FILENAMES: 47slide1.jpg 47slide2.jpg 47slide3.jpg DESCRIPTION: These are pictures of a Hardinge lathe cross-slide cleanup project. Posted by Jim Rozen . Jim provided the following description: ================================================================= Here is an example of a cross-slide unit for a Hardinge lathe that was cleaned up a bit, starting with the salt/vinegar solution which is often discussed on rcm. This slide had a lot of wear, and also a coating of fine rust on its outer surfaces. Fortunately the ways had a goodly amount of greasy spooge on them, so they were not badly rusted. But I wanted to remove the oxide from the parts without using wire brush, scotchbright, or any abrasives. Those will tend to blurr over the graduations on the dials and compound angle graduations. So I disassembled the parts, degreased them, and then soaked in a saturated solution of table salt in houshold vingar. This removed the surface rust without touching any of the good parent metal, so I could then proceed with re-machining and re-scraping the parts to get the slide in a useable condition. Obviously the salt/vinegar trick is not magic - it will not add any material back on once it is rusted. But it *will* remove oxide with a minimum of disruption to whatever good metal is still there. That's its real charm.