Hello I want to begin by thanking you all for the great info you share on this group. I have about 25 stoves in my collection (I am collecting many of them from storage in the next 10 days) But I see many of you using Electrolysis to clean metals up This excites me greatly but... I do not know much about it. What current do you apply? And for how long? are we talking 10 min, 10 hours, 10 days? Anodes and Cathodes I know I could ask GOOGLE but since you guys actually do it, I can trust your info more than a random person. Thanks in advance Glenn
I saw a thread on here earlier in the week, which included a good picture of the set up they were using. Could I remember who or what??? Not a chance! Then I remembered seeing the lid of an ice cream container in use to keep the +ve and -ve apart. Searched Ice cream and hey presto! found this Random or what, made me laugh about how my mind sometimes works. There are also some videos on the subject (electrolysis, not my brain) on youtube. Dean
4 pieces of rebar, copper cabling from a power cord and I quickly replaced the expensive car battery charger shown (which appears to have a 4 hour cut off in ‘dumb mode’) with a cheap and cheerful one I got off amazon for about £10 which I run at 6V. The hardest thing to source was the container! -R
@Dean I use a 10amp charger on fast or normal charge rate. Large plastic bucket paint scuttle Water and soda crystals mixed in water as the electrolyte. Leave it in for as long as needed (not much help as guidance.) Good ventilation as this give off hydrogen(not much I don’t think) Big lump of steel (not stainless) as a sacrificial anode check which way round the positive and negative from the battery go I always have to look that up myself! Look on you tube for vids some are a bit complicated but it’s actually fairly straight forward and gives great results. Good luck Nick
Make sure you use washing soda (sodium carbonate) as the electrolyte and leave it to work in a well ventilated area. Small amounts of hydrogen will be given off but it will rise so ventilation is good. I don’t like using salt as that will produce chlorine gas. I have a really old car battery charger that was made with no cut off features and I use that. I could probably do with a couple more amps but, I’m not in a rush. It is an excellent way of removing rust and old paint. Almost like magic. You’ll be scouring the area for rusty things to clean.
You can use pretty much any power supply you can find. The guys who restore farm tractors and are derusting engine blocks and transmission cases use 250V arc welders. I don't recommend that for stoves. I use the power bricks from laptop computers that put out about 19v at 3-4 amps. I've also used little wall wart transformers 12v 1a. The resistance of your workpiece will determine how much power you need. A stove case is relatively low resistance, a solid chunk of metal like a bench vise will be much more. You can use multiple small power supplies attached to multiple sacrificial anodes to get better coverage. Remember electrolysis is somewhat line-of-sight so more is better when placing anodes. My setup for stoves is 4 laptop bricks and a power supply that has 3 24v 4a outputs. I hook up all 7 to the six anodes in the tub I use for stoves and other largish parts. I use old lawn mower blades as anodes and found they work well. Current flow will decrease as your anodes wear and accumulate rust (resistance is increasing) so it pays to keep the anodes clean. I swap out anodes with clean ones and then use a wire wheel on a bench grinder to clean up the old ones. (done outside with mask or respirator, it's a dusty process). I have also just put a piece of trash metal like a tin can cut lengthwise and flattened out in place of a workpiece and reversed the polarity in the tank to clean the anodes. Rebar will work as an anode, but I find something with more surface area, like the lawnmower blades, works better. I've used baking soda (calcium bicarbonate), washing soda (calcium carbonate) and tri-sodium phosphate (TSP) and not found any difference in results so I use baking soda because it's the least expensive. If your workpiece is greasy you can also use lye. I prefer to clean the piece before it goes in the tank. Clean off as much rust and dirt as you can before putting it in the tank. "You'll blow up your garage with a hydrogen explosion!" was something that made the rounds many years ago when the GPA community was first discovering electrolysis. It is an old wives' tale/urban legend/pure BS. Yes the process does generate some amount of hydrogen. However, hydrogen is extremely had to capture (in this setting) and will dissipate so quickly that there is no danger. Even if you covered the tank and tried to collect the hydrogen you would have difficulty in collecting enough for more than a small firecracker sized "pop". Here is a pic of my setup for doing up to Coleman 413 sized cases. Stove cases are a bugger to completely strip and repaint. The Optimus will be much easier than a Coleman case because of its size and shape. Good luck.
Hi, That 22 does not seem to be very rusty, try a wire wheel? For restoration Rustbucket Is a classic that inspired myself! If you want to lice on the edge, just use table or road salt (NaCl) in the water. Any pair of ions will do the trick of moving charge in the electrolyte. All the best, Lars
As a sacrificial object I don´t use steel as it is really "sacrificed" after time - will rust and damaged. Better is carbon rod which just attract rust and this rust from carbon rod can be easily cleaned up. Carbon rod I bought from model store where is using to build air/car models.
Looking at what’s on eBay, do you mean carbon fibre / CFRP or the much more expensive graphite rods? -R
You may loss some/all of what paint you have left on that 22. Outside not that terrible and inside will be hidden with pans when cooking. Have you tried scrubbing with cloth and vinegar? I have used the process with great results. KISS I use baking soda, tins cans and alligator clip for quick and very easy set-up. Tin cans don't last long but have alot of surface area. Once they get cover in gunk just toss an replace. 12v charger 10A sometimes several hours and sometime several days.
@Valmidir Yes the anode gets depleted, but the pieces I use for anodes were headed for the trash bin already. Old lawnmower blades don't have much resale value. It does seem that a better grade of steel in the anode seems to work better than the low grade in rebar. No proof just perception. @Daryl I suggest getting a cheap plastic bin/tub to use as a containment vessel for your 5 gallon bucket. I've had a couple of them develop cracks in the bottom after being used for a while as electrolysis vessels. It amazing how big a mess 5 gallons of rusty water make on the shop floor.
I didn't see this mentioned in other responses - Electrolysis, like electroplating, is a line-of-sight process. For example, if one were to put a stove fuel tank (fount) with a rusty interior into an electrolysis tank, paint and rust will be removed from the fount's exterior but not the interior. To clean inside a rusty fount you can hang a positive (+) anode (electrically isolated from the tank) inside of the tank, fill the tank with the electrolyte (washing soda/water), and then attach a negative (-) lead to the tank itself. On a side note, being an "artist" I often need metal pieces to be realistically aged and pitted to look right. I hang the metal pieces I need within the tank, wiring them as the positive anode, and use any scrap as the negative. The positive anodes are sufficiently pitted after about a 12-hour soak.
