CLEANING TOOLS WITH ELECTROLYSIS
I pulled this out of my tool box and I really didn't want to clean off the corrosion with a wire brush or a scratch pad. I wanted to find some other way to get the corrosion off. So I discovered the electrolysis method.
Needless to say I set up an electrolysis tank, used a steel rod for the positive terminal which will be pulling the corrosion from the affected tool. The water is just distilled water mixed with about 2 tablespoons of Arm & Hammer washing soda. The actual element that's doing the work is "sodium carbonate" (note that it's NOT bicarbonate like baking soda). The "ground" or negative cable is connected to the tool.
For the power supply, many people will use a car battery charger. Actually I did have a car battery charger at first; but apparently that technology was so sophisticated it detected that I wasn't charging a battery so it wouldn't even send a charge. Thus I resulted in putting my old PSU to work. measured the leads using a voltmeter and determined that it puts out about 12 volts, which is perfect for this. Actually I ended up using multiple leads to power multiple tanks from the one psu shown in this picture (beat that, car battery charger). Yes I am using an Antminer switch to power the psu on and off.
Here's what's going on; the corrosion is being extracted from the metal via the electrons charged on the positive terminal. Yes, that positive terminal (the rod) eventually absorbs all of the corrosion.
Not gonna lie, I did have to clean it a little with a scratch pad; but it was a very "light" cleaning; hardly no effort was put into cleaning it because the electrolysis process did all the work for me.
That's amazing! I assume this means that the bicarb is simply removing the corroded layer.
You could make a cottage industry of this - buy old corroded tools, clean them up and then re-sell them.
Absolutely and electrolysis with metal is actually a very fascinating process. I'm learning you can use electrolysis to extract metals like zinc or copper and attract it to the metal you would like to have that coating. Which will ultimately help the tool to prevent future corrosion from occurring.