Thread: Electrolysis, anyone tried it?

I read a post a while back about electrolysis on the site and it didn't seem too many were interested in it. I've seen some pretty impressive results from electrolysis and found some good info about it. Being an electronic tech by trade and working on science degrees at college I think I'm going to give it a whirl with some nasty blades when I get a chance just thought I'd see if anyone else has tried yet and what their results were. From what I've read electrolysis can actually recover some of that rust converting it back to iron. I've attached a .pdf on electrolysis and found a site for a guy that uses it to restore old gin traps and he tested it out on an extremely worse case horse shoe (just looks like a blob of rust) and was able to recover what metal was left under that rust without all that hard labor and metal removal involved in sanding. That can be found here:

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/andyspatch/rust.htm

He does mention that with electrolysis some of the hydrogen can make it's way into the metal and make the metal brittle called hydrogen embrittlement but he said he has yet to have this happen to him on a piece and that if it does happen there is a method to speed the rate that the hydrogen leaves the metal at by heating it to about 150 celcius (302 farenheit). He says it shouldn't mess with the tempering too much and I don't know that much about metallurgy to tell wether it would or not but I would imagine if a dremel could at the temperatures the razor might reach during sanding (nowhere near 150 celcius, that sucker would be extremely hot) then I'm sure such a process would mess with a razor's temper.

I did notice he uses low amperage for longer periods of time (24-48 hours and recommends 1mA per square centimeter) whereas a lot of the other info that I've seen on the web has guys hooking up battery chargers that crank out several amps.

My plan is to buy some junker rusted up razors, probably on flea bay or from an antique shop and give it a whirl, since I'm an ET I'll probably engineer a little box so I can control and monitor the voltage and amperage that I'm drawing through the solution to do the electrolysis as well as adjust it (this can be done very easily .. for me).

Just thought I'd see if anyone has done it yet, when I do get around to it I'll post pictures and results. My theory at this point is that I'll be able to preserve things like acid etching on blades as well as clean out rust in areas like jimps, the pin-hole in the shank and other hard to get areas in razors. Obviously it won't fix pitting though, that'll still require removal of metal to remove the pitting.