Cleaning parallels - the wrong way

[Gas_mantle]

A couple of my parallel were showing a bit of tarnish so in a fit of madness I thought a quick dip in some citric acid that I use when soldering ought to do the job.

I forgot about them and 2 days later had a jar of black liquid plus these 2 :-

[b.lindsey]

Yikes!! Well, good excuse to get a new set now

Bill

[Gas_mantle]

Yikes!! Well, good excuse to get a new set now

Bill

Yea, its a lesson learnt. I can't believe how much the acid ate into them - I was only a solution of citric acid crystals in water and not particularly concentrated either.

[Vixen]

Try and convince yourself you have simply provided an etched oil retaining surface.

You can keep on using them, the sides will still be parallel

Mike

[Jo]

  I have had numerous set of parallels for over 30 years and other than the odd home made "feature"  they have never shown the slightest sign of wanting to tarnish even if abused and left damp  .

Where did you get them from Peter? Give them a little rub on a bit of wet and dry on a surface plate and see if it comes off, if not I would try to buy replacements made of a better quality steel.

Jo

[Gas_mantle]

They are part of a Soba budget set that I think I bought from Chronos for maybe about £50.

When I say tarnish I don't mean any deep pitted contamination but just a slight surface staining. The idea was to leave them for 5 or 10 mins and just give them a bit of a clean - I forgot about them so a 48hr soak was overdoing it a bit 

Like a few others have suggested its an excuse to buy better ones and the rest in the set are ok.

[pgp001]

I wouldn't get too hung up about it Peter.
As has already been said, they will still serve their purpose as parallels.

If you fancy a laugh at my expense, I just paid £30 for some new trousers for work.
I was "carefully" opening the plastic packet with some scissors to have a look, but did not realise how close to the packaging they were and I managed to cut a hole right through the derriere 

Phil

[Gas_mantle]

I wouldn't get too hung up about it Peter.
As has already been said, they will still serve their purpose as parallels.

If you fancy a laugh at my expense, I just paid £30 for some new trousers for work.
I was "carefully" opening the plastic packet with some scissors to have a look, but did not realise how close to the packaging they were and I managed to cut a hole right through the derriere 

Phil

Cheers Phil, I guess I can still use them as parallels and treat them as +/- 0.5mm