Turn A Five Gallon Bucket Into A Rust Removal Tank
Rust removal is an enormous hassle, normally involving lots of elbow grease, steel wool, and sweat. Build your own electrolytic anti-rust tank out of a five gallon bucket instead and you’ll clobber your oxidized iron with science.
This project relies on a few simple components—a five gallon bucket, some pieces of rebar or other narrow steel, a trickle battery charger, and some wire—and a washing soda/water solution to create an energized solution that’s really tough on rust. The simple summary of how it works: you clip the negative charging lead to the item to be cleaned, the positive to the rebar, and then hit the juice and watch as the combination of electricity and washing-soda-laced water channel the rust right off your tool and towards the rebar anode.
Want to know the science behind how this Frankenstein cleaning tools works? Read through this Wikipedia entry about electrolysis. If, on the other hand, you want to dive right in and restore some rusty tools, check out the Instructables tutorial below for more information, appropriate warnings, and lots of pictures.
Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
@It_Figures: I wonder if I could just get this put on Mythbusters and have them do it for me... Of course they would just blow the car up and the end.
Electrolysis, eh? Somehow I thought hair removal at those spas would be a little classier than sticking your face in a bucket while holding one end of the car battery.
What price fashion indeed!
@SMSDHubbard:
Fortunately, they aren't very nice clubs. Needless to say, I'm still pissed about it.
I tell everyone that's why I have a nasty slice, unbridled anger every time I look at the clubs.
aSoundofSleep
I've done this on a couple of old wood planes that I picked up at garage sales, and can attest that it works great.
It will NOT replace iron that's turned to rust, so the cleaned up metal may have pits, etc where the rust dug deeper in some places. But you get a nice clean iron surface with essentially no elbow grease.
dwhitman
@infmom:
What you're saying is you didn't need a bucket b/c you were driving one? I fondly remember my mothers 1977. Yellow. Deer magnet.
jupiterthunder
@aSoundofSleep: Ouch.
I have a set of brand new golf clubs I hope this works on.
Why is a set of brand new clubs rusting you may ask?
Well, when battery acid gets on a club it removes the protective coating off the metal, making way for rust to do it's dirty little thing. This is why once you change the battery in your car, you return it to the store for credit, not leave it in your trunk with your brand new clubs for a couple days .... FML.
aSoundofSleep
@OMG! psycheese!: We used to drive a 1980 Corolla like that.
Hm, I've got an old wood pellet stove kicking around in the shed that's pretty rusty. I wonder if I could rig something like this up with a massive plastic tub, would be nice to save it from being totally useless.
jeremy_mccurdy
@Duane: Scale up.
Figure out the ingredient proportions for a 10K gallon pool, and add a crane to the "You need" list.
Coca Cola and/or Diet Coke works well as well to remove rust, though it would probably take a bit longer
@OMG! Pwnies!: chances are it won't go back together again... it's probably the rust that's holding the pieces together.
@Duane: Piece by piece?
OMG! Pwnies!
Nice, though I have doubts that I can fit my car in a five gallon bucket.
seems impressive. i can't think of anything laying around that is rusty to try to fix...
achoke
@jupiterthunder: Yeah, pretty much. I was really afraid to wash that car lest the fenders fall off.
I wonder if a clipped the negative my gold wedding ring and the positive to the rebar, would I get gold plated rebar?!? Cool!
Snopes says the Coke-Rust remover is false.
SiddhimaAndromeda
@fiman16: Yup. The only thing at work is a lot of good ol' electricity. This is the same process that produces other gold-plated items, too!
@fiman16: The reference, sir. You missed it.
OMG! Con Seannery!
@OMG! Pwnies!: this doesn't involve magnets or magnetic fields!
fiman16
@TheJester: so does mythbusters
fiman16
@PickledEgg: Gold isn't magnetic!
OMG! Con Seannery!
@aSoundofSleep: About an hour ago, I just watched an episode of "How It's Made" and they showed how putters were made. This same method (though using an acid solution and then copper, followed by whatever metal to actually coat the piece with [matte silver, shiny steel, etc.], but the same principle) was what was used.
It should do a nice job, since that is how they were coated to begin with. I hope that it works for you.
AbrogatedOrder
@Duane: Just keep letting it rust and eventually it will fit..
But Billy Mays told me all I need is some Oxyclean...
@Psychophan7: Nevermind. Just...sigh.
Picklex20 is a wipe on rust remover. It is an industrial product whose application is for prepping metals for painting or finishing. Rather expensive but it works like a champ. Literally brush on with a paint brush and the rust disappears.
I've tried the electrolysis and it works but as soon as you remove the item from the solution it rusts nearly instantaneously. You can literally watch it rust before your eyes.
ct_price
@SiddhimaAndromeda: And on a similar cleaning old metal objects myth - if you want to clean your old pennies you shouldn't soak them in baking soda and vinegar. Or if you do, at least check them well before the mixture has evaporated.
On the up side, the pan of filthy pennies no longer look like filthy pennies. On the down side, they look more like a dead coral reef than usable coinage.
vinylrake