My new Marshaltown 6mm trowel has gone all rusty and I've only had it a few weeks, I have a Marshaltown plastering trowel which is 5 years old and as clean as a whistle.

I would have thought they'd be stainless steel? I've started smearing it in silicone grease to keep in from getting worse, hows everyone elses trowels?

Some rusty but scrape them and they just look discoloured like some of my plastering trowels

my 6mm rubi has gone rusty too, it had a plastic coating on when new but i didn't see it. water went under the plastic coating and rusted it. still works ok. my 10mm rubi is fine, i took the plastic off that one!

I use stainless trowels so dont have a rust issue!

I have a bit of hessian soaked in engine oil wich I rub my trowels over after use

addy is waterbased and if you just washout and leave to dry the trowels tend to rust, if your tiling everday its not an issue but if tiling is just part of your repetoire then you need to oil between uses

It's a trowel.... don't worry not exactly the end of the world.... Some trowels though are just steel and others are stainless.. or maybe even that plastic coating like some rubis have.. The rust doesn't hurt them and a quick clean before use works a treat..

I don't like rusty tools either... I saw a program about Prince Charles once, and he's really finicky about gardening tools and wipes the spades etc with an oily rag before he puts them away... it sounded like he's doing that himself as well, rather than the staff... maybe I should start doing that as well, quite like the image of it... I could pretend I'm slow and tidy, rather than chuck things about....

Prefer stainless myself but I have ordinary carbon steel tools to which I give a squirt of WD-40 after I clean to keep the rust at bay.

Mine are never left long enough to get rusty.........