After reading last week’s barbecue themed posts, Ali got in touch to ask about repairing a rusted up bbq:

The grill is rusty pretty much all over and there is a rust hole in the base too. My husband wants to throw it out and get another but I’d like to try fixing it first. Please give me some hope that the effort with a wire scrubber will be worth it!

A lot of barbecues at the cheaper end of the market have chrome-plated steel grills and once the chrome gets scratched or otherwise damaged, the exposed steel rusts really quickly. You might get all the rust off now but I’m not sure you’ll be able to keep it off in the future – anyone know any heat/food friendly way to protect it again? If it’s a cast iron grill – most expensive but not uncommon – then you should be able to de-rust it and protect it again like any cast iron pan/appliance.

As for the base, it depends on the size/location of the hole – a small one low down could be turned into a fat trap. Assuming it’s a kettle/barrel type bbq, you could strip it right back to metal (possibly worth doing all over in one go) and repaint it with a heat-proof metal paint (like stove paint) to reduce further rusting. However as someone who has spent far too long stripping metal recently, let me warn you, it’s not exactly a fun pastime.

If you don’t think it’s worth the effort to save this one, learn from this one’s untimely demise when you buy/care for your next one — look for one with a better grill or if it’s already a good one, protect it better in the first place, and don’t leave bbqs outside and uncovered in wet/moist weather.

Any further advice/suggestions?

We’ve had an email from Janet:

I’ve been clearing out my dad’s old shed and it is FULL of rusty old tools. Help! What should I do with them!

I guess it depends how “rusty” you mean by “rusty” – if it’s not very, a local community group (say an allotment group if they’re gardening tools) might be willing to refurbish them and put them back into use but if you mean utterly seized and beyond redemption, they might not be so keen.

It also depends on how “old” you mean by “old” – some people collect antique/old tools and equipment, particularly if it is for a specialist purpose so it might be worth investigating that option.

Any other ideas?

(Photo by anbra33)

Completely out of character, I went on a bit of a tidying rampage at the weekend. Well, I sorted out some boxes in the spare room and the storage chest in the living room – that’s a rampage for me.

Amongst the random bits of paper (recycled/composted) and unnecessary household objects like two phones even though we don’t have a landline (charity shopped/Freecycled), I found various nuts, bolts and screws in various states of rusting. I added these to the ice cream tubs of random nuts, bolts, screws, washers, hinges etc that we have in the cellar and it made me wonder if we’d ever get around to using them.

We dip into the boxes whenever we need a fixing but we just don’t need enough of them to make any headway through the tubs and we tend to pick the least rusty ones when we do need something – so what can we do with the rusty rest?

(Photo by fugue, who seems to have a similar collection)