My setup is just a 5 gallon bucket filled with an electrolyte solution (water & washing soda). Normally I use rebar as the a, but lately I've been using scrap bits of Jeep. I've got a chunk of coil spring from my parts XJ as the anode right now. I'm using an old plug (wall wart) from something that runs at like 5 volts DC and 1.3 amps. Larger DC transformers (both in voltage and amperage) will produce a faster result. I mainly do small things so it suits my needs. I have seen welding transformers used and tanks rigged up to do entire trailers.
What I really love is that it only removes rust. Unlike grinding/sanding where you can take good metal off along with the rust, this only takes the rust.
Shot before I fired up the tank for the first time. The coil spring is the anode which will be degraded to remove the rust from the other part (leaf spring eye). I was using the eye as a test piece before moving on to something important.
Here you can see the coil is starting to degrade and there's all sorts of crap from the spring eye that has settled to the bottom of the tank.
Here's the knife I was trying to forged afew weeks ago. Notice the surface rust from just being exposed to air.
Here it is afterwords. All the surface rust is removed without having to do any work but wait. Plus it didn't remove any non rust material. You will see that this process does not remove the black patina on the metal.
There are tons of video's and websites devoted to this if you want to look this up. Here are some quick notes:
- Don't use stainless steel or galvanized steel as your anode. This creates toxic gunk. Personally I wouldn't try to derust them either.
If you cannot find washing soda, you can put some baking soda in the oven on 350 for about an hour on a cookie sheet and make washing soda.
This process creates oxygen and hydrogen bubbles. Do it somewhere with good ventilation and no sparks.
The solution will eat copper, so it's a good idea to get some steel wire to make the connection between the part and your copper wires.
Other than that, it's a pretty simple and effective process for rust removal. It's also just about the exact opposite of anodizing metals. Plus if you stay away from stainless and galvanized. You can pretty much dispose of the waste about anywhere.
