A Weekend of Cleaning for a Good Cause!

I helped my niece clean horseshoes for her wedding diy project. She learned how to clean them here.

After reading that article I learned two main things:

This can also be done to remove rust from garden tools! So handy! Also, citric acid is used in canning recipes – which means we eat it – therefore it can’t be TOO dangerous to work with.

My reason for sharing the learning moment that unfolded this weekend is twofold:

It was a lot of fun seeing hard work pay off to an amazing finished product and I wanted to share my personal learning experience… And…

I wanted to share this online in case any followers have either a) more ideas for what you could do with horseshoes for decoration or activity or b) more ideas of what could be cleaned and derusted with citric acid! I want to consider this an ECMP355 post because the original idea was found online, and I am sharing our experience with it online – even though the actual project isn’t edtech at all!

At first I was convinced this wasn’t going to work. (Actually at first I thought we would be crafting with horseshoes and then I realized it was cleaning!) I assumed she would just be using water and I knew that water didn’t erase rust and I worried it would rerust right away.

That is when my niece explained that she had seen this helpful article online on how to do it and was all prepared. She had citric acid and knew she needed sealant to put on the shoes as aoon as they dried before the air could cause more rust.

Materials: Citric acid and water in a bucket, gloves, toilet brushes, knives, paper towel, Rust o Leum sealant.

Process: Let shoes soak for a while. Then scrub and soak. Scrub and pick. Rinse in the bucket, dry off on PT, and spray both sides with sealant.

After we left a few on the PT and it messed up the sealant, my niece’s friend had the great idea of hanging the shoes from the deck railing to dry and finish.

Voila! Look at the difference!

I am going to ask my niece for another photo of how the shoes look a couple days later to see if the sealant really worked!