How do I remove rust from my pony?

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MustBeJewel

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How Do I Remove Rust from My Pony?


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(The MLP Preservation Project)


Most ponies can succumb to rust due to the metal clamps and washers used to hold in their tails.
This condition can also occur in ponies with any metal parts.

Here are some great tutorials for how to fix that problem. ;)

NOTE: If you sell a pony after you have removed its tail rust and replaced its washer, ALWAYS notify your buyer!!




Tail Rust Tutorial by @Unicornucopia:

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So you've purchased a lot of ponies, and some have a horrible-looking rusty tail base? Not a problem! Use Rit Rust Remover (for fabrics, in the laundry section of your grocery with the dyes, or order it online) to de-rust the tail, as well as the inside of the pony. It also works great for Beddy Bye Eyed ponies whose eyes have rusted shut, or open, whichever the case may be.
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Step 1: Simply pop the head off, use pliers to reach inside and grab the tail, and pull it out through the neck. Ewww, right? Pretty gross in there? Yeah, I thought so. Read on...

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Step 2: Use 2 pairs of pliers to pull the washer and clamp off the tail (see photos below).

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Step 3: Secure the tail with 2 plastic cable ties (also known as zip ties). This will prevent rusting in the future. If you don't know how, see the "Making Tails" tutorial.

Step 4: Wash as much rust out as you can with dish soap and hot water (not too hot!).

Step 5: Heat some water to boiling in a teacup (in your microwave, or with a tea kettle, or a pan, it doesn't matter how you do it, but you'll only need a teacup's worth.) and carefully drop in a heaping teaspoon of the Rit Rust Remover (it doesn't need to still be boiling when you do this). Be careful not to inhale the powder, and don't get it on your hands. Read the box for full details. Now, soak the rusty ends of your tails in the cup for 10 minutes or so.

Step 6: Next, take them out, rinse them off, and smoosh the strands around between your fingers to really break up that rust. Repeat the soaking/rinsing cycle as many times as necessary to remove all the rust.

Step 7: Now wash your tails with anti-bacterial dish soap (really work it through, because it will feel strange), and rinse.

Step 8: Condition the pony's hair (the strangeness will go away with the conditioning) and see the Styling tutorial!

Step 9: You can re-use the solution you've already made, and pour it inside the pony's body to remove any rust in there (or soak the head of a BBE in it to de-rust the eyes). This may take a few cycles, and you may have to make more solution, but it definitely does the trick! Wash out the pony's body with more dish soap when it's rust-free and you're done!

Wasn't that easy? Now you'll never have to sell another pony again because it was plagued with rust, and you've learned how to prevent rust in the future by using the plastic cable ties! Look at Baby Lofty now! Isn't she beautiful? (She was also turned from a BBE into a NBBE using my tutorial technique.)

 
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Tutorials for Eye Rust Repair:

Eye rust is a problem pretty unique to either BBE or Spanish "Piggy" ponies, and it can be a little intimidating to deal with.




Tutorial by KottonKandy:

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Here is our test subject: Baby Frosting. Her eye was gross and swollen from how much rust was built up. The eye didn't even blink anymore and the rust was trickling down her face.

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So first thing, I pop off her head and using a pair of needle nose pliers, pushed from the back of her socket and popped the eye out. Heat helps here. I warmed her face with a blow dryer to make the plastic more flexible.
Ok. That's super gross. You can see all the rust that poofed out onto her face after I got the eye out. At this point, I took her other eye out too so I could see what it was supposed to look like AND so I could give her head a good cleaning with Dawn and get all the rust out of her.


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Here's a quick diagram of how BBEs are put together. You have the eyeball, and a housing for it. The housing is two pieces. The back is plastic and the front is metal and they both clip together. Unfortunately, her casing was rusted together. So first I had to fix that. I plopped the whole thing into white vinegar and let it sit. Every few hours, I took an old toothbrush and scrubbed at it. I let that buddy soak for half a day before enough rust was removed for me to pop the casing apart.​


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Once I got the housing apart, the eyeball itself got to soak in vinegar and get scrubbed every couple of hours. The rust came off for the most part, but it took one of the little pegs on the side of the eye with it. The pegs are what hold the eye in place in the casing and allow them to turn.

So I made a replacement peg. It's just a straight pin trimmed to the correct length. It's on the left in case you can't tell. I know it's all pretty teeny.


Next up was putting the eye back in its housing and making sure the new pin was the correct size to allow it to move. It was probably the easiest part of all this lol.
Now all the hard stuff is done. Time to get out the blow dryer again and warm up her face! It's definitely harder getting the eyes back in than it was getting them out. Once they're in the socket, you have to kinda poke and prod them back into a normal alignment, but it wasn't too difficult.
Last up, because I manhandle things badly, I had rubbed off her eyeshadow. So I got out my paints and my teeny brush and fixed that.
And now she's all better

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