wishywashy
Active member
Hello Folks,
Okay… I freely admit now that it wasn’t entirely clever after all to pour about 1kg (ie. 2.2lbs) of Rust & Stain Cleaning crystals (aka Oxalic Acid) into the enamelled steel bowl of my trusty old Simpson 175 Top Loader a few Saturdays ago, in an effort to remove some particularly tenacious rust stains that had taken hold in some seldom-worn whites that had been hibernating in the cupboard. The spray of rust spots in question and the number of garments involved were far too scattered and numerous to attempt anything other than a washing-machine-based solution to the problem, and - as I stand/sit here - I honestly started out by adding only 1 cup of the Rust & Stain Cleaner to about 45l of water (ie. About 12gal - the minimum sized load for the Simpson). So the whole experiment seemed quite harmless at the outset…
Anyway, being a minimum-sized load, I used the Simpson’s gentle cycle throughout the exercise in order to reduce the “chop” on the surface of the water by enough for me to keep an eye on whether or not the stains in question were shifting. After a while, it unfortunately became apparent that they weren’t doing so by any means. So I doubled the dose of the Rust & Stain Cleaner (as you do…), ran through the cycle again, and once again - no positive result was evident. So, thinking to myself in consequence that the stuff must have had far less guts than I originally figured (and had been cautious of), I foolhardishly poured all of the remaining contents of the container into the Simpson, because:
A) It was starting to go hard in the bottle from age and moisture,
And,
B) It had already proven itself pretty useless anyway for the task that I originally bought it for - namely the cleaning of the water stains in the bottom of the bowls of our various toilets…
Well, midway through the exercise my brother turned up with some rusty old whites of his own, so by the time I gave everything that needed cleaning three gentle cycles in a vain attempt to extract the offending rust out of the whole assortment, the number of minimum-sized loads ended up totalling nine. I then put all the garments back into the machine together for a full-sized rinse, drain, and spin - somewhat jaded by this time at the obvious lack of success in the endeavour. It was only after the machine completed the spin and stopped, and I started taking the clothes out one by one, that I noticed that they seemed to be clinging more to the side of the bowl during removal than they normally did. To my shock and horror, it became increasingly evident as I removed the remaining clothes that the bowl’s whole enamel lining below the approximate waterline of a minimum sized load, was severely damaged, and had taken on the texture of coarse sandpaper!!! (cue to “Psycho” theme-music…)
It was immediately obvious that if I didn’t somehow replace either the bowl or - failing that - the whole machine, that it would eventually reduce everything being washed in it over the course of several months to the status of lint-covered rags. So, in a frenzy of reckless desperation, my first reaction was to grab a sheet of medium-grit wet-and-dry sandpaper, set the Timer on the Simpson to “Spin”, and hold the sandpaper as best I could against the side of the bowl as it spun around at several hundred RPM…
Achieving the desired result was a very tedious affair, to the degree that it took me at least ten full spins to sand the lower half of the bowl back to an acceptably smooth finish again. But smoothness was only half the battle, because the basic steel construction of the bowl - formerly protected by the enamel lining - was now fully exposed, and bound to oxidise as it dried out after each laundry-day. It would thence pass on this oxidisation to a whole new generation of white garments, in order to bugger all of them up too with rust stains. So either a new bowl, or a whole new machine, would thus still be required in fairly short order…
The following photo shows the condition of the bowl after the said sanding, and the oxidisation that then resulted from about a dozen or so loads worth of washing thereafter:
Okay… I freely admit now that it wasn’t entirely clever after all to pour about 1kg (ie. 2.2lbs) of Rust & Stain Cleaning crystals (aka Oxalic Acid) into the enamelled steel bowl of my trusty old Simpson 175 Top Loader a few Saturdays ago, in an effort to remove some particularly tenacious rust stains that had taken hold in some seldom-worn whites that had been hibernating in the cupboard. The spray of rust spots in question and the number of garments involved were far too scattered and numerous to attempt anything other than a washing-machine-based solution to the problem, and - as I stand/sit here - I honestly started out by adding only 1 cup of the Rust & Stain Cleaner to about 45l of water (ie. About 12gal - the minimum sized load for the Simpson). So the whole experiment seemed quite harmless at the outset…
Anyway, being a minimum-sized load, I used the Simpson’s gentle cycle throughout the exercise in order to reduce the “chop” on the surface of the water by enough for me to keep an eye on whether or not the stains in question were shifting. After a while, it unfortunately became apparent that they weren’t doing so by any means. So I doubled the dose of the Rust & Stain Cleaner (as you do…), ran through the cycle again, and once again - no positive result was evident. So, thinking to myself in consequence that the stuff must have had far less guts than I originally figured (and had been cautious of), I foolhardishly poured all of the remaining contents of the container into the Simpson, because:
A) It was starting to go hard in the bottle from age and moisture,
And,
B) It had already proven itself pretty useless anyway for the task that I originally bought it for - namely the cleaning of the water stains in the bottom of the bowls of our various toilets…
Well, midway through the exercise my brother turned up with some rusty old whites of his own, so by the time I gave everything that needed cleaning three gentle cycles in a vain attempt to extract the offending rust out of the whole assortment, the number of minimum-sized loads ended up totalling nine. I then put all the garments back into the machine together for a full-sized rinse, drain, and spin - somewhat jaded by this time at the obvious lack of success in the endeavour. It was only after the machine completed the spin and stopped, and I started taking the clothes out one by one, that I noticed that they seemed to be clinging more to the side of the bowl during removal than they normally did. To my shock and horror, it became increasingly evident as I removed the remaining clothes that the bowl’s whole enamel lining below the approximate waterline of a minimum sized load, was severely damaged, and had taken on the texture of coarse sandpaper!!! (cue to “Psycho” theme-music…)
It was immediately obvious that if I didn’t somehow replace either the bowl or - failing that - the whole machine, that it would eventually reduce everything being washed in it over the course of several months to the status of lint-covered rags. So, in a frenzy of reckless desperation, my first reaction was to grab a sheet of medium-grit wet-and-dry sandpaper, set the Timer on the Simpson to “Spin”, and hold the sandpaper as best I could against the side of the bowl as it spun around at several hundred RPM…
Achieving the desired result was a very tedious affair, to the degree that it took me at least ten full spins to sand the lower half of the bowl back to an acceptably smooth finish again. But smoothness was only half the battle, because the basic steel construction of the bowl - formerly protected by the enamel lining - was now fully exposed, and bound to oxidise as it dried out after each laundry-day. It would thence pass on this oxidisation to a whole new generation of white garments, in order to bugger all of them up too with rust stains. So either a new bowl, or a whole new machine, would thus still be required in fairly short order…
The following photo shows the condition of the bowl after the said sanding, and the oxidisation that then resulted from about a dozen or so loads worth of washing thereafter:
