Thread: electrolysis for rusty razor

Good work, Randy. I had wondered about hazards. Good advise there.

Originally Posted by sharptonn

I had wondered about hazards.

There aren't many hazards to the process but it is always a good idea to be safe. Caveat number three: Unplug the power supply BEFORE unclipping the anode or cathode leads. A spark could potentially ignite the hydrogen. Not much potential in a well ventilated area but hey, why play Russian Roulette if you don't have to. Caveat number four: Do NOT let your blade touch any part of the anode.

Sorry to sound like some damned street corner evangelical. I just want to pass on things I have picked up along the way so you don't have to learn the hard way by first hand experience. These are "caveats" not "rules". I personally follow them but you can make up your own mind what you want to try.

I'm learning new stuff every day. As posted by WadePatton earlier, you can not force amperage. The process will draw what it wants. For example, using the 12V 1A motorcycle charger the process is actually drawing more like 1.5A. With the same charger set to 6V the amperage draw is .5A. On a 12V 10A charger, the process is drawing only 2.5A at start up and drops down to 1.7A when checked an hour later. At two hours, the amperage drops down to 1.5A and seems to hold there. With a multimeter, you can see that both the voltage and amperage fluctuate. This seems to happen more on the 1A motorcycle charger than the 10A car charger. Possibly the variations have to do with the quality of the power supply? I don't know. I'm just reporting information.

Again, I'll be posting blade pics Thursday or Friday.

Randy

You're correct. Wow you are putting way more exertion into this experiment that I'm prepared for! lol.

Anyways, my container is a 2 liter bottle with the top cut off. I hung three iron nails spaced 120 degrees apart, and connected with alligator clips for the anode first. This set up wasn't sufficient. The reaction was weak, and the results were long in coming it seemed. My power supply is a 13.7 volt, 3 amp non adjustable DC power supply. Commonly used in classroom settings by electronics students(me).

For my second iteration, I used galvanized steel strapping. I wound it into a coil, so as to surround the cathode(razor) with line of sight electron flow. This proved too taxing for my meager power supply which promptly cycled off within 3 seconds of being turned on. Next I cut about 7 inches of strapping. This portion seems to work best so far. I haven't experienced dramatic differences in levels of clean between line of sight and non-line of sight. But I'm still working towards experiencing "dramatic" levels of clean.

I suspect it has more to do with my anode choices than anything. My goal here is not to use anything I don't already have. So that means yesterday the anode was nails, today it's some strapping, tomorrow it might be some old used up drill bits. lol. Which is what's beautiful about the whole thing for me. I can use any metal I have here as an anode. I don't have to order it from Caswell, and keep it out of the sun. And I don't have to wear a respirator while I use it. Life is good. Now if I could just keep the neigbors away long enough to fire up the vibe tumbler, I'd be set!

Originally Posted by regularjoe

My goal here is not to use anything I don't already have. So that means yesterday the anode was nails, today it's some strapping, tomorrow it might be some old used up drill bits. lol. Which is what's beautiful about the whole thing for me. I can use any metal I have here as an anode. Life is good. Now if I could just keep the neigbors away long enough to fire up the vibe tumbler, I'd be set!

RJ - Life is indeed good! You sound like a tinkerer; a man after my own heart! Make do with what you have and if don't have something, come up with an alternative. Thank for sharing specific information.

I'm not quite sure the original strapping was overloading your power supply. Sometimes, as I have learned, simply moving the cathode (razor) a little to a different spot or removing it and reinserting it will get the process moving. Using 6V on my motorcycle charger, I some times have to jump start it by flicking the switch to 12V and then back down to 6V. I have blades I am testing stop "bubbling" and just moving it a little or removing and reinserting it, the process then began. I am not sure you can overload a power supply but at present, that is simple speculation. As I noted earlier, the process does not seem to draw more amps or volts than what is available. I'd really like to see you give the full strapping test another try (if you have enough left).

It is funny because tonight I was thinking about what sharpton suggested, trying different anode material. What came to mind was copper but at the price of copper these days, who can afford sheets of it. So I was thinking of using old electrical copper wire I saved after rewiring my house and coil it, like you did the strapping, to see how that worked. I am going to get a third bucket and try it.

I'm looking forward to more posts from you.

Randy

Here are some pics. The first razor, donated by sharpton (as all of my posts from here on out will be from blades he generously supplied) is a R.W.&S.. This was my test razor for the 12V 10A battery charger. As mentioned earlier, the the amperage the process actually drew was on 2.5 to 1.5 amps. These are original and final pictures. This was actually a four leg process ranging from 1.5 to 8 hours for each leg. Total vat time was 15 hours.

As a standard practice, I clean each blade with some Bar Keepers Friend (BKF) and a blue Scotch Brite pad when I remove the razor from the vat. I then use a hair dryer to remove all moisture as I have read rust will quickly set in after the process if you don't coat the blade with some kind of protectant. This is just internet talk I am regurgitating and have no first hand knowledge on the subject. I do not want to put any kind of coating on the blade if I am going to continue putting it into the vat since any coating will impede or thwart the process. So I have chosen to dry the blade with a hair dryer and it seems to work fine.

So here are before and after pics of razor number 1.




And the answer to your question is ... NO! The electrolysis did NOT eat a big chunk out of the razor blade. As I was cleaning after the first leg with the BKF and Scotch Bite, the pad kept snagging on all the jagged edges of the blade. So I decided to file the edges down and in doing so the chunk broke off. It was badly cracked from the very beginning and maybe I should have removed at the start. Live and learn!

The second blade is again a sharpton donation. It is a Giesen & Forsthoff "Timor" #161 in much better shape than the R.W.&S. razor blade. I am still in the process of trying to remove rust so the final results are not in yet. Here are beginning and present stage results. The process has consisted of 4 legs. 3 legs were done at 12V 1A for a total of 14.5 hours. Leg 4 was done at 12V 10A and lasted 6 hours. Total vat time: 20.5 hours. Again, as mentioned before, the actual amperage being drawn was between 2.5 and 1.5A. Some of the rust seemed to be stubborn and thus the reason for switching the power supply. The blade is still cooking as I post. I will be following up more on this blade. IF I can revive it, this should make a very good razor. Tom, sharpton, actually sent me many blades that, if this process works, will be excellent razors. Here are pics of the before and present:




I need to get more buckets. I am trying to figure a way to use 1 gallon instead of 2 gallon buckets. It would save a lot on the anode material and place the blade closer to the anode. At present, I am hanging the blade vertical and need the depth of the 2 gallon bucket to do that. I am working on a hanger that suspends the blade horizontally without the blade's edge touching any metal. I hope to post results on that soon. I also have another blade in a vat at 6V .5A that is coming along.

I do my experimenting in a screen room off of my garage. The room does not have power to it so I have to use an extension cord with the door between the garage and room ajar. That is the reason I can not get overnight results. The garage door leading to the screened room is on my home security system. I do not want to leave the door open at night. I have too many tools that I would not care to lose. I have no other place to conduct the process so I will be running electricity to the room this weekend. Then I will be able to cook away for longer periods of time and not have so many "legs".

Have a good weekend all!

Randy

P.S.: I have pictures of each leg along the process of both blades. If any members are interested, I will surely post them. The before/after/present pictures were intended to conserve server space and also not to bore members.

Nice job. It is good to have several guys participating as well. Gee, Randy, those blades weren't THAT bad! Have you been practicing breadboarding on a bench grinder? (kidding).
You guys work, we admire!

Okay guys, I have made a jig to hang the blade horizontally. The wire is copper and is one contiguous piece. The wood or what ever you choose as the hanger bar will vary depending on the size of your container's width. The holes in the hanger can be between 3 3/4" and 4" apart. The tang pin hole slips over the wire bent like an "L" and the spine (NOT the blade) rests on the wire configured as a "U" to keep it from accidentally falling off. The dowel is not part of the jig.




The bucket I intend to use is a Tupperware or similar cereal container. It holds almost one gallon but I am only filling it to 3/4 of a gallon. The anode is a piece of sheet steel. One member said he did not see any difference between line of sight and a simple single anode. I have used internet gospel to date as my foundation for information on this. Now I will test the truth of the matter. Another variable being tested is the closeness of the cathode to the anode. Unlike a 2 gallon bucket with about 6" between the two, this set up will initially put them 2 and 2.5" apart. The internet gospel is no closer than 2". We'll see about that!



I am currently finishing up a 16V power supply I am building. I only need to get it painted before hooking all the components together. While I am finishing that project, I am going to try daisy chaining one bucket with another and see what happens to the voltage and amperage.

I now have electricity out to my screen porch as well as lights. I can now run 24 hour legs instead of 6 to 10 hour ones. Wahoo!!!!

I am posting far too much here so I am going to give it a rest so others can jump in with their ideas. I am learning as well as the rest of you and would really be interested in your experiments. Just post pics and forget all that previous garbage about information on your set up. If something you are doing is working, I have no doubt there will be a ton of questions to ascertain just what you are doing. I sometimes get so involved in something I forget to have fun. I am enjoying this process but I do need to lighten up and let things happen as they may.

Hope your weekend is going well.

Randy

I said I was going to give this a rest but I got excited and could not resist. Here is a blade that was in the vat for 15 minutes. No, I did not make a mistake. I did not mean to say 15 hours, I literally meant 15 MINUTES! Looks promising. The blade is not worth continuing with. A big hunk of the edge is cracked, aluminum thin and ready to fall off.



I will post more but first I have two questions. First, why is this thread posted in the "Forge" which has nothing to do with this topic and is a sub-forum of the Workshop? I wonder anyone stumbles upon this thread. My second question is: Will a moderator please move this thread to the main Workshop forum where more users are likelier to follow it and potentially benefit from it?

Randy

Randy, have you drawn any conclusion about, or had any experience with this? I've got lots of bubbles coming up, but no red gunk. The blade seems like it can still get more clean, but I'm not getting any more gunk in the water. What do you think? I hadn't heard about the minimum safe distance thing. After I read that, I found a container to separate my cathode and anode a bit further from each other. This seems to have solved the problem of my power supply tripping. I had read somewhere that if you get them too close, your voltage will go through the roof. But it didn't give any notion of what's "too" close. lol. The neighbor threw away his mop today. Guess what that's made of? Yep.. tube steel. HA! Lots of surface area on a hollow cylinder!!

Originally Posted by regularjoe

Randy, have you drawn any conclusion about, or had any experience with this? I've got lots of bubbles coming up, but no red gunk. The blade seems like it can still get more clean, but I'm not getting any more gunk in the water. What do you think? I hadn't heard about the minimum safe distance thing. After I read that, I found a container to separate my cathode and anode a bit further from each other. This seems to have solved the problem of my power supply tripping. I had read somewhere that if you get them too close, your voltage will go through the roof. But it didn't give any notion of what's "too" close. lol. The neighbor threw away his mop today. Guess what that's made of? Yep.. tube steel. HA! Lots of surface area on a hollow cylinder!!

RJ: I hadn't heard of the no red gunk until I experienced it myself with my newest set up as posted above (the Tupperware container). The blade is only 2.5" from the anode which is a relatively large piece of sheet steel. I got massive amounts of bubbles but no "gunk". It was definitely working as witnessed by the 15 minute process I posted.

I've learned a few more things but I am waiting to see if a Mod moves this thread to the main Workshop forum before posting further results here. I am here to help and I am spending an inordinate amount of time trying to do so. I do not want to leave you hanging so here is what I have found. It is not the voltage that is tripping your power supply, it is the amperage! When the cathode and anode are close together, that baby wants to suckle a lot of amps. If your power supply has circuit protection, what you will find is that it cycles on and off. As the demand for amps exceeds the supplies ability it will shut off and then cycles back on. I'll give much greater detail when I learn what is going to happen with this thread. For now, this will be my last post.