chocolateducttape

Thank you all so much! That's really interesting that it does the same thing on wood, I didn't know that before but the tannin point makes a lot of sense. I hadn't thought of steel wool either, but that makes a lot of sense as well, plus it's easy to get ahold of. My brother is a blacksmith- I can't get any scrap metal from him till summer, but I will then. (He's the one that told me about this site, actually. I don't know his username though. He's probably going to read this and laugh.)

I'm actually a leatherworker, not a blacksmith, but I have a strange question. I discovered a really awesome way to dye leather black without having to use actual dye- it's fantastic because it's a chemical reaction with the leather so the color doesn't rub off. Just take some rusty metal and let it dissolve in vinegar, saturate your leather with the solution, let it dry and oil it, and you've got a really nice black. It smells funny for a few days but hey, it works. Now I just need more rusty metal. Do any of y'all know what I can get cheap (preferably that comes in the form of nails or something easy so I can just get it from a hardware store) that'll rust really fast, and how to accelerate the rusting process?