Several years ago a friend asked me to disperse most of his late father's estate.
The old timer must have been a colorful character. He lived a minimalist life style even though he had retired from Ratheon with a good nest egg and pension. But he had simple needs and lived on a small farm in Cochise with his horses and dogs.
Spent his golden years packing into unit 33 mostly and hunted as much as possible. He built a small shop on his acreage and lived in a kit garage with dirt floors.
When the prostate cancer weakened him to exhaustion, he settled into assisted living and therefore was not home when his property flooded. The moisture had ruined a lot of his possesions when I started to gather them and some items were just tossed.
But there were a few items I put into a drawer for another day.
SCIENCE!!!
Yesterday I started the restoration of these items. All with moving parts were so badly rusted, they no longer had moving parts. Time to experiment with electrolysis.
5 gallon bucket of water with approx 1 tablespoon of salt per gallon water for electrolytes. I hung the items needing cleaned from a piece of sucker rod I could ground from the old battery charger. I would set the charger to 6V, 3 amps.
The anodes were a couple of iron grading stakes I had laying around. I connected them together with jumper cables but it didn't seem to matter having 2 anodes since all the oxidation migrated to the one anode even though my volt meter indicated voltage at both.
Put the rusty items through the electrolysis overnight and got up to this view.
Its important to do this outside, as the process creates hydrogen since you're separating H2O. Additionally, using salt for the electrolytes makes for chlorine gas.
After 18 hours, here's the result...
I was thrilled to see this antique actually operate again. The breech opens, ejector, hammer, trigger all moving again. She's going back in for more electrolysis. The right side of the pistol was facing the anode so it came out cleanest, so I turned the gun around 180' to work more on the left side.
In case you're wondering, it's an Iver Johnson, 5 shot Top Break Safety .32 S&W short. Same model used to assassinate Pres. McKinley 119 years ago.