This was my first try at Parkerizing using some steel parts I made for an antique Kalamazoo band saw from the early 40's. It's part of a restoration thread that I have shared in other posts on the XS forum. For those that missed it and would like to see it, it's located here.
https://www.garagejournal.com/forum...1-816-horizontal-band-saw-restoration.543093/
I posted it here as it has applications for motorcycle parts as well as it spruces up raw steel parts nicely, provides corrosion protection and is an easy enough process for do-it-yourselfers to do at home.
A couple years ago, a friend gifted me some Manganese Parkerizing solution from Brownells when he was done with it. I thought (hoped) it might up my repair/restoration game by making my machined and fabricated parts look a little more "pro". I figured the process was probably a bit stinky so wanted to do it in the garage and this week the temperatures were supposed to be considerably higher than they have been lately, so this week it is (was). The setup is pretty simple. First step is cleaning, for which I used hot TSP, then a water rinse, followed by a hot water rinse and finally the Parkerizing solution. This is my setup...the Parkerizing solution is in the stainless pot on the right.
The most time-consuming step was the one-time "conditioning" of the Parkerizing solution. This requires suspending a coffee filter full of steel wool in the heated solution for an hour. Once this was done, it was a pretty straightforward to move from one step to the next. The actual Parkerizing only takes about five minutes. It also wasn't as stinky as I expected so, in a pinch, doing it in the basement isn't out of the question.
I didn't spend a lot of time on the surface finish, basically just wire brushed the mill scale off the guard "doorstop"(foreground) and used some steel wool on the very light surface rust on the brush holders and that was it. They would have looked a bit better if I spent more time on that step but, all-in-all, I'm very satisfied with the results and the reasonable amount of effort to achieve them. I will definitely be doing more of this in the future.
It doesn't show well in the picture but they're actually kind of a medium dark gray. It was amazing how much oil they absorb. I put two fairly wet coats of oil on them and the first one had disappeared completely after a couple of hours. The second coat left just a hint of oil on the surface and looked totally dry again the next day so they should be fairly corrosion resistant as well as better looking.
https://www.garagejournal.com/forum...1-816-horizontal-band-saw-restoration.543093/
I posted it here as it has applications for motorcycle parts as well as it spruces up raw steel parts nicely, provides corrosion protection and is an easy enough process for do-it-yourselfers to do at home.
A couple years ago, a friend gifted me some Manganese Parkerizing solution from Brownells when he was done with it. I thought (hoped) it might up my repair/restoration game by making my machined and fabricated parts look a little more "pro". I figured the process was probably a bit stinky so wanted to do it in the garage and this week the temperatures were supposed to be considerably higher than they have been lately, so this week it is (was). The setup is pretty simple. First step is cleaning, for which I used hot TSP, then a water rinse, followed by a hot water rinse and finally the Parkerizing solution. This is my setup...the Parkerizing solution is in the stainless pot on the right.
The most time-consuming step was the one-time "conditioning" of the Parkerizing solution. This requires suspending a coffee filter full of steel wool in the heated solution for an hour. Once this was done, it was a pretty straightforward to move from one step to the next. The actual Parkerizing only takes about five minutes. It also wasn't as stinky as I expected so, in a pinch, doing it in the basement isn't out of the question.
I didn't spend a lot of time on the surface finish, basically just wire brushed the mill scale off the guard "doorstop"(foreground) and used some steel wool on the very light surface rust on the brush holders and that was it. They would have looked a bit better if I spent more time on that step but, all-in-all, I'm very satisfied with the results and the reasonable amount of effort to achieve them. I will definitely be doing more of this in the future.
It doesn't show well in the picture but they're actually kind of a medium dark gray. It was amazing how much oil they absorb. I put two fairly wet coats of oil on them and the first one had disappeared completely after a couple of hours. The second coat left just a hint of oil on the surface and looked totally dry again the next day so they should be fairly corrosion resistant as well as better looking.
