How to Remove the Rust from Metal Letter and Design Stamps

Ever take a look at your once beautiful metal design stamps and feel a little sad because they are rusty? Not to fear! Lisa + Mel share with us how to remove the rust from your metal stamps in the video below. Roll up your sleeves, bust out your stamps and a few household items and let's get crackin'!Here is what you will need: WD-40 Wire brush Steel Wool Gloves Shop or paper towels Cardboard (to help protect your work area) With these supplies and a little elbow grease, your stamps can look a little prettier. Get a complete walk through with Lisa and Mel in the video below! Video Transcript (Auto Generated) do you see ups ever get dirty maybe even rusty it doesn't happen that often but we just shown a class showing you what to do if it does it's pretty rare that you get rust but if you live near the ocean or something and it's happening it's not a big deal we're gonna show you how to clean off how to prevent it from coming back and again this was shot as a Facebook live video it was tons of fun and we've edited here for you so if you're watching it on YouTube maybe give us a thumbs up if you liked it and leave a comment if you have a question and we'll get back to you let's check it out you now talk to them about what we're doing today we are gonna talk about rust and how your stamps can get rusty it really depends on where you live and how you store them I know I've had a lot of experience with rust because I live by the ocean sometimes I think it's not even just humidity but it can be more salty air so I've noticed that sometimes humidity the humidity won't matter if it's just warm but not salty yeah so we just wanted to talk about storage ideas how to clean the rust and also let you know that rust is not awful I mean rust like on the shank and anywhere that's not near the impression is kind of normal I mean I mean it can have it over over time exactly but the interesting thing is the reason we came up with this Facebook live is because Mel lives by the coast like she said and so does our sister Taryn who co-authored the book with me that just came out new stamp metal jewelry and their tools are kind of rusty and so I thought well let's cover this but then we went and chatted with Laura who's right over here our customer service pro and austere like do you hear this lot she said she really doesn't right like a little bit but not it's not like there's a million rusty tools in this with our customer right it happens and people know that it's gonna happen and sometimes it's like oh no what happened yes it's a tool but it's not a it's not a like huge thing its usual is not ruined and it's not not anything that you can't affect so for the small community of you that have a little rest on your tools that's what I'm trying to say there's a small amount of you that's why we're here today to show you so I'm gonna walk you through what we do to clean our tools and like Mel said just remember it's a tool like any other tool that you have in your garage that's resting um so some ways to clean it and some ways to prevent it so let me first pull up this image right here so these this top rail that you see in the before are some of Tarin's design stamps now I'm going to point out if you look at the actual tips of the impression they're not rusted because she uses them so much in fact used all those in the top row throughout our entire book and it still stamps fine but it's just not particularly pretty and am i right worrisome the rest so you don't have to stress about rest but just with a little bit of cleaning honestly a little bit and you'll see in a minute they say look like the lower road there so that's a little before and after and what I want to point out is that it's still slightly discolored the metal so um yeah so you'll see that the rest slightly disco it looks a metal and there's still got little black dots but the rest is gone it won't grow and hopefully you can coat it a little bit and some oil like we'll talk about and keep it from growing we're coming back one thing that we noticed with the stamps that I took from my sister's house is that a lot of the stamps the side where had been put in the wooden case left in there was not rusted it out at all it was what was exposed to the air which kind of makes sense so if you just keep designs that you can always just keep the wooden top on your or the plastic top on your letter set or with design stamps you can just have if you have a holder purchase another holder or take a ziplock baggie but this I thought was kind of cool this is like our cool 0:08 and if you just line them all up by various sizes in here ilk louis and then you won't really have any rust issues and then just take it off when you are ready to see them yeah that's good that helps protect it yeah so here's a set that Mel showed you this is Terrence set and she kindly gave us her rusty stamps so we could show you but to her benefit they're gonna come back clean so like this guy right here we took it out we're like oh okay look at all of the bottoms are fine so it just shows you you know maybe keep the lids on put them in like an airtight bucket when you're not using them and again I want to point out that we are right next to the bay like I can literally see the bay from our office the part that comes down to Redwood City and none of our stamps in our design area are rusted and we leave them all open so it's dependent on where you're living if you want to be safe that's you know more safe than sorry definitely keep them covered we don't and they haven't rested I always put gloves on because on the warning on the different products that I you and I use wd-40 but I also well let's back up I went to Home Depot right and went to the wd-40 section and there's tons and tons of things to use to get rust off of tools and to also act as a lubricant to keep the rust from coming back right on all of them it says you know if your skin contacts this product you should wash it level off which for sure again safety first but when I look at the MSDS sheets on their website it says more like long exposure to skin no no no no so you you can do with it what you want I put on gloves because why not but with wd-40 I never did before today and I'm okay I'll take a bath yes I'm done I'm not telling you do not put on gloves I'm telling you you're an adult you can make your own decisions so I tested last week all three of these this is the three-in-one fast-acting penetrant which frees rusts and prevents rust this is the blaster breaks loose faster and wd-40 and honestly they all worked exactly the same for me I'm in a demo with wd-40 because it was the least stinky and it's the most common I think you might already have it so I've just got some rubber gloves here that is cardboard okay you probably don't want that like the wd-40 on your kitchen table yeah it's kind of gross okay so I'm gonna grab the rustiest of rusty here and let me see if I can get a little close up for you guys is that in focus that was pretty good see yeah it is yeah so it's got the rat I don't know if the coloring here look at the color just totally shifted because my blue hands I don't know if you see here that this is pretty reddish colored all I do is take the wd-40 give it a shake and I just give a little spritz and then roll it around so I've got this I got the head of it in there and you just sort of let it sit for I don't know a couple minutes let me do two do we have any really bad design stamps let's see I want a nasty one come on Karen give me something that's a good one oh yeah that is a good one so this one isn't really rusty this is how she marks her tools to make sure that we don't steal them when we borrow them ha this is not particularly rusty all over the tool but it is on the head of the tool again it hasn't prevented it from working perfectly there's no rust that's growth grown on the actual engraved part because she uses it so much but I'm just gonna get that soap hang in there all right so these two have been soaking for a little bit I'll let those guys sit from here you can see we grab those paper towels over their mouth like even if I just rub it with my finger the rust starts to come off so you can rub it I mean I wouldn't do that first I just wanted to show you I'm gonna put a little more on there I grab steel wool and I just grab the harshest steel wool from the hardware store but I also did this with medium and fine totally what worked fine don't feel like you have to go get a specific steel wool and just rub see that how the it's already just coming right off now wd-40 says it's also a rust preventative so just by coating it from wd-40 you've already gotten ahead of the game oh that's cool I really don't detect any smell at all either it's really not but I'll tell you what these other ones that three and one we're singing weak stinky all right so you can do that with your steel bowl or if you have steel brush which we do sell and we'll put a link up there for you you can also use that so what I like about this is I can really come out the sides I actually usually use this for the sides I can use this on the top now you don't want to use anything really harsh on the top of your stamps because you don't want a dull it's the engraved part right like on a design or whatever these bristles are really soft they are not harder than this stamp so you don't need to worry about that if you were to go like this for an hour maybe you don't need to do that it's just a little bit just like that and I like this better on the stamps because the bristles can get in there and really get it off your brush I go to the sides yes exactly right so you can also get this steel wool on there you want to make sure that no steel wool remains when you're done with this because steel wool will um rust I'm just gonna grab a paper towel this just happens to be blue but it's just a basic paper towel and wipe it off so now the rest is totally gone again it'll leave it a little bit discolored but that's just how it's gonna be now and it's gone off of the tip okay so here's the other one it's been soaking and I'm looking at it and I can tell it that the rust is already pretty much gone but see how dark dark dark that is just by wiping all that smear right there is the rough we'll the sting up remain slippery Amy wanted to know know cuz I'm gonna wipe it off entirely after this after I coat it and a little bit of the wd-40 has soaked into the stamp and putting it with another oil after race so I'm just being very thorough here but this is actually a pretty quick process it's gonna be a pretty quick Facebook like hey yeah Mary Ellen had said that she had just opened up a set and there was rust issues on it so that this was good to be able to see that so Mary Ellen where do you live yeah I was curious how that to an was it in a plastic case a wooden case or no case or no case at all yeah now even if you have some that are coated in nickel that doesn't always take care of it we have found so there's not much you can do because the nickel in this case is pitted pitted but you can't this one has been cleaned and this one hasn't so it'll clean it up a little bit but it's a coating that has been pitted through because of I mean where Mel and Taryn live is like a really harsh environment it's great for surfing though it's tiny bit of rust yes right the price we pay so you want to wipe it off what you don't want to do at this point and I know this seems ridiculous you guys but I did it let's go oh this tools kind of oily I'm gonna wash up the oil with soap and water I did it when I first started making jewelry I got my first draw plate it was coated in oil and I was like EW gross so I washed it off and then start addressing it was the stupidest thing ever but that oil that comes if you get sets or stamps or tools of any kind and it comes coated in oil it's like that because when they ship it overseas it will get completely rusted and it's transportation over here so that oil is actually a good thing just wipe it off with a paper towel and a rakish leave it the oil yeah you can leave it unless you your skin really sensitive and you never know what that oil is but so this was the nickel one it's still pitted but it's a little honestly I think it just got moisturized I don't think it really took anything but it'll still get a good impression I think that's a thing on even if it looks like you still see something looking dark and the rest is off but it may have marks on it it's like it's like sunspots we're still dynamic wonderful women we just have had a little Sun yeah we have all right so here's a little close-up here's one I haven't cleaned here's one I did clean you can see that oh yeah and you can see the difference on the sides so that red stuff is the rest so did we hear back from Mary Ellen on where she lives I don't think so no okay you may be part of the witness protection program she on tell me what else yeah she's fine so if anybody else has questions let us know but see what's happening see right here I'm just picking this up because it's not it's such a close-up you don't want to leave steel wool on here I mean this table is coated now in wd-40 so it's not the end of the world but steel wool can rest but just make sure before you put them back the steel bowls off didn't you wipe off you know Oh Mary Ellen's in New York yes there's different parts so I've got my gloves off and I just want to show that like there's not a lot of grease on here now but it definitely feels lubricated now if you feel if you're worried about your skin touching on the wd-40 which I'm not because I think they come coated in something that's similar to that anyway we've been using it all along then I would say go ahead and coat your tools and your stamps with a lubricating oil a lot of the lubricating oils like this guy at the hardware stores are meant to lubricate tools that you're not really handling like the inside like it's got this little point so you can get inside like a gear or something and keep it from rusting it's not to put like all over a tool that might affect your skin again my skin I don't I don't really get affected by stuff but you never really know like better safe than sorry so to me this is fine I would leave it like this if you're concerned about the wd-40 wipe wipe wipe some more and maybe take something like mineral oil or castor oil or something that's readily available at drugstores and you can coat it with that especially on the tip here the one thing I want you to remember though if you do have oil on your stamps when you go to stamp if any of that oil transfers over to your stamped piece it won't oxidize well you know because it's now dirty oh that's interesting so let's say I had a bunch of oil on here and I stamped you know this bracelet whatever and I would then wash it in soap and water tons wash wash wash wash wash which you should do anyway if you want to get a proper oxidation so the oxidation takes and stays it doesn't have oil separating it weird if you leave the oil on it and then you go to you went to oxides and then you put a pro polish pad when that kind of muck up your pro polish pad two and a half waylynn yeah yeah yeah so again this is um I want to show that that big box that you showed well we have close up here okay yeah this is for people who are having rust issues if you're not having rust issues then you're you're fine so this is a box that Mel mentioned that we sell and I would buy two of them if you need to for your design stamps and it just goes right on top they're pretty inexpensive they are pretty inexpensive I think it's hol zero zero eight I don't know if that's the model number and you can pop a link up there for you so this is just for your stamps thing yeah or in their in our Facebook group and again if you haven't join our Facebook group go over and do a little search on Facebook for B education.com metal stamping and beyond because we got a lot of fun going on in there answer three questions and then we'll let you in and our Facebook good people were asking about is a little off subject but well you have this here when they get like the cheaper set such as come in the plastic and there's no slots for the letters I hate it and I hate it too you take the N out and the M and O move together but we sell a smaller one that is more like this it comes in a pair so if you wanted to take those stamps out of the plastic container and put it in a wooden one where everybody has its place and maybe you mark the letters underneath it whatever works for you just get two of those and they're not gonna waste it on top - yeah well though that comes as a pair man we just launched oh yeah that's right and we'll top a link up there on there for you as well so that's a little different situation more you want every stamp to have their own spot rather than worrying about the rust Jackie had wondered if you keep the wd-40 on longer look if you gave it a bath or the for ten minutes and would it take even more rust off or no the rest is gone at this point this is just discoloration of the tool okay so it's I don't know you don't want to leave it in there too long this is the discoloration doesn't really bother me think of it as like yeah you can try it but you definitely don't want to leave something in one of these too long I mean I'm talking days it could maybe eat away at it but ten minutes probably is not harmful give it a go okay any other questions we're gonna leave sup but I just wanted to mention depending on the size of your letter set you're going to want to compare the size of it it's in the product description of what size shank it is and compare that to the product specs on the holders to make sure it will be a rate match because some stamps are a little bigger donors are the quarter inch shank so just make sure they match up that makes sense yeah and do we have what size fits in there in the description I have to look and see I think it's just the inch right you think you need to worry about the diameter measurement of your tool to see if it will fit in a certain size hole like this is three here this is half inch but it might be longer if you look at it from the not the diameter but the cross no that's it that's the word I'm looking for but this was this certain holder that we will put a link up to holds 1/2 inch and 3/8 that's smaller and smaller right yeah just not big one you guys I also wanted to mention one more thing I know that most the times we talk about the stamping group but you know the exact name for the stamping group was stamping metal group um yesterday we had a customer come in to pick up her order of stamps and she was really excited about her order and it was so cool it was from the side room and I saw the earring she was wearing which I had seen a picture on the stamping grill and we all got a photo and I got to see that another necklace that she was wearing and she was so excited I looked at the stamp she got and she was like I can't wait to go use you know the Lotus and the new spire role that we have she's about to Janis yes so I just wanted to say if you guys hadn't known about the stamping group it's a great group to join and it just it's just because I had lots of feel good I would have five thoughts and so I say hey giannis thanks for stopping by our group is fun so go check for beach kitchen calm metal stamping and beyond education calm community metal stamping and beyond and you will find inspiration yeah it's really awesome and thanks so much for coming by leave your comments below and we will answer any questions you have [Music]