If you just want to see how it works, don’t mess with reversing the current to clean the rebar. Simply use a stiff wire grill brush on the rebar. There is a lot of slag in rebar. It is low-grade iron. So when you use it in an electro tank, it sheds rust and iron like crazy. I’m talking chunks and large particulates. Think of a shaken snow globe full of rust colored snow. That is what your electro solution looks like once it runs for a while. I’ve tried to create a custom setup for cleaning the inside of teapots using rebar. A wire brush cleaned the rebar right up afterwards. Effectiveness at removing rust in teapots - low. If you are lining a barrel shaped object with it, you may even get tiger striping on the piece of cast iron you are cleaning, due to the straight line effect of the current.
For anyone who wants to build an electrolysis tank. Save your money for the real deal. Make it big enough to fit into a 45-50 gallon plastic garbage can, and use stainless steel plates or one rolled piece. You can clean up to an 18-inch skillet in a setup like this.
There are some great examples here already of the setups WAGS members have built. These units are workhorses. Mine is several years old, and it works as well now as when I first set it up.
