Sale on terrible ideas? I'll take two!

[Sir James A]

Bad idea #1 - Hydrochloric acid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrochloric_acid#Safety)

Bad idea #2 - Stainless steel mail

Combine them, and what do you get?

Failure. Horrible, horrible failure! Before soaking:



The surprise? Unevenly coated now, along with, literally, *hundreds* of rivets that partially dissolved and fell out!



So I've got a solid 8 or 10 hours to go just replacing them. It looks like roughly 3 out of 4 rivets all came out. Auuughhh.



At least it got *kinda* shiny.

About that cement mixer and sand IceFalcon recommended for cleaning and polishing ......... yeah, should have done that. Definitely should have done that.

Sigh.

Edit: I got the idea from Patrick Kelly here - http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?p=28761

[Sir Edward]

Oh crap. That's really not good.

Using an acid wash can remove the zinc from galvanized steel, but you would probably want to dilute it first. I have no idea what it does to stainless, beyond what you're showing us here.

[Sir James A]

Updated picture:



After some closer inspection, I found out something interesting.

The dark mail in the corner is the untouched voider. The other voider, where it's wider at the bottom, is material I took off my hauberk and used to extend the depth of the voider.

The extended part (not original) is shinier than the rest of the mail. And guess what else? Zero rivets missing. And no rust ... but the original voider has lots of rivets missing, didn't shine up as much, *and* it's already got some rust forming in just hours. The part I added looks like stainless should. The other, just doesn't.

I think I got mild steel voiders instead of stainless. The acid shouldn't have done anything to the stainless except take the coating off, unless I left it overnight or longer. It takes hours and hours of soaking time just to etch stainless with that acid. I've seen people say they soak it overnight to etch stainless. This doesn't seem like it should have happened.

I sent the pics to IceFalcon to see what he thinks. Fingers crossed.

[Sir Edward]

Well, that would certainly explain a thing or two. Acid etching of mild steel works surprisingly quickly, and when I was telling my lady about this, it occurred to me that those rivets might have been mild. You might be on to something.

[Sir Wolf]

hmmm stainless mail with mild rivets. who know eh? sigh. that stinks man. hope you get some closure on this deal!

[Sir James A]

Ice said to try the magnet test (completely slipped my mind) and the voiders react the same as my chausses / etc. The rivets that fell out fly onto the magnet - not sure if it's due to light weight, or that they're mild rivets in stainless rings. Sir Wolf, we're thinking the same. Waiting to hear back. A few more pics here:

http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t8/jba3/medieval/mail/acid-cleaning/

Not a single damaged ring, but tons of missing rivets - and the rivets are much thicker than the rings, so if anything, the rings should have dissolved / failed first, I'd think.

[Sir Wolf]

hmmm well that stinks. I doubt you are "going to get your money back" etc cause you did the acid and damaged it. but if it is the wrong product then that maybe another issue. can you get other rivets to replace these?

[Sir James A]

hmmm well that stinks. I doubt you are "going to get your money back" etc cause you did the acid and damaged it. but if it is the wrong product then that maybe another issue. can you get other rivets to replace these?

Ice said he'll send me more rivets, free of charge, but it'll take a few months to get. I offered to at least pay shipping. At least the rings didn't unlink - that's the worst thing, weaving riveted links. I can handle this, at least. Thinking about re-weaving rings ... with the hauberk and chausses to tailor too ..... the nightmares!

[Sir Edward]

That sounds fair. I hope the work goes smoothly!

[Joshua Santana]

Lessons for me as well, now I know what to avoid when cleaning mail in a soak. 

[Sir Brian]

An alternative to using corrosive chemicals is this:
http://www.kleensonic.com/

I partially removed the brass plating from a coif I thought would get really clean in one of these...it did, REAL clean down to the mild steel! 

Sorry about your mishap though! 

[Sir James A]

An alternative to using corrosive chemicals is this:
http://www.kleensonic.com/

I partially removed the brass plating from a coif I thought would get really clean in one of these...it did, REAL clean down to the mild steel! 

Sorry about your mishap though! 

I took a quick look and didn't see it for sale / pricing, but I'm afraid to ask.

On a happy note, the mixer at harbor freight is on sale, and I have a gift card for part of the amount ... and harbor freight is in woodbridge, which I'll be passing through on the way to VARF ... huzzah! Fingers crossed.

[Sir Ulrich]

Damn, that looks like it sucks. You could always try a magnet test as stainless is not magnetic but thats really odd that they used mild steel rivets for a stainless maille. Looks like when I need to clean my maille I'm gonna have to use a cement mixer too... Buying one of those would be a pain though. Would be nice if we could all pitch in and buy one for the order exclusively just to clean our maille that we can all use so we wont have problems like this again.

[Sir Edward]

I need to read some more about magnetism. Stainless is still mostly Iron, which is one of the magnetic metals. It's just that stainless is an alloy with higher amounts of chromium. So how that disrupts magnetism is beyond me. Reading is in order.

Edit:  Nice short answer here:  http://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae546.cfm

Apparently some stainless steels are still magnetic, so it's not a 100% accurate test.

[Joshua Santana]

Interesting, yet Stainless Steel is still Steel due to its molecular structure. 

Since I am getting mail sleeves (in the future) it won't be a problem finding the right soak to clean out the mail.