Cleaning Found Items

[gglockhart]

Try kool-aid or any product with citric acid in it. Home Depot sells a dishwasher tub cleaner that works fine. Use unsweetened kool-aid mixed in plain water. Heating it up speeds the process. I have bottles that are solid black but a few days sitting in a citric acid bath cleans it right off. Use a light color kool-aid like lemon.

 

[dogglebe]

If you are near a beer/winemaking suply store, pick up some B-Brite, a very popular and powerful cleaner. Do not get C-Brite, which is B-Brite with bleach. Bleach can eat away at stainless steel and aluminum.

If you can't get this, Oxy-Clean (bleach-free) should work.


Phil

 

[carrielsal]

Try the "toilet tank" technique, its working well for mine. I will try one of the other techniques mentioned if I find a pair that have some stubborn muck on them.

I've got a US Divers mask I found last week that I'm putting in the tank today. We'll see how the mask works with it.

I'm going to have to try this. I have some cheap sunglasses with rhinestones I found last year in the lake with some kind of buildup around the rhinestones.

 

[laguna230diver]

toilet tank method is really more for removing salts from within a recovered item

 

[BullseyePaintball]

What about rusted metal items. Any suggestions?

 

[Peter_C]

What about rusted metal items. Any suggestions?

Electricity?

 

[UntamedSpirit]

What about rusted metal items. Any suggestions?

Light Rust you can you clr or something, for anything heavy, as stated above electrolysis is needed.

I've done it once, and worked out pretty good. Made a rebar grid on top of a basin, and suspended more rebar in the water/ washing soda mix around the item....I used fishing line to suspend the item from a plastic bar on top of the basin...didn;t have as good of luck with the fishing line right from the rebar.

better instructions here

Electrolysis - Rust Removal

 

[BullseyePaintball]

Thanks for the info. Interesting reading. Im going to try it soon. Thanks again.

 

[RJP]

Dunno about river items, but I've heard of people that found small stuff in salt water putting them in their toilet tank. The clean water helps leach out the salt, etc. from the item and the water is changed on a regular basis that way. If I recall, the recommended time to soak is something like 1 month for every year you suspect the item has been submersed.

My wife and I were having a bathroom redone a year or so ago. She called me at work to ask me a question about something and then says "Oh, I gotta go, the plumber is here..."

"Hey," I said. "Tell him about the mug I found on the Arundo!"

[flashback]

The Arundo was torpedoed by U-136 on April 28, 1942. It now sits in a max depth of 140' or so, and doesn't get dived all that much as it's a bit deep for the recreational crowd, and it's in an area known as "the Mud Hole" which collects all the silt and sediment that the Hudson river carries out to sea, so you can imagine what the viz is like.

So one day we're out there and I go down the line, and just off the tie in I see a white ring in the muck. "Hmm..." I reach down and pull up an intact coffee mug. Dirty as hell, encrusted with crud, etc. Bag it, and finish dive. Back on board I clean it up a bit and it has a maker's mark on it and a date of "1942." Very cool. I take it home, clean the solids off and put it in the back of the toilet where it will sit for a few months.

[/flashback]

I get home that night...

Me: "Hey, new toilet and sink look great."
She: "He really did a great job."
Me: "Oh, did you tell him about the mug I found on the Arundo?"
She: "Yeah. Turns out he's a diver too; really enjoyed the story."
Me: "So where is it?"
She: "Where is what?"
Me: "The mug?"
She: "How should I know? Where'd you put it?"
Me: "Uh..."

Turns out that when I said "Tell the plumber about the mug..." she thought I meant "Tell the plumber the story about the mug..." and didn't understand that I meant "Tell the plumber the mug in the back of the toilet..."

:shocked2:

 

[laguna230diver]

cringe!