Weaver's Delight - Vinegar Soak

Some of the end brackets for the shafts were really coated with rust.  I used naval jelly to remove it on two of them, and it worked well with a bit of scrubbing and sanding.  For the other six, I thought I would try the vinegar method. 

I needed something long enough to submerge them, and found that an old toilet tank cover was just the right size.  Vinegar is definitely the cheapest way to get rust off of metal, but the rust also comes back pretty quickly.

While researching using vinegar, some cautions were mentioned.  First, don't use it on aluminum.  I didn't realize that the brackets were a mix of metals, one of which was aluminum. The aluminum very quickly turned powdery white after the parts were dried, and the other metal quickly got a thin film of rust.

The second caution was to neutralize the vinegar with baking soda in water.  I used that for my final rinse before drying.

To thoroughly dry the parts, I put them in the oven for about an hour at 225 degrees.

I still had to brush them a little bit before painting.  The aluminum part of the brackets also needed sanding with fine black sandpaper to try and remove the white film.

The photo of a sanded and unsanded bracket show the rust developing again, and the white powder on the aluminum part.  I didn't notice the rust developing so quickly after using the naval jelly.

After drying, get the parts painted right away, or if they aren't going be painted, get some light machine oil on them to inhibit the rust.

Here are more cast iron parts that were wire brushed with a drill, and primed and painted.

We think this loom had someone start working on it, because some of the bolts that should have been identical are different lengths, many washers are either missing, or the wrong size, and three of the four identical brackets on the right side of the photo are cast aluminum, and one is cast iron.  I'm not sure which was originally on the loom.