Quote Originally Posted by WhiteLion View Post
No hallelujahs, no high five hand claps, not even a night on the town. But here is the report: electrolysis works!!! Does it remove black rust? It does! Does it go deep? It does! So why no celebration?

I have been so intent on finding the Holy Grail I have stopped documenting and simply began tinkering. Now I have to go back to square one and determine what it was that finally worked.
This, this is a very good thing. Knowing that it works, for certain now. Finding the correct combination(s), well, we can keep doing that till we run out rusty razors. I also don't see a permanent shortage in that department.

In other news, my attempt to copper plate was unsuccessful.

It seems the additional time in the vat removed some additional rust, though not much, but did nothing more for the copper plating. I suspect that the surface of blade is not nearly clean or pure enough for a consistent plating. Fortunately, for this same reason, the plating is also very lousy and seems to come off rather easily with fine steel wool. I see to remember on the motorcycle forums that most pieces were acid bathed briefly before starting the plating process to ensure an even and thorough coating.

Tomorrow I'm going to purchase a tube of mild steel at the local hardware store. It should have a very low carbon content and a much higher iron content. I intend to set up a fencing system, much like WhiteLion showed in his earlier images, with tubing all the way around the bucket, linked with copper wire.

I'm also going to switch to a 2 liter soda bottle with the top cut off. The small diameter of the pipe means I should be able to fence six pieces of steel, one every 60 degrees, and have approximately two inches from every point of the razor to any given anode.

I'll put up pictures and some amperage numbers tomorrow.

Have a good night everyone and Randy, congratulations!