Metal Mold Refinishing

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Duffy Sheardown on January 3, 2010 at 1:53pm

What are the backs of the moulds like? Are they really made of steel? Aluminium (sorry, UK spelling!) seems more likely. Try polishing or re-working an area on the back of a mould to see if you like the result before attacking the used side.
Duffy

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Steve Kurz on January 3, 2010 at 2:07pm

Here are a couple of crude picts from one of them. It is an 18 1/2" mold, with only 8000 as a stamped ID on it. One of the blemishes can be seen as a black area in the bottom of the "basket"

Attachments:

• DSC05106.JPG, 1.3 MB
• DSC05107.JPG, 1.4 MB
• DSC05108.JPG, 1.1 MB

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Arun Bhargava on January 3, 2010 at 3:55pm

Hi Steve,

We make and sell vriety of moulds (www.ipfco.com), but I have never had opportunity to work with a metal chocolate mould.

I had a look at the picture, and based on my experience of making metal tooling for our moulds, I would say as follows:

1. Most important - don't do any thing, till you are sure of what to do.
2. From the picture, it is difficult to know the metal of it. It can be aluminium, or tin plate. I know of some aluminium moulds with are made with Cast aluminium, but your mould does not look like them. It looks more a sheet metal.
3. The close up pictures are a bit blurred, but it seems, that inside of the mould, is in a much better condition, but out side surface does have blemishes. Inside blemishes, what ever they are, look very small.
4. What should I tell to you do??

a) If possible, show the mould to some hardware person, or an metal engineer to be sure, what metal it is.
b) Depending upon, metal, you get rust removing sprays, that you spray on effected surface, leave it for some time, and then scrub clean. A caution - after cleaning the surface may look dull, and may need shining, so, after removing rust, you will need to use a suitable polishing agent, and your hands to get back shine. Your neighbourhood hard ware store could give you necessary advise on this.
c) a very unlikely, but possible chance - what you think rust, is actually chocolate deposit. So, have a very close look. Use warm cloth or warm soapy water to rub it off, if it does. If it is stuck badly, use a wooden stick, like tooth pic, to scrap it out.

Just check on these, and if you think OK, please get back here with what ever results. Would love to know, what happened.

All the best.

Arun.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Brian Donaghy on January 4, 2010 at 2:03pm

Steve.

Traditionally metal chocolate moulds were made of steal and then coated in tin. The industry has gone to plastic over the forty or so years.

Don't know if that helps??

brian

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Kerry on January 8, 2010 at 11:04pm

The little blemishes you see are called tin mite. You can try carefully polishing with some calcium carbonate powder (available in asian grocery stores) to try and remove them. If they are small enough they may not interfere too much with molding. I have also carefully applied a bit of naval jelly (a rust remover) before the polishing, but don't leave it on too long or it will eat in to the good metal.

I have quite a number of metal molds, and I find I like molding with the newer polycarbonate figural molds more, in part because I can see where I have bubbles and where I have painted the eyes etc on the mold. They also seem to fit together better and don't give me the little rim of chocolate that has to be trimmed off after molding.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Steve Kurz on January 9, 2010 at 8:13am

Thanks for the info. I will try the polishing. Unfortunately, most of the molds are one-of-a-kind, or I just have not seen them anywhere. I am sure that there are lots of them out there. I have never seen polycarbonite versions of some of them.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ruth Atkinson Kendrick on January 9, 2010 at 6:04pm

You can get them re-tinned. http://www.metalcoatingcompany.com/history.html We were in the metal finishing business for years, but not in the tinning end of it. It is a hot dip process and they come out looking like new. I don't think it is all that expensive. Dairies have to get their milk cans re-tinned from time to time. It is FDA approved for food contact.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Steve Kurz on January 10, 2010 at 8:36am

That is exactly what I was looking for. I will definately contact them! Thanks!

• ▶ Reply