Muriatic acid must be neutralized thoroughly and carefully or it will
keep on working on the clean metal indefinitely. Neutralized acid
isn't particularly hazardous stuff, and might even supply iron to your
plants. I like to use phosphoric acid.
Phosphoric acid works well, isn't particularly nasty or dangerous in
the concentrations supplied, and cleans up with water. It is slower
than muriatic acid but prefers 'eating' rust to removing good metal,
unlike muriatic. See the team.net website article on rust removal
chemistry.
If phosphoric acid is too nasty for you, you can use acetic acid (aka
white vinegar) right out of the bottle but it is very slow. Heat
helps.
-Roland
On Thu, 24 May 2007 10:16:09 -0700, you wrote:
::
::> If they are as good as they claim to be, I would
::> expect them to be on the shelf in every Home Depot,
::
::Problem is, "big box" stores like Home Depot tend to deal only with
::suppliers where they can buy many different items and enough volume to get
::significant discounts. They just don't deal with small, "one product"
::specialty vendors.
::
::I suspect good ol' phosphoric acid works just as well or better. And IMO
::it's "environmental dangers" are way over-hyped ... it's even in Pepsi and
::Coke ! Spill it on the lawn and the grass gets greener.
::
::And even Muriatic acid isn't all that bad, if you're careful with it.
::(Although I wouldn't care to drink it ... tastes nasty !)
::
::Randall - sipping on a bottle of carbonic acid
|