Any acid will do the job Martin, I used to use pineapple juice, which was truly excellent, but this was more than 20 years ago when I was able to buy big tins of fresh, natural Australian pineapple juice, then the local company was bought out by a big multi national, now the pine juice sold by that same company is reconstituted from concentrate brought in from Brazil & maybe some other places. This garbage is undrinkable & does a lousy job of cleaning ferric material.
Some people in Solo do use citric acid.
I have also used tomato juice, it does a good job but it is too expensive.
Yes, the electrolytic method can have negative effects on steel, according to AI.
Thinking back, I believe the first rusted keris blade I cleaned was done with muriatic acid --- another name for hydrochloric acid that was used by plumbers --- it was not kind to the blades. After that I used vinegar, then I used pineapple juice, then I went back to vinegar. I've tried various things over the years, but these days I always use plain old household vinegar, probably because it is easy & cheap. I've got several blades in vinegar right now in fact.
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