rust-able bracketry

[skeetstar]

Hiya folks, wondering if anyone can point me in the right direction.

I am making a coffee table cum drinks store for a customer. Using reclaimed timber and going for the rustic/abused look. I want some 6in flat steel corner brackets that I can rust. The only 6in brackets I've found are self colour, but they will not rust.

https://www.doorfurnituredirect.co.uk/flat-corner-plate-steel-self-colour.html
I assume that they are some sort of alloy steel, they go 'orange' which looks great, then all the orange rubs off.
Getting them made up by a steel works isn't an option as that will be out of budget..

Any one got any ideas?

 

[Cabinetman]

I have the rustic/abused look, but I don’t think anybody would want to coffee table looking like me!
I find this desire to have furniture made out of old rubbish very strange, with regard to the brackets I think that’s just mild steel and not left long enough to go properly rusty. This is another one I can’t get my head around, a young man visits next door and he has taken most of the paint off his car and then he paints it with a vinegar/water mixture to make it go rusty more quickly. It’s a strange old world.

 

[JefL]

You might find your brackets are zinc plated, you need to remove this with dilute hydrochoric acid, also known as killed spirits. Sold in builders merchants as cement cleaner. A 15 minute dunk in this will remove the zinc plating, then it WILL go rusty.
Of course, if it's not zinc plated this won't work.

Oh wow, just realised this is my first post despite lurking for ages. Sorry, Hi everyone.
Jef

 

[Cabinetman]

Hi Jef, I suppose I ought to say welcome, you are obviously one of the least opinionated people on here lol.
But a useful tip if I ever need to remove zinc plating.

 

[novocaine]

Hit them with a flap wheel then drop them in brine. You can speed it up with a bit of electrolysis using a small battery.

 

[JefL]

Hi Jef, I suppose I ought to say welcome, you are obviously one of the least opinionated people on here lol.
But a useful tip if I ever need to remove zinc plating.

Thanks. Not sure my wife would agree with your assessment of me.
I joined the forum mainly for information (for which it is a rich gold mine) and try to avoid the infighting but I often find myself biting my tongue. Who knows though, now I've broken my duck........

Jef

 

[Jelly]

Hit them with a flap wheel then drop them in brine. You can speed it up with a bit of electrolysis using a small battery.

You can speed it up considerably by cutting the jack off an old phone charger (or any other low voltage DC transfomer that's surplus to requirements) then separating and stripping the two cables...

However it's worth noting that if you apply sufficient current to iron in brine for long enough it begins to create Ferric Chloride, which will acidify the electrolyte and result in even faster corrosion (and cause irritation on contact with bare skin, and stain things greeny-black) resulting in exponentially accelerating corrosion rates.



On a wholly separate note if I wanted to make something look like it had rusted, and do so quickly I would take a different tack to rusting it.

I'd use a cotton bud or cotton wool to dab undiluted "Brick Acid" (20% Hydrochloric Acid from the builders merchants, Wear decent non-disposable gloves ideally proper ones but marigolds fresh from the packet would do for a one-use situation) onto patches and leave for a while to cause deep pitting.

After that I'd rinse thoroughly and either heat up to red-orange hot and allow to air cool, or apply Jenolite (phosphoric acid) to get the black oxidised surface (heating will give genuine black iron oxide, jenolite will produce an iron phosphate "Black Oxide" coating).

Finally (with another rinse if using Jenolite) heat to about 200C / Gas Mark 7 in the oven and dunk in double boiled linseed oil, then whilst still warm hang up for 24-48 hrs to cure.


If the client wants visible orange rust, on something which will be in their living space... Then they're just wrong, because they absolutely won't want that in 6 months time when the reality that it's continuing to degrade and shed rust hits home.

 

[Jester129]

Wilkinsons sell all sorts of brackets. Have you tried theirs'?

 

[gmgmgm]

Maybe look at cutting out some angles from Corten steel- it's designed to rust in a "stable" way. It's used for shipping containers and garden ironwork.

Perhaps also add some matt lacquer so any future flakes doesn't get all over the customer's carpets!