Rust never sleeps or a question about using rusty spare part

Without getting too technical, what we usually know as rust is the formation of iron oxide on an iron or steel object. We’ve all seen it on garden gates, corrugated iron, etc and its typical orangey-red. If tin or lead corrodes (rusts) you usually see a greyish-white colour – take a look at the lead flashing on your roof.

So to see an orangey rust colour on a soldier made from a tin/lead alloy (as old ‘tin soldiers’ were, usually one high in lead as lead is cheap and tin expensive) suggests to me that there were iron impurities in the tin/lead alloy; perhaps the allow had been bulked out with iron filings by some unscrupulous dealer or manufacturer. It’s hardly unknown – in Victorian times bread could be bulked out with sweepings from the floor (droppings included), sawdust and anything else to hand.

As Mr Tin says, I’d give them a good clean up with a wire wheel in a mini-drill and then a good prime.
Brian