I’m hoping we might have a metallurgist here who can answer this for me. My attempts to find an answer elsewhere have failed.
Sometimes, the stainless steel fixtures in restaurants have a label on them with instructions on properly cleaning the metal. One thing they’re all very emphatic about is that you should NEVER use steel wool to clean stainless steel. But they don’t explain why.
So, why should I not use steel wool to clean stainless steel?
Steel-wool fibers can lodge in the surface of the stainless steel and eventually rust, giving the appearance that the stainless steel is rusting.
Yep, same as not using carbon steel wire brushes, or using abrasives such as sandpaper or grinding wheels on carbon steel and then stainless. You run the risk of embedding rusting steel particles in the stainless steel material.
Thanks. After reading about the process of making stainless steel, what with alloying it with chromium and the way stainless oxidizes and creates a protective layer of oxidation, I was suspecting that steel wool somehow disrupted that oxidation layer or something.
I think that is partially true.
Stainless steel needs to be “passivated” to be really corrosion-resistant. This process etches the surface of the steel and “burns off” any exposed iron molecules. I think that cleaning stainless with steel wool not only leaves particles of steel than can rust, but these may also serve as corrosion-inducing sites, leading to far greater corrosion than the tiny particles would imply.
–another insightful and knowledge-filled post eaten by v-bulletin–
That’s what I read on Wikipedia about stainless. I already knew that stainless was an alloy of steel and chromium, and when I read about the oxidation of stainless, and how it can “repair” scratches in that oxidation layer, I got this idea that steel wool could somehow scrub that oxidation layer away, leaving the underlying alloy vulnerable.
My original thread title, before editing, included chemists along with metallurgists, but I deleted the “chemists” bit because I wasn’t sure if chemistry was involved. I was speculating that scrubbing stainless steel with steel wool might cause some sort of reaction between the steel wool and the stainless steel alloy, maybe the chromium atoms bonding with the steel wool’s atoms, and sucking away the corrosion resistance.
That’s what I get for reading articles about physics.
ETA: Because, honestly, I don’t think the simple appearance of the metal (i.e. not showing rust) is the whole thing behind the warning labels.
What about using Stainless Steel Wool ?
Yeah, the instructions say to use either a stainless steel or plastic “sponge”.
On the British show Wheeler Dealers (which we get here in the states) they restored a Delorean in one episode. They brought in a guy who was a specialist at repairing dings & dents (since the car’s outer skin is bear metal you can’t use any conventional bodywork). He would gently flatten out any dings and then he’d use a fine grit sandpaper to smooth the final finish.
I was amazed that it worked at all. Although at first covering cars in stainless steel seems like a good idea, it is in fact a *terrible *idea. Since it’s unpainted you can’t use body filler or primer or paint of any knd. Which means that even the tiniest scratch is a major repair. Decades ago a had a friend of a friend who had one and his insurance was incredibly high because of this.