If you’re tired of removing rust by hand, you’d be surprised how easy it is to build your very own electrolytic rust removal system!

[James Taylor] is in the process of restoring a very old lathe. Most parts were small enough to simply remove the rust, paint, and grease via chemical stripping and bead blasting, but he ran into a problem with the 40kg lathe bed. It’s painted and if he chemically strips it, he needs to rinse it — which might result in even more flash rusting.

He looked up electrolytic rust removal, and was a bit suspicious of how simple and effective it claimed to be, but he decided to give it a shot anyway. He picked up a big 160L rain barrel, 6 pieces of rebar, some copper wire, and a computer power supply.

Continue reading “Electrolytic Rust Removal Leaves Your Parts Shiny As New” →