Maintaining Garden Tools and Preventing Rust
- Clean your tools well after every use, removing soil with water at max pressure and a wire brush.
- Keep a towel where you store the tools and dry them fully before storing.
- Store your tools somewhere dry and off the ground.
- If you have a rusty tool, remove the rust with a metal brush.
- To remove stubborn rust, make a paste mixture of lemon juice and cream of tartar. Dip a cloth in the mixture and lightly rub over the rusty area. The citric acid will remove the rust.
- Sharpen tools with a file when they get dull.
- To sharpen pruners and clippers, color the blade tip with a permanent marker. Sharpen evenly until the mark has been removed.
- Before you put tools away for the winter, put some linseed oil on the handles and WD40 on the metal.
I haven't been doing these things! I have plenty of excuses (said humid tool shed, can't find the tool file, don't have any linseed oil), but I need to get in the habit of doing these things. Sounds like I need a trip to the hardware store and a kick in the butt!
3 comments:
I don't do all these things either, but do like that tip about coloring the edge of the pruners with a marker before you sharpen them.
I finally bought another tool file since I misplaced the last one. Sharpened tools really make all the difference. Why let your back do all the work when a sharpened hoe or shovel does the job so well?
Thanks Lisa for your valuable tips. During this fall, two of my forks and hoes have been junked and now I wonder how to keep my garden tools out of clean and junk free. I’ve cleaned my garden tools as per your advice and hope this would work for me. I’ve tried garden tool cleaner from Choiceful.com and it works like magic for me. Why don’t you look at those items? Hope you would like their Garden Tools and Cleaning products.
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