Make sure it is secure enough so that a bump won’t tip something over. If something doesn’t look right, stick your hand in the water and straighten it out. The desired result will have the anode secured and the part to be cleaned next to, above, or below it but again not touching. Old dishwasher racks, bolts, c-clamps, bar clamps, duct tape, baling wire, let your imagination run wild. You must rig your setup in such a way so as to suspend the article to be cleaned next to but not touching the anode. Try a coffee can with the lid flipped up and the side split and spread out. The larger the surface area of the anode and the more it surrounds the article to be cleaned the better. The ultimate is stainless steel as it will be less affected by the process, but don’t use your wife’s stainless steel potato masher without permission (voice of experience here). Re-bar, angle iron, coffee cans, shovels, cultivator sweeps, whatever you have handy. Just about anything metallic can be used for your anode. It is what we will be electroplating with the rust from our good piece. The other piece is technically called the anode.
Cooked on carbon, rusty, and the worse it is the better it will look. Any cast iron cooking utensil can be cleaned. The one you want to clean and another you don’t. Another measurement is two handfuls per every five gallons. This does not have to be an exact measurement. Use 1 Tablespoon per gallon of water in your container. It’s in a big yellow box just like the baking soda and isįound with the Tide, Oxi-Clean, Clorox, etc. This is a laundry detergent available at most grocery stores. Two readily available sources are "PH+" (a swimming poolĪdditive available at Wal-Mart or any pool supply house), or "ARM and HAMMER WASHING SODA" (Not Baking SODA). This is to create an electrolyte solution that is capable of carrying the current created by the battery charger. A five gallon bucket, an old cooler, a Rubber-Maid tub, a plastic 55 gallon barrel, anything that will hold the rusty utensil will work.ģ. This is to hold the solution and must be non-metallic. A 6-volt charger or a trickle charger will work, but will be extremely slow. While any charger will work, a 12-volt charger capable of 35 to 40 amps is ideal. There are only four components necessary for the entire setup. There is not much to setting up an electrolysis bath and this simple process will produce spectacular results on rustiest, crustiest, carbon-caked cast iron utensils you can find. While it appears to be a way to remove rust, it is actually a rust reduction method whereby hard red rust (ferrous oxide) is reduced to soft black rust (ferric oxide). Rust reduction via electrolysis is almost harder to say than it is to set up.