Have your favorite wrench got rusty? Well you don’t need to get rid of it, you can just restore it to the original quality in just a few steps. If you don’t know how to clean rust off your tools then you are at the right place. 

With time, almost all your tools & hardware may get rusted and you would need to repair them. After all, the tools that repairs things for you may need to be repaired somehow at some point too.

Here we will teach you how to clean rust off your tools with different methods. These methods work for almost all kinds of tools including wrenches, pliers, hammers and almost any other thing that has caught rust.

You will learn how you can clean rust using:

  1. Lemon Juice
  2. Baking Soda
  3. Vinegar

We are pretty sure that you have all of these everyday use things in your house so you don’t need to buy any expensive cleaners unless the rust is off the charts. 

So without any further ado, let’s get into cleaning rust!

How to Clean Rust Using Lemon Juice?

Lemons are known to be one of the best cleaners because of their acidic property. If you didn’t know already, lemons work pretty well for rust as well. 

All you need to do is take some salt and rub it on the rusted area. Once you have coated the rusty part with salt, cut a lemon in half and squeeze it onto the salty coat. If you’re out of lemons then you can also use limes. 

You have to let the salt and lemon juice mixture remain on the rusty tool for 2 to 3 hours. 

Afterwards, scrub it off. 

If there are tough stains, you can use steel wool or a scouring pad as well. Anyhow, if you don’t want to scratch the metal, you can use a soft-bristle brush or a cloth as well. It’s just you will have to scrub a lot harder if you are using a gentle tool.

You can use this method to clean rust off any consumer electronics and appliances as well as it is safe and doesn’t do any damage.

How to Clean Rust Using Baking Soda?

Now it’s time you take out the baking soda out of the cabinet but not for a cake. 

Baking soda is also acidic and great thing to use for removing rust off your stuff. The procedure is easy and simple to follow.

First of all you have to pour some baking soda into a bowl and add water. That’s it, but don’t add too much water to make it watery. Add enough water to make it a thick paste and then apply it on the rusted area.

Let the paste sit on the rusty area for a few hours. Once it is dried, you can use a toothbrush to scrub off the paste. The rust will come out with the paste. To clean the residue paste, you can wash it off with clean water and dry it with a towel. 

You can repeat the procedure for a few times to remove the rust completely. 

This method works well for removing rust off almost everything that can be washed afterwards. 

How to Clean Rust Using Vinegar?

Now off to our 3rd and last method of how to clean rust off your tools. 

You may already know how Vinegar is one of the most acidic things out here. But do you that it is one of the best natural cleaners around too?

Vinegar attacks rust and completely eradicate it. 

If you want to remove rust from small household items or tools like knives or small wrenches, just soak them in a bowl of vinegar and let them stay overnight. 

Afterwards, take them out and scrub them with a steel wool/wire or metal brush. Rinse the tools with clean water and then dry them with a towel. 

If you have items that are too big to soak in a bowl then don’t worry we have got your back. All you have to do is soak a rag in vinegar and wrap it around the rusty part or tool. Let it stay wrapped overnight and then scrub it off. 

This is slower than soaking the actual tool in vinegar but it is a good way to clean rust off large tools.

Wrapping it up!

Now you know how you can clean rust from metal surfaces, you can prolong the life of your tools, hardware, kitchen knives, as well as outdoor furniture.

Your things will look as brand new for longer as ever before and you will save up on buying new tools again and again. So don’t waste any time and get rid of all the rust around the house. 

By Anil Kondla

Anil is an enthusiastic, self-motivated, reliable person who is a Technology evangelist. He's always been fascinated at work especially at innovation that causes benefit to the students, working professionals or the companies. Being unique and thinking Innovative is what he loves the most, supporting his thoughts he will be ahead for any change valuing social responsibility with a reprising innovation. His interest in various fields and the urge to explore, led him to find places to put himself to work and design things than just learning.

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