De-rusting a frame? What method?

[afreegreek]

sandblasting is fast, like a few hours and it's cheap..you can get all the hard to reach areas and it can be primed and painted the same day.. sandpaper and wire brush takes forever, you won't get it all and you'll just end up chasing rust like a dog chases it's tail.. I've been down that road before..

[Jim & Toot]

I'm new on this board and let me first thank everyone here. This site is an incredible community, building my own is going to be a whole lot better experience because of it.

I've used electrolysis on smaller items like the inside of a motorcycle tank and it will give incredible results and isn't that difficult at least in the smaller sizes. This will get rid of the rust on a microscopic scale and possibly even restore some of the metal. This technique is used by museums to restore artifacts from sunken ships so you know it gives excellent results.

The pro's use lye and some specialized electronics but you should be able to do well with washing soda (that's Sodium Carbonate, not baking soda that's Sodium Bicarbonate).

Here's the set-up http://antique-engines.com/electrol.asp

An here's a link showing this method for a trailer frame. http://antique-engines.com/trailer-electrolysis.htm

[working on it]

Sandblasting or manually brushing and wire-wheeling off scale is the right way to go, but for light surface rust with no scaling use naval jelly or spray-on rust converter. Then wash and dry, then spray with a good metal paint, like Rustoleum or Valspar or Krylon. True, we don't have salt on our roads down here, and our frames are less scaled than up north, but spray on rust converter can reach inside spots where you can't. And, I'm not interested in a show quality trailer, or resale, so my methods are quick and dirty (wish I could have a powder-coated frame under a carbon-fibered TTT though!).