Pflueger Everlaster 400

[Araye50]

Just found a Pflueger Everlaster 400 in fairly good condition for its age. Looks great next to my early Templar 350 & Alpine 2659. After adding a few drops of oil the beauty spins like glass. When I got it I thought it had been accidentally hit with red paint. As it turns out the brick red areas are a very tough form of corrosion! I've had to be pretty aggressive trying to remove the corrosion. The metal undeneath still looks pretty good. Was wondering if anybody else has encountered this hard smooth red corrosion & if there's any magic bullet to remove it safely?

[Ron Mc]

That's dealloying corrosion. They are pits filled with red metal. The nickel-brass (nickel-"silver") dissolves by corrosion, the zinc and nickel salt out as scale, and metallic copper replates galvanically onto the surface and in the pits.

I've had some good luck with my dilute vinegar soak removing it when its only a surface film. But if its deep, it's there to stay.

Pick a metal part and try it, up to 3 hours in white (household) vinegar, diluted 1:4 with warm water, and keep it warm - about 120-130oF. Soapy water and rinse when you're done.

If all the salts and oxides are removed, the remnant metal will be pink.

It can be really thin, and might all polish out, or it can be deep pits and will always remain as pink spots.

BTW, this is the mechanism that gives almost every spool spindle you see the pink color. The environment that exists under damp line is perfect to cause dealloying.

[Sawisch In Cognito]

So that's why half my old 1131s and early Marhoffs have a pink spool! What a neat way to help tell if a reel is 'mint' or just really well cleaned and polished.

Thanks Ron, this was worth this year's dues!

Len

[Ron Mc]

if you were an industrial client, I'd charge you $1200 for that crap jester yay-banana

(and we'd make the next one out of Monel)

and seriously, I'm thinking they mostly used yellow brass spindles even on nickel-silver reels.

[Araye50]

Ron Mc, I presume we're talking about the same form of corrosion, except for the color, definitely a bold brick red to brown color (nothing "pink" about it) & the fact that vinegar does not seem to even touch this corrosion. At 1st thinking it was just some errant spray paint I tried acetone & lacquer thinner, which of course did nothing. Intrigued, I tried to scrape the smooth hard red surface with a sculpture tool & was able to shave the coating off fairly easily. The metal exposed looked great, no sign of the "pink" you mentioned. Quite a bit of the reel is showing this brick red corrosion, however it appears almost as if it were sprayed from one direction! For instance 1/3 of 1 side of the spool is heavily red, but just the edge of the spool opposite this is red. Another 'flavor' of corrosion is found on the reel stand, that was gray & fuzzy. The backplate bearing cap showed a 3rd type of corrosion, your typical blue green stuff, which also appears in conjunction w/the red on the side of the spool.

[Ron Mc]

bold brick red = hard oxide
pink = metallic copper (dealloyed)
blue/green is most hydrated copper salts (mixtures of carbonate/chloride/hydroxide). If you look at the Inorganic Compounds Table in the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, there's about 2 pages of blue/green copper salts.

If the dealloyed layer is thin enough, it will come off with cleaning.

I'm not sure what the gray is, but I'd like to see a photo.

I was cleaning on one last night that had one spot of the same thing, BTW. I didn't try to remove all the red, but I may take some polish to it later.