electro question

[Harry Riva]

No residue on the pieces I clean but there are faint white lines around the water level. I'll dilute the mix down. Too much electrolyte causes too many amps which is a bad thing? I know next to nothing about the technical side of this process.
Harry

[castironsasquatch]

Harry, I think I had it figured for about three cups of washing soda for my 55 gal. barrel, not quite full to the top.

ET

[castironsasquatch]

Here's the pic of the scotch bowl that was ruined in the electro. The lighter areas are where the metal was eaten away, leaving a shiny, rough surface.

[castironsasquatch]

Pic of bail handle also affected. It is now very lumpy all over.

[gt]

Thanks for posting the pictures Eric.

Your problem seems a little different to me. The etching I saw smooth and yours is rough but in any case if rust forms on the piece being cleaned it can't be good.

[castironsasquatch]

Acually Gary, in this particular situation, there wasn't any rust build up on these areas. Just came out looking like that. I suppose there is a slight chance the piece was already like that before I cleaned it, as it was quite dirty, but I think I would've noticed the bail thing, but ya never know ::). I'm not sure what else could have caused this though. The last couple days I've been cleaning 4 pieces at a time with no problems at all. I like doing this because I can let it go all night and have 2 or 3 pieces done by morning instead of just one. Then I fill it up and go to work and might have 2 or 3 more done when I get home. Just wish I knew more facts about the actual electro process, so I could try to avoid whatever is causing the once in a great while problem.

ET

[Scott Sanders]

Hi Eric,
I may be waaaaayyyyyy wrong on this, and I'm sure someone will correct me if I am, but in looking at the picture of the bottom of your Scotch Bowl, I would say it is the lighter color that you are trying to achieve when cleaning with electrolysis.  It looks to me like the black that is showing is still the original seasoning and has not been removed in the cleaning process.  I like to get my iron down to the light color you are showing and then do the re-seasoning.  Although I am not a great fan of rough iron, the old seasoning does usually cover up a lot of roughness that is exposed when taken down to bare iron, if it's there in the first place.  

I also was under the impression that electrolysis cleaning was accomplished through "line of sight".  If you have one piece of iron blocking another they wont get cleaned.  In my "Perry's Barrel", if I want to clean more than one piece, I try to hang them at different elevations, and part way through the process I will rotate each item a couple of times.  This helps to get all parts of the iron in the "line of sight".  So, I try not to put too many pieces is at once.

Hope this helps a little............anyone else have any more thoughts or ideas on this?????  I'm interested in this too.

Scott........(still @ CoH)

[Tom Neitzel]

Eric, I resized the pictures a bit to fit the screen better.  If you want me to put the larger ones back I can.

Tom

[castironsasquatch]

Thanks Tom, much better.

Scott, I tried reseasoning after cleaning to see if it would help cover, but that's as good as it got. The light areas if you could feel them, are recessed from the rest of the bowl. It's hard to tell that from the pics. I've never seen a sandblasted piece, but would that cause metal to be removed like that. If so, perhaps someone tried doing that many years ago. Just don't know. As far as the straight line for cleaning, I know that's what they say, but I very often have pieces come out completely clean on all sides, even while doing 4 or 5 at a time. Not sure how that works, but it seem to do pretty good.

ET

[Jeff Friend]

Electro isn't exactly a "line of sight thing."  The electic field lines will curve around from the back side of a pan to the anode.  Go to this web site and run the applet to see what I mean - this is pretty cool.

http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~phys1/java/phys1/EField/EField.html

You can simulate 1 or more pans (blue) and multiple anodes (red) to see how complicated the situation becomes.  Make sure you have the equipotential and electric field line boxes clicked.  The electric field lines correspond to current flow per unit area (amps per square inch) and the equipotential lines are the same voltage (potential).  The top image is a representation of a pan (blue dot) with one anode.  As you can see, there are more electric field lines between the pan and the anode than behind the pan.  The bottom image is a pan surrounded by three anodes . . . the field is more uniform on all sides of the pan.  (Does this remind you of the experiment you did in elementary school with a magnet and iron filings?)

I use one SS sheet as the anode in my electro setup and, as the image below would suggest, both sides are being cleaned when the current is flowing.  The side facing the anode cleans faster, so I just rotate the pan after a few hours, let it cook a while, and I am done.

When I am cleaning a pan, I don't try to get a huge current flow.  I have found that I get good results with only 10 to 20 amps.  The conductivity of the electrolyte depends on the amount of ions in solution.  With sodium carbonate, I believe the recommendation is 1 tablespoon per gallon, but I have used a stronger solution in the past.  I also adjust the location of the pan to get the current flow I want.

Hope this sheds some light on the subject.

Jeff

[C. B. Williams]

Jeff: Very interesting , thanks. C B