2024-11-22
Stainless steel-How to Clean Stainless Steel to Make It Shine
To properly care for stainless steel, you must first understand how it keeps from rusting, thus garnering the name "stainless." The key ingredient that elevates normal steel to stainless steel is chromium, which reacts with the oxygen in the air to make a layer on the surface of the metal called chromium oxide, which blocks the formation of rust.Every time you scrub, scratch, or strip stainless steel with scratchy tools or harsh chemicals, it removes the chromium oxide layer. This used to be no big deal, because high-quality stainless steel had lots of chromium in it and could self-heal, forming a new layer of protection in minutes. Nowadays though, as stainless steel has shot up in popularity, so has the cost of chromium, so appliance manufacturers put less and less in to cut costs, resulting in lower and lower grades of stainless steel that can no longer self-heal as easily. It is important to avoid being overly aggressive with scouring your stainless steel and to dry it quickly, as you have no real way of knowing how low a grade of stainless steel your fixture or appliance has been made with until it's too late.