to prevent rust

make sure the 304 shavings are removed

they will rust quickly

Change the wire to one wither a higher chrome content. When polishing first heat the sawdust to drive out the moisture. Wood contains natural acids try washing the sawdust before using it. Add some wood ash as well.Bake the sawdust to make some ash do not let it burn so restrict the air as if you were making charcoal, but slightly hotter, not that charcoal would harm the mix, it may be slightly too abrasive if not powdered.

Dear Guest,

Seeing no value in the responses that have been posted, and seeing that no one has identified the root cause of the rusting problem, I will provide you with an explanation based on metallurgy and chemistry, not alchemy.

1) Forging does not generate chips. It is unlikely that chip contamination is the causa sine qua non (Cause without which not) of the rusting of the screws. If there is a chip making process after forging, a) you didn't say so and b) Those chips are a contributing but not root cause factor to the rusting of the product. Forging does produce scale. More on this later.

2) Advice to remove the moisture from sawdust packing followed by advice to wash the sawdust, then bake into charcoal, adds only confusion, and cost (Drying sawdust takes energy, to then add water, then dry again and bake into charcoal, thatwould require a lot of heat!) and fails to identify the root cause of the rusting. Stainless steel can resist attack from chemicals much harsher than moisture and wood acids when properly treated.

3) The root cause of the rust is that your screws still have iron and iron oxide contaminants on them. These iron compounds on the surface set up a corrosion cell with the stainless screw. The scale and oxides from your forging process are the root cause of the rust. YOU NEED TO REMOVE THE IN PROCESS IRON -IRON OXIDE compounds chemically from the screws to prevent them from starting the corrosion process. Mechanical removal will not assure removal of the contamination every bit.

This is why you NEVER use Steel Wool to clean Stainless Steel appliances, grills, counters etc. The iron will start the Stainless to rust.

The process used to remove the inprocess iron contamination is called passivation. Heres a link:

http://www.pfonline.com/articles/119806.html

By the way, saw dust is a terrible media for polishing stainless steel it is wrong hardness, wrong particle size, wrong consistency, and does hold moisture and contaminants.

Its not magic; no elixir, eye of newt, nor flowers of charcoal needed to solve your problem. Just passivate the screws after forging-Or after machining if you are indeed cutting the threads after forging- to remove the iron- iron oxide- forging scale contamination from the product. The ASTM standard A380 mentioned in the article above is a repeatable, commercial, proven process. Washing and baking sawdust??? Wheres the value in that?

milo