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Rust Removal?

1

1370rod

Well-known Member
Restoring a moldboard plow and of course they are rusty. Is there a super duper product that will actually clean up the surface rust or should I just start buffing? Thanks for suggestions, Rod.
 

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You can remove a lot of the rust with muriactic acid, out side with ventilation, then use the flap disk.
 
Back in the days when we did moldboard plowing, I would pull the plow out of the shed with its rusty moldboards and head for the sandy field. Make a few rounds and then head for the clay or gumbo or whatever with shiny moldboards. Works every time it's tried.
We never poured oil or grease or painted them. The sand worked better.
 
Since you said (restoring), I'm presuming you are prepping the entire thing for paint. And I recommend sand blasting. If mollboards are shiney shiney from use, I'd advise leaving them alone and coat with a layer of grease. If not, clean those up too. If this will be for use, I recommend not painting the plowing surfaces. If for show and not going to hit the dirt again,, just paint the whole thing.
 
I have had success with graphite paint. It will stick to rust. Even sticky gumbo will slip. By the time it wears off the moldboard will be shiny.
 


3X flap wheel, but wear a respirator because the dust will really fly. Since you are restoring you will be painting, so before priming pick up any one of the phosphoric acid rust converters and give it the treatment in order to get the rust out of the pits. It turns rust into iron phosphate which is the black coating on your impact wrench sockets.
 
If you wait till spring plowing will shine them up with no dust and no work to do it. The dirt will shine them up in a few acres. I've not shined a plow before using yet. Dad used to grease them after plowing. It got let go after with more cows and less labor. And now it gets used about once every 5-10 years so nothing is done except use it and grease it besides replacing worn points, moldboards,shins, and landslides.
 
I have sand blasted then polished with a grinder and fine sanding disk. It worked fairly well. If you use a rotary polisher or sander try to run it so the sanding marks go in the same direction as the soil flow. In our soil even a nice polished up moldboard might not scour. About twenty miles west of here they can drop a rusted plow in the ground and have it polished in no time flat. Won't happen here.
 
(quoted from post at 07:34:50 02/19/22) You can remove a lot of the rust with muriactic acid, out side with ventilation, then use the flap disk.
Click to expand...

Unless you remove the moldboards and dunk them in muriatic acid and leave them there for some time, acid won't do any good.
 
I never realized that depending on the soil conditions, that coating the moldboards to protect them can be very important, as the soils here are abrasive enough to scour them year to year or many years. When considering the finer kinds of soils, clay/gumbo and similar, sure made sense as the plow will pull with less resistance and not build up soil because of the polishing of the steel. We do have some areas with those kinds of soils actually. None of the farmers would coat the moldboards that I have seen.

In my experience with moldboard plowing, I was able to get a barn kept, 101 Ford plow that was mirror like polished. I rebuilt it, shares, shins, landsides, leaving the OEM Ford scripted moldboards. It does live outside, so the first year or so I coated with grease. In the weather conditions we have here, I was not all that impressed, but the grease certainly protected them, but it wears off after a year, not all of it, better than nothing too!

I'm also fussy with hand tools, especially my compost fork, I never let the tines get rusty or leave any tools like this outside, they reside in a dry basement that is heated during the winter.

I coat them with Rustoleum white paint, it lasts for years, will show the smallest spec of rust and for the money, it works great. There is a coating specific to this purpose, I never found it locally, so just decided that painting them was effective and no worries about it failing anytime soon.
 
(quoted from post at 09:03:56 02/20/22) I never realized that depending on the soil conditions, that coating the moldboards to protect them can be very important, as the soils here are abrasive enough to scour them year to year or many years. When considering the finer kinds of soils, clay/gumbo and similar, sure made sense as the plow will pull with less resistance and not build up soil because of the polishing of the steel. We do have some areas with those kinds of soils actually. None of the farmers would coat the moldboards that I have seen.

In my experience with moldboard plowing, I was able to get a barn kept, 101 Ford plow that was mirror like polished. I rebuilt it, shares, shins, landsides, leaving the OEM Ford scripted moldboards. It does live outside, so the first year or so I coated with grease. In the weather conditions we have here, I was not all that impressed, but the grease certainly protected them, but it wears off after a year, not all of it, better than nothing too!

I'm also fussy with hand tools, especially my compost fork, I never let the tines get rusty or leave any tools like this outside, they reside in a dry basement that is heated during the winter.

I coat them with Rustoleum white paint, it lasts for years, will show the smallest spec of rust and for the money, it works great. There is a coating specific to this purpose, I never found it locally, so just decided that painting them was effective and no worries about it failing anytime soon.
Click to expand...


I don't own one now but in the day, when I finished a plowing project I would back up to the shop door and grab a partial spray can of whatever color and paint the moldboards before unhooking.
 
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