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I post sewing and crafting tutorials here at the Mermaid’s Den. I love making things and sharing them with you, so you can make them, too.

How to Remove Rust from Vintage Metal Bobbins

How to Remove Rust from Vintage Metal Bobbins

How to Remove Rust from Vintage Metal Bobbins

I recently got a vintage White Rotary sewing machine. While it's a cool machine, it takes a non-standard sized bobbin, which can be tricky to find. Luckily, it came with eight bobbins, but some of them were a bit rusty. I didn't want to lose any of them, so I used a dremel and some polishing/sanding bits to clean the rust off. Here's what worked best for me.

How to Remove Rust from Vintage Metal Bobbins

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Materials used:

Since the bobbins were pretty small, I used forceps to hold them while I cleaned off the rust.

How to Remove Rust from Vintage Metal Bobbins

Here are the three types of brush that I used. The small brush on the right was the most useful, since most bobbins only had a few spots of rust. I used the brush wheel on the left to clean rust out of the inside of  the bobbins.

How to Remove Rust from Vintage Metal Bobbins

Here's one of the worst bobbins before cleaning.

How to Remove Rust from Vintage Metal Bobbins

And afterward. There's still a bit of discoloration where the rust was, but overall, it looks as good as new.

How to Remove Rust from Vintage Metal Bobbins

Here's the whole group before cleaning. Some were worse than others.

How to Remove Rust from Vintage Metal Bobbins

But they all cleaned up nicely.

How to Remove Rust from Vintage Metal Bobbins

This one had a bunch of rust on the inside as well as the outside.

How to Remove Rust from Vintage Metal Bobbins

I was able to clean the rust off with the brush wheel. The metal is pitted and discolored where the rust was, but it should still work fine.

How to Remove Rust from Vintage Metal Bobbins
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