What is the best way to remove rust from a chainmail shirt?
If your chainmail shirt gets some surface rust, it's important to remove the rust from your chainmail shirt. Chainmail rings are thin, so if you let the rust sit, they'll break and need to be replaced.
There are two ways to remove rust from chainmail.
Chemical cleaning
You can remove rust from chainmail quite easily using a rust removal product, which you can buy at a hardware store.
Let the chainmail soak for a while, rinse off the rust removal product with water and let the chainmail dry.
Once it's dry, treat the chainmail shirt with oil to prevent it from rusting again.
Mechanical cleaning
Mechanical cleaning uses abrasion to remove rust. If there's only a tiny bit of rust, you can simply rub the chainmail over itself or wear it for an extended period.
If there's too much rust on your chainmail shirt, you can 'tumble' the chainmail shirt. A rotating tumbler would be the best option, because vibratory tumblers often can't handle the size and weight of a larger chainmail piece, like a chainmail shirt.
You could use a cement mixer drum, but you'll need to remove the baffles in the drum first.
To tumble your chainmail shirt, you'll need to put tumbling media (walnut shells, bran, steel balls, etc.) in the drum along with the chainmail. This tumbling medium is responsible for abrasively cleaning the chainmail. Fun fact: in the Middle Ages, people would put their chainmail shirt in a barrel and roll it down a hill to remove the rust.
Once the rust is removed, you should oil the chainmail again before storing it to prevent it from rusting immediately again.
