How do I maintain steel and metal?
Most armour plates and steel weapons are made from carbon steel. Carbon steel is susceptible to rust and therefore requires regular maintenance.
Basic maintenance
The maintenance of steel and metal is really important. When your steel armour or weapons get wet, make sure you dry the steel as quickly as possible with a cloth. Once the steel is dry, you need to oil the steel or spray it with anti-rustspray to prevent the steel from rusting.
Removing rust
If there's only a very small amount of rust on your steel item, you can probably remove it purely by polishing (see Polishing page )
If polishing isn't enough, you can sand away the rust with steel wool or a steel brush. This may cause some scratches on the steel, but that can also be fixed. Once the worst rust is gone, start using fine black sandpaper to sand away more rust. When all rust is removed, you can polish the steel to remove any scratches that were left during this process. After polishing it's recommended to use sword oil or anti-rustspray to prevent the item from rusting again.
Maintenance hack
If you don't want to clean, polish and oil your steel armour or sword after every use, there's a way to make them last a long time with a bit less maintenance.
A great way to make steel rustproof is by painting it with metal paint. You can use a clear, varnish-like paint for this.
For plate armour you can also choose to paint the steel with a coloured paint, just as they did in the Middle Ages.
