Hi, I have been playing around with rust removal using various different techniques, I have a blasting cabinet with a 4hp compressor which is excellent for tearing rust and paint and metal! off, but its so clumsy to use, I end up with more grit in my face than in the cabinet. I have used grinders and sanders which work really well but you really need to put the effort in, and all of these techniques are way to fierce for small precision machined components such as bearing surfaces and tin ware.
Looking around on the web I have seen lots of people using electrolysis to remove rust, at first I though it would take lots of equipment and consumables, and the results would be a little disappointing.
I tried it yesterday and the total cost was £2, yes £2 !.
The results are pretty shocking, I had a hub from my Salisbury 4ha axle to clean, this thing was pretty rusty, 1 hour later with absolutely no effort the thing came out completely rust free and was coated in "black oxide".
This is a truly amazing method of rust removal, and all you will need is . . .
A car battery charger,
Plastic bucket,
steel bar or plate (to sacrifice)
water
sodium carbonate (97p) from co-op
The basic idea is to fill up your plastic bucket with water and pour in half a cup of sodium carbonate for every 5 gallon of water. Connect the positive lead of your charger up to the sacrificial steel bar (anode), connect the negative terminal up to the component you want to clean rust off of, and the submerge both the anode (steel bar) and the component with negative terminal in the water solution.
Make sure the component and the steel bar do not touch, obviously this will cause a short circuit and you will blow fuses or worse!
switch the charger on and leave it alone for a few hours, you will see bubbles of hydrogen coming from the component your cleaning.
Again don't put your hands in the solution whilst the battery charger is on!.
once the component is clean the reaction will stop, it will have a layer of black oxide stuff on it which apparently helps rust proof the part, however you need to dry the part off quickly and paint it, it is very susceptible to rust at this point.
Use your common sense and you will have no problems.
here is a link to further explain the process www.rowand.net/Shop/Tools/Electrolysis.htm
Have fun . . .