Getting rid of rust on irons

I got a set of irons (1957 MacGregor M85 Tourney Colokrom) for a very good price. These were in really bad condition. This iron was the worst. Lots of rust stains where the chrome had peeled off. I decided to try and remove the rust spots using a liquid remover. They came out better than I could have dreamed.

If I like these irons enough I might consider having them rechromed at some time.




I really like how those colokrom copper inserts turned out. The pitching wedge (not pictured here) has a tiny circle of wear marks around the sweetspot. These have been played by an accomplished player. Feels good to give these irons a second life.

This stuff is made by a European firm called HG (Hagesan).
It’s called ‘Rust Remover’ :slight_smile:
Pretty sure that you can at least get something similar in the States.
Here’s the link:

oc.hg.eu/search?q=rust

Here’s my ‘localized’ version of the product:

Some notes about usage: Spray it in a cup deep enough to immerse a head. You can add some water but I just used the stuff as is.
It turns into a deep purple color when rust is present and it starts smelling real bad (like rotten eggs). Read the instructions!

Nice post there IOZ

I’m going to have to give that a try on some of my older sets

Thanks

Looks good.

One thing I did years ago to remove rust from old woodworking equipment was reverse electrolysis. Pretty simple and it gets absolutely every speck of rust out, but the tonic above looks easier.

Reverse electrolysis you just get a car battery charger or old 12V power adapter (9V no problem either), attach -ve to clubhead, +ve to a sacrificial bit of metal (I used an old lawnmower blade).
Chuck club and metal into a bucket of water with some salt in it, but not touching each other. And turn power up the adapter. A club wouldn’t take that long, maybe an hour of fizzing away.

The only issue is that it removes all oils from the surface as well (as I’d assume the Rust Remover tonic does), so you’re going to rust up again pretty quickly unless you put some rust preventer on.

Nice find…

You should send the company an email with those as an attachment. They would be happy I am sure.

Good one steb, thanks.
Even though it says on the can that there is an ingredient in there that prevents the material from rusting up gain I doubt that it really works all that well…

You can also leave the irons in a bucket of regular coke for a few hours and scrub them down with a regular golf cleaning brush if you want to avoid the smell.

Nice work IoZ,

Am pretty sure that they will rust through pretty quickly. Have you thought about trying to plate them yourself, might be fun, the guy says at the end of the second video that all the gear cost less than a tenner.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lcz8Py7bjzQ[/youtube]
(Thanks to hq for sending the link).

Thanks NRG!

I haven’t tried plating anything yet. I must confess that I don’t know much about the process either. I can’t watch the video now, but it sure looks promising though.

I will definitely do some research, but if I understand correctly the plating process covers the metal with a thin layer of metallics such as chrome, copper or nickel…

Some questions that came up:

  • How do you make sure that all the rust is gone, you don’t want it to rust from underneath the new layer, right?
  • The video talks about nickel plating, but is it possible to do DIY chrome plating? That’s what we want right?
  • When will Range Rat return to ABS :question:

It would be awesome though if we can do this ourselves!

IoZ

  • I guess a good clean down with some wire wool will do the job
  • It looks very much DIY
  • Am sure Rat will be back in good time, or maybe we need to start a campaign

You can do it in chrome too, this might be even better than nickel, I bet the Captain already has his done.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkAwH251MOQ[/youtube]

LOL
Random woman: ‘Oh but Captain, yours are so nice and shiny.’
Captain Chaos: ‘Yes, it prevents rust caused by humid specimen such as yourself.’

Normally the protocol here is to ask for a photograph, or a quick video, but I think we should just leave it be.

Unless He wants to of course.