First time cleaning up tail rust! (w/ pictures)

[TheBeatlesPkmnFan42]

My poor little Baby Surprise had tail rust, among other issues (I'll have to fix these later!), so I decided to do something about it!

Spoiler

Firstly, some before pics:

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(Ignore Dancing Butterflies back there, I was going to do her too but didn't have enough time, she'll have to wait!)

Her head glue was being a bit stubborn in some places as I was holding her under the hot water, to help with it I ended up using the sharp part of a safety pin to poke through bits of the glue, and eventually succeeded in removing the head:

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Another image of the rust inside:

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It wasn't too much rust, the majority of it was around the washer itself, with just a little bit elsewhere (toward the bottom of the inside of her feet and inside her nose, I didn't have anything small enough to clean these places so I'll clean them out on a later date).

So, I took out the tail and began to clean.

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I used a soft children's toothbrush and some toothpaste (the specific kind was Colgate MaxFresh with whitening if anyone's curious) that I had just gotten in a small tube from the dentist a while back. It didn't take too much scrubbing to get the rust off, on both the tail itself and inside the body where the washer was.

Here's the tail with its new, rubber washer:

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I then of course had to take the rubber washer back off to put the tail back into the body. I just inserted the clamp with the tail in through the outside of the tail hole, then from the inside put the clamp through the hole of the washer. This rubber washer's a lot thicker than the original metal one was.

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Here's the inside of her body with the new washer!

After pictures!

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Despite the issues she has that I still need to fix, she's looking much better than she did before!

The issues she still has are:

-frizzy tail, I'll just try shampoo and conditioner initially, as I don't know if we have a straightening iron with a low setting in our house
-age spot (since she's a white pony it will be easy to simply paint over the spot)
-smudged paint on the right eye (I'll have to mix paint together to match the purple color)
-faded pink balloon strings (again I'll have to mix paint together)

Her neck is also thicker on the body part than it is on the head, but I don't think there's really anything I can do about it. It looks odd, but oh well.

I also still have that rust inside of her feet and nose to take care of, but I'll have to buy something like pipe cleaners before I can fix that. I at least got the metal washer out and cleaned up the rust around that area!

[glitterball]

Well done cleaning the rust away!  And nice photos!

If it bothers you, you could always tie a ribbon around Surprise's neck to hide the size mismatch. 
 

[TheBeatlesPkmnFan42]

Well done cleaning the rust away!  And nice photos!

If it bothers you, you could always tie a ribbon around Surprise's neck to hide the size mismatch. 
 

Ooh I should do that, that sounds so cute!

[Mewtwofan1]

Well done! She does look a lot better. Almost happier in a way. And I second the ribbon idea! It sounds absolutely adorable!

[NightGliderSA]

What an improvement 

I just love the ribbon idea - and will do that anyway, how cute!

[jrr74]

nicely done.  I wish I had your ambition for tail rust. 

[FlickaFriend]

Wow you did a great job! That tail looks so clean and fresh now. It makes such a big difference doesn't it. I did my first rusty tail recently and I found the toothpaste made the hair super dry and frizzy but conditioner and hair irons worked a treat. I've read some pony people have success with dipping the hair in boiling water and combing smooth instead of straightening irons, you could try that?