How To Easily Remove Rust And Restore Old Gym Gear

So, who'd have known that starting a garage gym on a coastal property would mean rust problems?

If you're starting your own training space at home with some previously neglected gear, or you already have some stuff that is starting show signs of age with a little (or a lot of) surface rust creeping in... well, it's actually surprisingly easy to remove rust and restore old gym gear to it's former condition and give it a new lease on life.

My gym is mix of stuff that I bought new, stuff that I bought used but in good condition, stuff that I bought used and in rough condition further inland before I moved, and stuff that I bought used and in rough condition locally.

Predictably the stuff that I bought locally has been the hardest hit. Even the stuff I bought and scrubbed up before moving hasn't really needed a second treatment.  Take a look at these before and afters of my smith machine, leg press, and weight tree and then I'll tell you how I did it.

Not bad eh?

OK here's the process:

1. Pour some cleaning vinegar into a bowl or bucket.
   "Cleaning vinegar" is not distilled like the vinegar you might have on your chips, and it's more acidic. You might find regular vinegar still works but I wouldn't be especially confident.
2. Soak some paper towel in the vinegar, then wrap around the rust effected piece of gear.
3. Wrap that in plastic cling wrap. I just used plastic bags for a few things because I'm lazy and frugal.
4. Leave over night, for about 24 hours.
5. Pull everything off and most of the rust will be gone. Give any remaining rusty areas a good rub with the gross and soggy paper towels as you pull it off, and that will take care of most of it.
6. In more severe cases you might need to apply a little effort with some steel wool, a wire brush, or emery paper at this point.
7. Wipe it all dry with a clean rag.

What you'll find though is that a little bit of the rust will start to come back within a few days, especially if you don't remove any trace of vinegar.

Therefore, repeat the whole process with a citric acid solution. You can get citric acid from the baking aisle of your supermarket. Experiment with different strengths but I find about 5 teaspoons to a liter of water seems to do the job quite well.

Do that, and as you can see in the picture of my leg press, some long suffering old gear will shine like new again.

Caveats:

• Stuff with knurling that is particularly well used might take a few treatments to really get clean.
• Do NOT use the vinegar on anything with a powder coating, as it'll take that off along with the rust.