Thread: using electrolysis to remove rust

Originally Posted by MajorPanic

Check out my tutorial on hand plane restoration....

Hand Plane Restoration PAGE 2

oh its u again, i remember u hollar'd at me in the other thread. Must admit ur restoration is pro.

Originally Posted by luckduck32167

oh its u again, i remember u hollar'd at me in the other thread. Must admit ur restoration is pro.

::u

i bought my charger from ebay. When it arrived i was like YES! i can do my experiment now. Honestly i wanna c that nasty soup cause then ill know it worked real well. I can c it working before my eyes.... ever so slowly.

Hi LuckDuck32167,
Go to HTPAA ( Melb. Based. ) Removing Rust by Kevin Chamberlain, & he runs through all you will need to know. Don't forget to do this outside as it makes Hydrogen Gas. Actually, there is a meeting on Tue.17th. May 2011 at the Box Hill Comm.Centre in Station Street. It will be a Show & Tell Night on "Unusual Tools ".

Some battery chargers won't work without a battery in parallel with the electrolysis circuit.

Here's a WIP on a free Dawn vice I did a couple of months back.
Attachment 169930

Instead of a battery charger I used a old computer power supply.

In this WIP you will also see I de-rusted a couple of railway line fitch plates that had been sitting on the bottom of the ocean for many weeks.

another question, does putting more baking soda make the process go quicker? the process is going really slowly atm.

More washing soda increases the conductivity of the solution; too much and it acts as a short across the terminals of the power supply and triggers whatever circuit protection the power supply has. Unless you've got an ammeter connected to see what the draw is, you might end up getting a lot of tripping of the power supply.

Originally Posted by luckduck32167

another question, does putting more baking soda make the process go quicker? the process is going really slowly atm.

After an hour or two crud will build up on the positive terminal and reduce the current and you have to rub the crud off to re-establish the current. You can jiggle the positive electrodes up and down to clear it a little but that's not as good as rubbing with your hand or a cloth.

If you add more soda the current will increase for a while but then crud up the positive terminal even quicker and drop off just as before. This is OK if you are prepared to stick around and keep rubbing the crud off every half an hour.

I used washing soda rather than baking soda and found 5 g/L of the soda worked OK but it took about 12 hours, - about 6 cleans of the positive terminal to get close to complete.

I have used this process a couple of times and agree with what bobl and Mastersplinter say. The mix I use is 10g/l of Soda Ash (washing soda, sodium carbonate- all the same thing) and found approx 3-3 1/2hrs was enough time in the mix.

my plane has rust under the paintwork and i never manually remove that crud of rust!

Just a quick question, is the sludge left behinds toxic in any way?
I have always been put off because I stupidly equated washing soda with caustic soda and therfore avoided derusting my tools due to not being able to get rid of the sludge safely.

Chris

Originally Posted by haggismuncher

Just a quick question, is the sludge left behinds toxic in any way?
I have always been put off because I stupidly equated washing soda with caustic soda and therfore avoided derusting my tools due to not being able to get rid of the sludge safely.

Chris

yea apprently if ur using stanless steal sacrifical metal it releases poisonous stuff into the water. i just dump it on my backyard lawn.

I threw the old mix on the grass out the back and it didn't kill it. Soda Ash is alkaline and I have used it in the past to neutralise hydrochloric acid etc. Its also an ingredient in laundry powder.

Originally Posted by haggismuncher

Just a quick question, is the sludge left behinds toxic in any way?
I have always been put off because I stupidly equated washing soda with caustic soda and therfore avoided derusting my tools due to not being able to get rid of the sludge safely.

Chris

As long as you use mild steel/ iron as opposed to stainless there is nothing toxic to worry about. The solution is PH neutral, or there abouts.

I guess if you were really pedantic you could find all sorts of problems - impurities etc., but at the end of the day the quantities are small and there is nothing there to cause any problems.

When the sludge builds up enough to become annoying, I just throw it on the garden.