Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire cleaning a chain?

I like the idea of using the mixer with some type of abrasive medium. You get to playing around with it and you might end up with everything on your place that will fit in it cleaned up.

I worked for a company that made a lot of flame cut parts, to clean and deburr them they put them in a cement mixer with a couple of coffee cans of kitty litter or speedi-dry oil adsorbing compound. Worked great, parts came out clean and ready to prime and paint.

Is there a Home Depot, Lowe's, Walmart, etc., within reasonable driving distance? If so they usually stock a clean play sand in good size bags for kids sand boxes and such.

Being a little lazy around the edges, if I wanted a couple of 18 inch pieces of clean chain I'd probably just go out and buy new.

I've actually done that with big tow chains....it works great but you need to tie 20-30 feet of rope between the truck and chain....

I could probably buy a couple of pieces of chain for the price of the sand. If I buy new chain, then I got a couple of pieces of chain laying around in the way.

I went over in the field where I had disked a fire lane and got a bucket of the sandiest ground that I could find. Got it in the mixer as we speak. Waiting on the before pictures to load to photo bucket. Threw in a wrench and an extension too. Will have to buy the U-bolts that hold them on, as they were worn pretty bad and one twisted off when trying to remove it. miles

Muriatic acid would clean them up lickity split.

and will clean old gunked up carburetors also

We would just drag it behind the ship and let the salt water clean it up. Worked great but I doubt it would work well where you live.




I thing sharp sand would work pretty well in your cement mixer.

As a side note I accidentally threw a shell holder in with some brass I was cleaning. When I found it and saw how nice it cleaned up I threw the rest of my shell holder in the tumbler.

If the above doesn't work, Google electrolytic derusting.

Well, my sandy ground was too fine to do much so after a bit I went and got some gravel from the road and will see how that works. Tried to screen out some smaller pieces but that was a lost cause. miles

The gravel worked good on the chain but the tools kept getting hung in the holes where the slanted stirrers are, and just went around and around. One side got clean but not the other. miles

I use a product called PolyZag or PolyZ as it's known or Alumabrite for derusting my traps and snares. It eats the rust off without hurting the metal.

Miles, stretch them out on the ground, pour a mixture of bee honey and pine sap on them, and leave them there for a day or two. Then, turn them over and do the same thing again on the up side.

The armadillos will come in at night and lick them clean, rust and all - those critters have raspy tongues - better than a tough wire brush or a bassturd file.

I'm not trying to be difficult, but who paints chains???

Damn it, I was hoping this was a thread about cleaning gold chains.

Not frikken rusty ass old steel chains.

Yup, four fuhcking pages.

Lordy Lordy!

Bead blast the sumbeech and be done with it!!

Soak overnight in muratic acid .