Getting Rust off Blades

[amcnulty]

I know this has been addressed in other threads but I need some additional help.

My daughter has coronation ace blades and last night after her show dress rehearsal she left them in her hard guards.:x In 12 hours they developed rust!!! Anyway, I tried the baking soda with a wire/metal sponge method and got rid of all the brown rust, but there are still dark spots on the metal where the rust was. Do I need to get this off too? If so, is there anything else to try to remove it? Also, if the only option is to get the blades sharpened to remove it, should I get them sharpened ASAP or is it okay to wait a week. She has the show this weekend and is testing on Thursday and I don't know if its better to get them sharpened before all of that or wait.

Thanks for any advice. Her blades are only 2 months old so I am hoping to get all the rust off before any more damage is done.

[Isk8NYC]

Don't worry about the dark spots. They're more cosmetic and probably won't affect her skating.
It's visible rust that's a problem and not because of appearance, but because the rust makes it hard to glide along.

If you scrub off every little mark, you'll just dull the blades. Let her try skating on them and get them sharpened after the fact.

Don't get blades sharpened right before any big event, such as a show, competition, test, tryout, etc. I usually recommend a two-week before window to my students.

[amcnulty]

Thank you so much.

[Sessy]

I know this has been addressed in other threads but I need some additional help.

My daughter has coronation ace blades and last night after her show dress rehearsal she left them in her hard guards.:x

I discovered rust on my coronation ace blades just yesteray, indicentally. Put them in coca cola, then rubbed them with a sponge, put them in cola again, etc, until all the rust was gone. Then flushed them under the water tap and dried them off. Of course, they will need a sharpening now. Even a little bit of rust takes all the sharpness off. But other than that they're fine.

I really like my blades sharp, sharper, sharpest myself. So I rarely find them too sharp. When I do, I softly run them over a piece of wood like a pencil or just walk around on the supposedly blade-safe surface of the ice rink for a bit. That dullens them right down... Two weeks, lol, for me when I was skating, after 2 weeks I'd already be sour that my blades were "dull" again, lol.

[SkatEn]

Is the rust that is left over those that you can feel and see or those that you can see only? Does it feel smooth? If the blade feels smooth, I won't do anything about that.

Don't over do the metal scrub. Metal + metal = Dull blades, which also won't be ideal for a show nor competition.

Sharpen them after the competition, because it usually takes time to adjust to a sharpening. You won't want to find out if your daughter can adjust quickly enough or not!:lol:

I think my pair of Ultima Legacy blades does not rust as easily or as much as MK/JW blades. I know Ultima is not made of stainless, but still, I much prefer that it hasn't have some major rusting. At most, it's a speck. Aren't JW/MK and Ultima made of the same steel...?

[Sessy]

Yes but at the same time, if the rust dullened her blades a lot, it could affect her edges. Like say, on a camel spin... I guess the thing would be to have her try out the blades now and say what she likes to do with them, whether she can skate on them as they are.

[Query]

How curious.

Like most things carbonated coca cola is probably acid, so it should compete with the rust for the oxygen in the rust.

Or maybe it just etches the outer layer of steel away, and the rust with it.

I found some WWW references (not related to skates) to acids removing rust at the cost of damaging the entire steel surfaces.

This post
http://www.skatingforums.com/showpost.php?p=309637&postcount=5
suggested bicarbonate of soda, which is a mild base in water (though it reacts with bases too), and I found a few WWW references to leaving a layer of bicarbonate of soda to inhibit rust (also not related to skates).

How can both acids and bases remove rust? Or does dry bicarbonate of soda act as an acid too, with rust?

Wonder which does less damage to the steel.

No doubt the OP already knows that blades that are well dried and either stored in a reasonably dry non-humid environment, or coated with a thin layer of oil probably won't rust in the first place. (As with Coke, colored oils might stain boot leather, so be careful.)

I've had no rust on (Ultima) stainless steel blades (put soakers over them, and let them air dry in the open (not in a bag or trunk), though that might not work in very humid climates, and titanium blades probably don't rust either. But I sometimes had problems with rust on high carbon steel (MK Dance) blades if I didn't oil them, even when dried first, especially in the summer, when DC gets fairly humid.

I doubt anyone would switch blade styles just to prevent rust, since other ways work.

[Sessy]

I have a pair of bent MK21 blades I'm not using.

Want me to test different rust removal methods? :twisted:



Actually, it's not as simple as acid. Coca cola also contains potassium sorbate as well as phosphoric acid, the latter of which in particular is known to react with rust to form phosphate that solves itself in water. The good news is that only over 80% solutions of phosphoric acid are corrosive to metals, so it's safe otherwise to your blades and won't bite off the upper layer of your blades. Makes you wonder thrice about whether to take that extra-large cola at the drive-through though...

I'm thinking baking soda might be used to remove it simply for its grainy texture, especially because they say to dip a potatoe in the soda and then rub the area. If that's the case, then it definitely will mess with your blades, scratching them up.

In my case, I suspect the really really humid room and rapidly-changing temperatures (almost no isolation from the temperature outside in the attic) were at fault. Probably condensation of some sort. That's what you get when you don't skate for a year.

[Query]

I have a pair of bent MK21 blades I'm not using.

Want me to test different rust removal methods? :twisted:

They say to mount slightly bent blades with pressure to straighten.

So please don't wreck your beautiful blades for my curiosity. Even if they aren't the highest end blades, maybe some day you will go somewhere with only synthetic ice.

Thanks for explaining the coke thing.

[amcnulty]

Yes but at the same time, if the rust dullened her blades a lot, it could affect her edges. Like say, on a camel spin... I guess the thing would be to have her try out the blades now and say what she likes to do with them, whether she can skate on them as they are.

Thanks Sessy. I used the coke on her blades yesterday. She had skated on them Friday night and said they were fine, but I wanted to try to get the rest of the spots off without scrubbing anymore. The coke worked like a charm. She was all set for the last two performances of the show. I will probably still get them sharpened after her test session on Thursday as they were close to needing it anyway.

[Rusty Blades]

Getting Rust off Blades

You called?

(The most effective and safest way to remove rust from steel is fine steel wool.)

[Sessy]

They say to mount slightly bent blades with pressure to straighten.

So please don't wreck your beautiful blades for my curiosity. Even if they aren't the highest end blades, maybe some day you will go somewhere with only synthetic ice.

Thanks for explaining the coke thing.

We already tried that. Didn't work. Well I mean, sure, it did. Until about the fifth toeloop which I tried in them, after that, the spins were gone again and as soon as they're even slightly bent, they just keep on bending more and more... At any rate, I suppose the thing could be tested on any carbon steel, really.

[Kristin]

Ahhh....leaving the blades in the hard guards has happened to the best of us! :)

In the past, I have just either skated on them (the rust will fall off if it isn't deep), or just gotten them sharpened. ;)