Iron Powder

I use iron powder to control rusting where I want it.  I use it with thermofax printing, masking, stenciling, resist printing, etc.  The Quilting Arts article did not have the specific iron that I use, so I wanted to give all the nitty gritty  details here (pun intended, sorry).  I use iron100 from chemicalstore.com.  It is a high purity, hydrogen reduced, fine iron powder with particles of 150 micron or smaller. Do you need

iron100 from chemicalstore.com

iron100 from chemicalstore.com

to order this exact iron?  No.  I chose it because it sounded like it might work and it did!  I wanted something small and smooth so it would not rip up my thermofax screens. I do not know if the high purity or oxygen reduced matters, but probably not.  They also have superfine and ultrapure.  Since the iron100 worked, I didn’t try those more expensive options.  I can tell you not to use anything oxygenated because it has already bonded with oxygen and it won’t rust.  You also do not want anything coarse, like shavings, that could rip your thermofax screens.  They may give an interesting resulting texture if used for a sprinkle technique.  The can in the photo is 5 lbs.  It is a lot of iron powder, but not nearly as much as it sounds!  Iron is heavy.  The 5lbs comes in a quart can and I suspect the 1 lb would be about a pint or half pint can which is the size of a small can of wood stain.  Enough powder to get a whole lot of thermofax screen prints but a pretty small package.  I believe the square dish in the photo is 3″x3″ to give you some scale.

Happy rusting!

 

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to Iron Powder

  1. Gjeneve Hopkinson says:

    I know that this is an old post, but maybe somehow it will trigger that I have sent a comment. I was so happy to find this post. I pulled your article out of QA and finally am getting around to trying it. I had ordered iron but wasn’t sure if I had ordered the right thing as it was slow to turn. It turns out that I had ordered the correct thing and am so happy to be finally trying this. I also do rusting with rusted objects which gives a wonderful random look as you know. Thanks so much for sharing this info.

    • Barbara Triscari says:

      I’m so glad you got the right iron and you are having success. I think it is lots of fun to get random rust, but sometimes you just want it to be precise. Thanks for stopping by to tell me you tried it out.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *