How Do I Prepare a Surface for Applying Rust Blocker?

Rust is a pretty destructive phenomenon that can lead to losses amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on which of your ferrous objects it attacks. It can be your factory equipment, warehouse, expensive vintage sports car, or boat. Additionally, you will have to dig deep into your pocket to repair the damage done by rust. You should know that you can use a rust blocker to prevent rust from attacking your ferrous objects. For this prevention method to work well, you need to prepare the surface you are planning to protect. Poor surface preparation can be linked to nearly all rust-proofing failures. Here’s how to prepare a surface for rust inhibitor.

Surface Cleaning

Surface cleaning is meant to remove any substances that might prevent the rust blocker coating from adhering directly to the surface of the ferrous metal. These substances include moisture and water, oil and grease, weld spatter, cutting fume, weld fume, white rust, salts, welding burn through, aged coatings, and dust. Each class of substances has its recommended surface cleaning option.

  • Solvent cleaning

Solvent cleaning utilizes solvents and related cleaning compounds and works best for cleaning ferrous object surfaces that are contaminated with oil, grease, and similar substances. The process is usually the preliminary step to surface preparations for applying rust blocker. This is because subsequent processes like abrasive blasting simply spread oil and grease contaminants more thinly instead of removing them.

  • Abrasive blasting

Abrasive blasting is used to clean tougher contaminants like rust, salts, old paint, and fouling from the surface of ferrous metal. You should remove weld deposits and spatters from the surface before commencing the process. Moreover, once you are done with the abrasive blasting, you need to re-clean the surface more remove all the loose debris and dust before applying the rust inhibitor.

  • Pickling

Pickling is a surface preparations process for applying rust blocker that has been quickly gaining momentum over the last two decades, especially in the automotive restoration industry. It’s used to remove contaminants from small objects or in hard-to-reach spaces like inside pipes. The process begins with the normal solvent cleaning and abrasive blasting sequences to deal with contaminants on the easy-to-reach surfaces. The item is then given a wash before it’s put through an acid pickling bath. The acid pickling bath removes all the rust in the hard-to-reach places, and once done, the item must be washed to get rid of all the acid remnants.

Want Rust Blocking Professional Help?

You might want to do rust blocking on your factory equipment, vehicles, or water vessels by yourself, but you should let a qualified and experienced professional do it. Magica, Inc., located in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, are the experts in rust removers for cars, other ferrous items, concrete, and even antique lace. We also help our clients with rust inhibitor applications on their ferrous objects. At Magica Rust Remover, we do not use harsh acids like hydrofluoric, hydrofluoric, and phosphoric, which can degrade your items. We are open 9 am to 5 pm from Monday to Friday. You can visit us or call us for all your rust removal needs.

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