I hate to admit it, but sometimes I leave my gardening tools out.
They get hit by the elements, water, all that fun stuff,
and you get some pretty gnarly looking rusted out tools. So in today's video,
we're going to go through a couple different methods to restore these to brand
new and protect them from ever getting like this again.
Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening where it's my goal to help you grow a
greener thumb.
And part of that is buying really high quality tools and then actually taking
care of them, which I did not do in this case.
This one's looking really rough and these just need a little bit of a polish.
So we're going to go through a baking soda and water method,
as well as a vinegar and salt method. And then at the end of the video,
I will show you how to properly oil them up and protect them.
So without further ado,
cultivate that Like button for Epic Working Garden Tools (this one doesn't even
come undone anymore), and let's get into the video.
We're going to go with the salt and vinegar method first, but this one,
you don't have to do this.
This one's so bad that I'm actually going to deconstruct it so we can get to
every surface.
So this one fortunately just comes off very easily with this right here,
this slides right out. And then we just pop the screw of the spring out.
Or you could just do it like that, honestly, probably is fine. Got my tool.
The first thing we're going to do is a vinegar and salt and water mixture.
So I have concentrated vinegar here.
This needs to be diluted down to normal vinegar.
It's just a little more cost effective to buy it that way.
So I have some water and then I also have some standard salt here.
What you want to do is roughly a 16 to one vinegar to salt
ratio. You don't have to be too specific here. It'll still work.
So what I'm going to do is I've got my water here.
This needs to be diluted down to 60 to one. But again,
just buy white vinegar if you don't want to deal with that.
So I'm going to mix that in. It's got a nice smell to it.
Alright.
Our water mixture is complete and I'll put it in this shallow bowl here.
Just need enough to cover it. Nothing too crazy here.
And then I'm going to add in my salt, roughly 16 to one, and we'll mix it in.
That should be good.
We can mix it in with this cause it's going in there anyways.
This is the longer acting process.
So we need to leave it in here for at least half a day or so,
if not a little bit longer. So I'm just going to submerge.
We'll toss these in as well,
and you can already see some rust starting to come right off of that. But boom,
we'll leave it in there for now.
And I'll be back in about 12 hours to check on this one.
Our really rusty tools are cooking away for at least 12 hours.
You can go even longer up to about three days or so for super rusty tools.
But if you have something like this that just needs a little bit of a tuneup,
then what you can do is take baking soda and water, form a paste,
spread the paste on top of the metal surfaces,
leave it for about half hour or so, and then just hit it with some steel wool.
Nothing too crazy here. Just grab some,
spread it all over, make sure you get nice coating.
And you're good to.
Go. While we're waiting,
let's just see what happens if we hit this with steel wool,
without doing anything else. Just to get some of the exterior rust off.
And that's going to work pretty well if you just have surface rust and you want
to hit it up with some core steel wool.
It takes most of it off.
So for some really light rust, this might be the play.
Flip it over.
But here's a little more serious area that we probably
would have wanted to treat the other way. But again,
this can be part of your stack of cleaning up your tools is hitting it with that
steel wool before, then do your treatment.
And then also do it after, before you put on your protective coating,
which we're going to get to a little bit later on. We've got
about an hour to wait for baking soda and much more for our vinegar salt
solution. So I will see you back in a little bit.
It has been a couple of hours on our baking soda mixture.
So I just want to come in with my steel wool and give it a nice scrub.
Even more is coming off, which is fantastic.
That's exactly what we wanted to happen. And this is just a light job. Again,
nothing too crazy on this one.
Just a light buildup from leaving it out a couple times in the rain,
as it seems like I do no matter what. Super forgetful,
as far as my tools. But that's coming right off.
I have even finer steel wool.
If you want to really come in and give it a good scrape, that'll help.
While we allow the more extreme version to continue to break down.
let's go ahead and seal these ones off. These ones are ready to go.
We're using 3-In-One Oil, who are the sponsors of the video.
I've used this before and I use it pretty much any time I'm sealing off my
garden tools.
So you just want to apply it liberally to every part of your tools
and it will do a really good job of lubricating.
So even if your tools are stuck a little bit, that's a fantastic thing to do,
even if you're not doing this full process.
But I find it to be absolutely fantastic for preventing future rust
buildup,
obviously provided that you do not leave it out in the garden like I can
sometimes do. So liberally coat it.
We'll just take a standard rag and work it in nice and
good. And I recommend doing this, at minimum,
change of the seasons. Spring into summer, summer into fall.
Just give it a nice lubrication.
You can take the pieces apart if you want to because, you know,
a good pair of pruning shears,
a good pair of loppers should last you practically a human lifetime
if you're care of it properly.
So buy the best that you can possibly get and then do these types of processes
to take care of it so it lasts forever.
It has been about a day, let these soak for a little bit longer.
I also added a couple more tools into the mix. Wow, you can already see,
it's just coming right off. Look at that, look at this hammer!
But the ones we really care about are our pruning shears.
So let's take these out and see what we're working with. And look at that!
I mean, it's almost completely off without even having to do anything.
But let's hit this with some steel wool. Honestly,
there's almost nothing to do here but take that one chunk off right there.
Try to stay away from the cutting edge if possible.
Let's give this a light scrub-down and eventually I'll hit it with the finer
steel wool as well. Even the other side, just ate it right off.
And that was only about 24 hours.
So if you have a heavy rust job you can go even harder than that.
Shouldn't really need to. There IS one final step we need to do though,
before we lubricate this with 3-In-One Oil. Believe it or not,
we actually are going to throw it back in water. Look at that.
Look what came right off of that. That's crazy.
And we're also gonna add some baking soda cause we want to neutralize it just a
little bit. So about two tablespoons of baking soda, start foaming it right up.
We don't want any lingering vinegar salt mixture in there.
So we're just going to mix this in to neutralize, not for too long,
just a few minutes or so. Again,
once the surface is nice and dry, it's a good idea to apply your oil.
You don't want to apply it while it's wet.
So I'm going to get every surface on both sides,
as well as the nut and bolt that we took off. Be pretty liberal here, honestly.
Just really work it in there.
It's nice as we're getting underneath some of the construction,
so it's going to stay protected on every single surface.
I used to not honestly take care of my tools that well,
as you can see by the one that I showed you,
this is the one at the beginning of the video. It did not look that great. But,
you know, the more you invest in a tool,
the more it makes sense to take care of it. And the better that tool is.
So it's a double whammy of value.
You pretty much buy something once and never buy it again.
And this thing was looking in rough shape before. Now it looks, honestly,
awesome.
Like I'm really excited to see how this cuts as soon as I'm done with this.
Let's give them the old cut test. Coming straight in on some bamboo.
Easy.
Back in business. Two different ways to bring your tools back to life.
Buy quality and then preserve it for as long as possible. Remember,
you got that baking soda and water paste that you can then use as a scrub for
the simpler projects.
And then for the more serious ones like this guy who was in rough shape,
it's vinegar and salt at a 16 to one ratio.
About 12 hours or so maybe up to three days for the seriously rusty projects.
And then just scrape it off,
hit it with some 3-In-One Oil as a lubricant and protectant.
And you're good to go.
So thanks to 3-In-One for sponsoring the video and until next time,
good luck in the garden and keep on growing.