Text and phtos by Wayne Scraba
In the first part of our series on “killing corrosion”, we took a look at a well-respected (and readily available) commercial product called “Evapo-Rust”. This time around, we’ll focus upon a simple household product that some have told us works pretty well in removing rust. And that’s cooking molasses.
Truth? You gotta be kidding? We were skeptical. But we decided to move on with the test. For our purposes, we used good old-fashioned Family Brand Cooking Molasses. Various molasses mixes can be found on your local grocery shelf and if you need bulk, check out a livestock feed store. Molasses is sometimes used as a supplement for animal feed. It’s inexpensive and available in five-gallon pails (for less than $30 if you shop around).
Just like Evapo-Rust, Molasses is environmentally friendly (obviously, you can eat it). It’s biodegradable and non-toxic. But does it work?
For our mix, we poured a pint of molasses into a matching plastic ice cream bucket. Then we added another pint of hot water to the mix and stirred it. Finally, we tossed in another corroded motor mount and a bunch of corroded bolts and fasteners. We tried the stuff overnight. There was no appreciable change. Then we tried it for a week. Same thing. We called the boss (the Editor) and told her it was a lopsided test. The molasses wasn’t working. But we decided to leave the parts soaking in molasses for a month, just to see if we were missing something.
Check out the results. You might be very surprised (we were actually shocked):
Remember that corroded motor mount we placed in the Evapo-Rust solution in the last issue? Here’s the twin second mount after it was soaked in molasses for a month. Certainly, we hosed off the surface, but that’s it (no cleaning, scrubbing or anything else). The rust removal is incredible.
Here’s a side-by-side look at the pair of motor mounts. The one on the left came from the molasses while the one on the right came out of the Evapo-Rust solution. To be fair, there’s a bit of surface corrosion on the Evapo-Rust cleaned part and it will likely come off easily. However we think the molasses was more than up to the task.
Here’s a look at some of the bolts and hardware we pulled out of the molasses. More in the next photos:
These bolts were soaked in the molasses for a month. And yes they were crusty – they’re transmission mount and transmission cross member fasteners. We hit the first bolt with a wire wheel (bench grinder) but the other fasteners weren’t touched.
This washer shows how slick the molasses works. Once removed from the ice cream pail, we simply hosed it off and wiped it dry with a paper towel. We didn’t use a wire brush and we did nothing else to it. Molasses really (really) works. We’re believers.
Conclusion:
If you need to remove rust quickly, then Evapo-Rust is your best friend. The stuff will knock out the rust overnight. If you have a lot of time on your hands, then molasses might just be your answer!