Removing stain from hand saw plate

[Martin Rock]

Hi all

is there any product that can remove stain from a hand saw plate?

thanks

Martin

[Peter Evans]

Hi all

is there any product that can remove stain from a hand saw plate?

thanks

Martin

What do you mean by stain?

[Martin Rock]

from rust i guess, the saw has been derusted and cleaned but stain spot remains

[Stew Denton]

Hi Martin, metal polish helps.

I have used "Blue Magic Metal Polish Cream" and have good success with it. Metal polish was suggested to me on this forum in the past, and they also recommended using a wad of aluminum foil to rub the metal with the polish.

It worked great, but you have to rub it in quite a while, and when the Blue Magic starts to turn black and to dry out that is the point when it really starts to work well.

The folks recommended other brands of metal polish, and highly recommended one in particular, but I don't remember the brand. I bought the blue magic because it was available here, and have been very pleased with it.

Regards,

Stew

[Jim Matthews]

It bears mentioning, these polishing compounds may obscure a faint etch.

[William Huver]

I recently started cleaning a new batch of handsaws-in-a-bucket that I found a while ago. I decided to try using the combination of Autosol metal polish and rubbing the steel with crinkled aluminum foil. (Was that the brand you were thinking of Stew?) I just put a dozen dots of it around the saw plate, and scrub with the foil until everything is black. It works great, the best polish I've tried by far, but I think it gives the steel a "whitish" look. If that bothers me, then I wash the plate and apply a more common polish - Mother's Mag and Aluminum, in my case.

Beyond tough cleaning spots, I've found that I tend to use it when the rust isn't too thick, and I'm trying to find the etch. It really reduces the amount of sanding I might need to do (or places to avoid), and cleans some of the saw plates that left the factory rather coarsely ground, where sanding by itself doesn't work as well. The paradox with using the Autosol is that even though it helps to remove the rust around the etch so that I can clearly see it, it will, as Jim noted, lighten that same etch. The other metal polish I use will lighten the etch as well.

I'm not sure what kind of "stain" you have, but hopefully one of these polishes does the trick for you.

Regards,
Bill

[Martin Rock]

here is a sample
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[David Weaver]

You're going to have to do a fair bit of work to get that out. If the reasons are cosmetic, you could literally sand the plate until it's removed.

I wouldn't do anything with it. I'd rather have the full thickness of the saw plate. You can use metal polish as described above to see if you can scrub some of the color out of the shallowest of the pitting there, but some will still maintain its dark color.

[Martin Rock]

ok thanks for your answers

[Malcolm Schweizer]

I use Naval Jelly, which is a pink liquid that you put on the metal and it eats away rust. The only issue is that it leaves the metal with a light grey dull hue, but if you go another step and sand with very fine (2000 grit) sandpaper, and then buff it out, it is back to shiny metal. As someone above mentioned, if you are trying to keep a maker's etch, then this isn't the best way to go because it will eat away some of the etch- as will any method that removes metal.