wipe it across my tools when I put them back.
Why not run a dehumidifier with a drain pipe? If it's a garage, just run the drain pipe through one of the door's many gaps
This is great info, I took screenshots to make sure I don't miss anything.Any idea what is the best way to clean awkwardly-shaped rusty parts like in the OP? Sandblasting?>>2888829I've used a dehumidifier but it doesn't do much. BUT the one I use doesn't drain, and may not be powerful enough, either. It's something I'll look into.
Just wanted to bump because most of the solutions I've gotten over years has worked for broad and flat-ish surfaces, not for nuanced surfaces like the buckle of this router bit case.I'm wondering if something works that doesn't require a complicated setup.
>>2889144Wire wheel in a drill press works pretty well. You could also just submerge it in vinegar (or any other rust dissolving chemical bath) and scrub it off with a wire brush like pic rel. It will still be pitted to absolute shit though. Wire wheel tends to at least leave the pitting shiny.
>tfw shed floor is 3 concrete slabs from 3 different eras and every time it rains the moisture seeps under the shed then back up through the old concreteEmbrace the surface rust, your good tools will have a decent airtight case for them anyway.
>>2888868Take them off and put them in Coca Cola or rust remover. Or boil them for an hour to get a preventative black oxide coating.If you don’t touch the stuff a lot just give it a coat of oil every year or so. oil normally doesn’t wear off unless you touch it or it gets absorbed by sawdust
i've been told that rust doesn't happen if RH is below 50%. is that real? i searched it and the results are somewhat mixed. intuitively it doesn't feel right. i could believe there's a curve where higher humidity mean faster rusting, but there's still going to be water and oxygen at lower humidity. it seems complex. like air composition matters and stuff. surely there are answers to this.
>>2888791I use slip it for some precision steel machine parts that I leave outside, covered but in a very humid rainy area. Haven't had any rust and its a wax so it stays on and works until you wipe it off.
>>2889183This is a very interesting question. The rough short answer is water will not become liquid on the surface of the metal if its partial pressure in the air is low enough. Basically it would rather evaporate than stay liquid on the metal. It’s called critical humidity and it’s normally a bit less than 50%. But it only really applies if there is no rust yet. Once it has started to rust the speed looks like pic rel.
>>2889194you're not going to have like, liquid on the surface of steel unless you're below the dew point. i don't think you're gonna saturate the air of your garage or something with some damp steel.so there's gotta be something more special happening on the surface. i could understand it if it's an absolute humidity thing, because there's a greater number of water molecules physically present to catalyze the reaction. but it's not. it's a relative humidity thing. it's strange and i guess i'll have to look further into it to try and figure it out. is there a critical temperature aspect to it? reaction rates increase exponentially with temperature, so how does a cold damp garage compare with a hot dry shed? will shit rust in snow? i should think about rust more.
>>2888791Free airflow. Sooner or later, some things start to hold moisture and rust. Moving air can stop that. An example, that I'm dealing with now, is an oil tank in the garage. It was installed before I bought the house - I think in '97. The outer, exposed side is fine. Part of the other side is fine. The left rear quarter is pressed very close to a wall and insulation - whoops, that's side's been holding moisture and slowly rusting away for 30 years. Never noticed it, because it isn't easily visible. Now I just had to deal with 2 pinhole leaks and I'm fine, but the tank is shot - needs to be replaced, because of some trapped moisture.
>>2889144What's that white crystal powder in the pic?My two cents is to get a rotary dehumidifier with drain. It's new tech, much more efficient, quiet, and powerful. Oil will go rancid, grease is hard to clean and spreads everywhere, etc...but just controlling humidity fixes the problem with no side effects AND it's more flexible. Sure you can grease metal, but what happens if you store old clothes in the garage, or an old chair, or some old wood. they get moldy and you can't grease those.Obviously the downside is the dehumidifier is expensive, some $200, and will cost some power (~300W for the one I have but it's duty cycle is maybe 10% in the space I use it in), and finally it's less flexible if you say take your tools and put them in your car for a trip, the grease will keep them protected but there's no dehumidifier obviously.
>>2888791I run AC in the summer, with a dehumidifier. In the winter I run 2 electric space heaters, one on hi, one on low, and I use a propane heater when I'm in there working on stuff. I don't seem to have any surface rusting issues.t. 26x38 masonry block garage with conditioned apartment on top.I did away with the stupid condensate bucket for the DH...I have it feeding into a container that I can easily see, so I can watch how fast it fills up...when it stops producing water, I turn it off for the season, only using it when I'm running the propane heater; it's ventless, and so puts moisture in the indoor air, in which case the DH will pull a quart or 2.Do you have any roof leaks, or water coming under the bottom plate, or other intrusion? I had space between the walls and the slab that wasn't properly sealed and so would get intrusion. I fixed this and noted an improvement in dryness...measured by the condensate production
>>2889367inb4 electric space heatersi have to keep the pipes from freezing or my tenant won't get water. I know they're expensive...but I also have pro sound stuff in the garage, so I want to keep the stuff at least somewhat above outside ambient temp.
God I love living in a desert, except for the lack of water for crops and pasture...
>>2888868I second the dehumidifier. I try to seal up my garage as well as I can, then run a large dehumidifier, catching the water in a 5 gallon bucket with a lid There have been times when I've had to empty the bucket every week or two.
>>2888823This, camphor is the bees tits. I live on the coast and there's a constant salty sea breeze by my shop. All my tools kept rusting in my box until I chucked a couple of these bad boys in each drawer. Never have any issues now.
>>2889219> you're not going to have like, liquid on the surface of steel unless you're below the dew point. If you get very very close to a surface the vapor pressure becomes different so you do get tiny small film of whatever vapor the air contains that allows rusting but only if the vapor pressure in the air is low enough for the film to sustain.
