My first restoration

[Dalorin]

Here's the pictures of a really nice Griswold block logo dutch oven before I restored it.

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[Dalorin]

Here's the after photos

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[Dalorin]

Here's a pic of my electrolysis rig

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[aggie79]

That is really cool! Please us more about the process and electrolysis rig.

[Woodbutcher]

Nice work. The DO came out great....What's for dinner?

[Padilen]

That is really cool! Please us more about the process and electrolysis rig.

X2

[Dalorin]

That is really cool! Please us more about the process and electrolysis rig.

No problem.

The electrolysis rig is basically a 25 gallon tub that you can get from Walmart for five bucks. Then it's filled with water and you add super washing soda (sodium cardonate) also available at Walmart in the laundry section.

Also in the picture you see an old manual battery charger. You have to use manual, the new automatic ones don't work. I got this one off craigslist for fifteen bucks.

The cast iron you want to clean is suspended in the solution from a wire connected to the negative lead of the battery charger. Then you use a sacrificial piece of steel connected to the positive and suspended in the solution opposite your cast iron. This is called the anode. You never want these two to touch.

Then you run six amps or more thorough the system till all the gunk and rust are removed.

You're probably familiar with electroplating. Well, this is the opposite process. Instead of bonding a material to a base metal we are removing all material leaving nothing but the base metal.

Once I have the cast iron stripped bare I seasoned it three times with organic flax seed oil and finally cast iron conditioner.


You can find lots of videos on YouTube of people showing off their electrolysis rigs. Mine is really simple and budget oriented.

Hope this is useful
D

[Dalorin]

Nice work. The DO came out great....What's for dinner?

Tagine recipes my friend! As many as I can get ahold of! I like the spicy spicy!

[Padilen]

Thanks for the explanation! I make my own laundry soap so I have everything to do this. My piece of cast iron that is in need of this, I gave up on and decided to use as my charcoal holder for cooking! In your pic you have a glass lid how hot can the cast iron get before the lid could/would break?
How much soda per gallon of water?

[tony.latham]

Out of curiousity, what happens to the sacrificial steel? Does it erode or oxidize?

T

[Dalorin]

Out of curiousity, what happens to the sacrificial steel? Does it erode or oxidize?

T

It does in fact. It's like really accelerated rust. In my case I found a steel dinner tray at a second hand store. Already it shows very heavy rust around its edges.

This is why is very important to get the polarity correct when you are connecting the battery charger.

[Dalorin]

Thanks for the explanation! I make my own laundry soap so I have everything to do this. My piece of cast iron that is in need of this, I gave up on and decided to use as my charcoal holder for cooking! In your pic you have a glass lid how hot can the cast iron get before the lid could/would break?
How much soda per gallon of water?

I cannot imagine the glass breaking from heat. It's made to go inside an oven so it should easily handle upwards of five hundred.

The sodium carbonate goes in at a rate of about a tablespoon per gallon. This doesn't have to be terribly exact. Just know that if the solution is too weak you won't read enough current on the ammeter on the charger. If it's too strong you could read too much. I ran my rig at eight amps. Some go much higher than this.

You'll know when you have it right because everything will start fizzing. Tiny bubbles of hydrogen rise off the piece.

That is why you want to do this outdoors. You don't want hydrogen gas building up in a confined space.

[Padilen]

Thank-you again.
Now I'm not sure my charger will do this its a 2-6-12boost.

[tony.latham]

Out of curiousity, what happens to the sacrificial steel? Does it erode or oxidize?

T

It does in fact. It's like really accelerated rust. In my case I found a steel dinner tray at a second hand store. Already it shows very heavy rust around its edges.

This is why is very important to get the polarity correct when you are connecting the battery charger.

Thanks! I'm gonna file this back in a crook in my gray matter coils. I'll use it for something, sooner or later.

Tony

[Talia62]

Out of curiousity, what happens to the sacrificial steel? Does it erode or oxidize?

T

The anode -- what you're calling the sacrificial steel -- will eventually just disappear. Chemically speaking, what's happening is that the process is turning ferric oxide into ferrous oxide.

Ferric oxide is what we think of as rust, that brownish-red coating that takes a lot of elbow grease to remove from an object. On the other hand, ferrous oxide doesn't stick to the metal, and can simply be wiped off as a blackish powder.

This process does not require a battery charger. You can do it by simply taking a 12v battery, and using that as your source of current. Jumper cables work just fine for hooking things up. I wouldn't do it with a battery that is actually connected to your vehicle though.