Putting Electrolysis To The Test! | Rusty Vice Restoration

hi everyone hope you're doing well now in my last electrolysis video i showed you step by step how to do it how to get yourself set up and the principles behind it and it's tried and tested it works really well but today i want to see if electrolysis alone can free up this huge rusty old vice let's get into it and find out [Applause] [Music] hi i'm dom and welcome to my workshop [Music] hello everyone i've done the first introduction to electrolysis and a few of you said the hammer wasn't rusty enough basically so i thought what better candidate than this vice and look at it this has been outside in a field exposed to the elements for getting on for 30 years it is absolutely it's completely seized do i need to prove it i don't know i mean look that is absolutely seized up so this flatbed here is attached to the front jaw and as you wind it that should slide through this central piece water of the rain and the elements have got in there and those two pieces those two surfaces have just fused together the rust has just eaten into each piece and just rusted and seized them both together it doesn't look any better underneath look at that in there it makes me sad to see these old british pieces of engineering rotting away in people's gardens and if it wasn't much further i think this would have ended up in the skip so i'm glad i got it when i did it's got this quick release lever which is really really handy so you can pull that lever and then slide the front jaw in and out without actually having to sit there and unwind it all the time so if you're trying to clamp something small then all of a sudden you need to clamp something much bigger instead of just standing there winding out the handle you can pull the quick release and slide it out it's a really really good system and i actually don't have a device this big with that quick release of it there is a maker's mark but it's so rusty it's so corroded i actually can't tell what make it actually is but i can see on this side made in england and it's a beautiful thing using electrolysis for rust removal is a really really good way to remove rust gently instead of attacking this with an angle grinder even sandblasting and media blasting can be really quite aggressive but most importantly if i was to sandblast this it would take it off here perfectly and it would take it off here but it wouldn't get in all the little nooks and crannies and in there where these two faces have rusted together is right in there that's what i need to get out i actually have no idea what the electrolysis is going to do is i know it's going to remove the rust but will it actually free it up imagine if i could take it out of the tank of electrolysis after a few days in there and it just and it's freed up and it doesn't need too much more and the mechanism is all loose and freed up i honestly have no idea what is going to happen let's hope we can save this lovely old vice okay welcome to mark 2 of my electrolysis tank right a bigger tub more anodes oh anode or cathode hang on it doesn't matter either way whatever a bigger tub more volume for water more positive terminals around the outside more space 12 volt car battery charger i think i got this from tool station or screw fix or somewhere but that's the first thing that you're going to need a really basic 12 volt car battery charger and you know what the older the better a lot of the more modern newer battery chargers that you can get in half and some places are too clever for their own good they have a pre-programmed set in them and all sorts of lights and gizmos and gadgets and it's just we're trying to make it do something it's not really made to do i've got plastic tub doesn't conduct electricity absolutely fine there's your pieces of steel i mean i would have rather these were flat i would like them to be a bit of flat bar but the piece of angle is all i could find and that'll do the job just fine i've given them a quick grind down to make them shiny look at that look how shiny that is lovely cable ties plastic don't conduct electricity no problems there positive terminal from the car battery charger hooks up to the first one if you were doing something quite small that one anode from the positive is all you would need because this vice is massive and because i've got a big tank to put it in parts over this side are going to have to travel a lot further to get to that so by putting these all the way around the edge in a ring every single one will have a shorter path to travel so i should get a nice even fizz of rust removal more pieces of steel this can be anything at all as long as it's steel not stainless steel not copper not aluminium make sure you use just mild steel bog standard mild steel these are just little croc clips and some some wire so the only way you're going to get all of these anodes to work and sort of talk to each other and the current to flow around is to link them together it looks complicated but it's really simple just got two little croc clips a piece of wire and just connect one to the other then that one to that one then that one to that one and just go all the way around until the last one is connected it is quite handy that my brother is an electronic engineer so i can just call him when i get stuck because electrics are not my strong point absolutely not my strong point but luckily i've got a very clever brother and he said if i connect this last one back to the first one then i've got a ring i appreciate this is very different but it's a bit similar to the plug sockets in your house that is uh one loop of electricity and that's kind of what i've created here so now i've got an actual complete loop of electricity coming from the positive of the car battery charger black is always negative red is positive black is negative i could clamp it anywhere but basically i'm just going to put that on the side because this tub is plastic it's not going to conduct electricity and i'll make sure that this isn't in the water um it could be but i just don't want to ruin my clamp then my negative is out here ready to go and that can clip on to the vise somewhere it's looking good i think i'm ready to put the vice in there this is really heavy the vice is now in the tank the tank oh you know what i should have checked this didn't have any holes in it fingers crossed the tank does not have any holes the vise is in all my anodes are connected up my negative is here i'm going to clip that on now the negative from the battery charger is the blue one which is connected to the actual vise it's really important that i'm surrounding the vise with my positive anodes but they're not touching so you can see so the current is going to be passing from the vice and jumping across trying to pass through the water to this and so that distance you want to make as short as possible the main body is that part with the stand and then this front jaw which passes through because it's made of two pieces i will connect another wire so all that will involve is another another wire from my negative and then i can connect that to somewhere on this front part so that that way both pieces will have current passing through them if i was to just connect it to the one piece the current is not going to pass through to this second piece so by connecting the negative to both bits it's gonna help me i made a blue wire so it was a bit easier to see i know there's wires everywhere now but honestly this is really nice and simple good bit of advice where you clip your negative onto the actual part if you can sand that area down scrub back with a wire wool or something like that just to clean it up so the clamp the clip has got a better connection all you're trying to do you're trying to increase that uh the current at the least amount of resistance and if that connection is really rusty there's going to be a lot of resistance and it's not going to work as efficiently the power is still off on the on the charger all i need to do now is fill this up and make sure the vice is completely underwater [Music] [Applause] advice fully submerged in warm nice warm water next thing you need sodium carbonate cleaning soda you can get it from the supermarket you can get it online it's very easy to get hold of it's not bicarb of soda it's not baking soda it's uh no it's kind of sodium carbonate it's in powder form i've got a bag of it here and this is why i use the warm water so all i need to do is just now sprinkle this in and this is gonna well it's got it's got cleaning properties so it's gonna clean as well but actually the main purpose of this is to make the water conduct electricity better you could use salt some people use salt as well but this works best for me now there probably is a ratio for how much water to how much sodium carbonate you need i don't know it i just put a sprinkle in we'll be able to tell because when i flick the charger on you'll see the gauge go boop and just pop up that has all dissolved really well and i can always add a little bit more later on so okay okay here we go let's flick on the power and see if this thing starts fizzing [Music] yes yes yes already [Music] these little bubbles that are fizzing off of the vice now are hydrogen which is flammable so please make sure if you're giving this a go yourself do it outside do it in a well ventilated space and just be very aware that those bubbles and that gas that's coming off inside those bubbles is flammable so i i'm fine here i've got two huge roller shutters that are open and there's loads of air passing through actually i wonder how flammable they are [Music] i know there's much danger of you setting fire to your whole house but just be aware that is flammable it's been two hours if that and look already i think adding that extra wire and creating that ring on the top has really helped the current has shot up he's never been that high before and look at the color of the water and you can hear it fizzing away i'm going to leave that for a good few hours again i'll keep an eye on that current when that starts dropping off that will mean that i need to change the solution it's just too gummed up and it won't work anymore but for the meantime that is doing well i came in this morning as a good good note here for people i tried to turn it straight back on as it was this morning with a sludgy water and it did not work it just the gauge on the dial on the uh on the chargers went ooh bang nothing it just wouldn't work so i had to completely drain the tank start over afresh with new water new sodium carbonate whilst it was apart i gave the anodes the positive sides they they get really rusty so i gave them a good scrub down and ground the back down so they're nice and shiny [Music] i'm impressed oh this is coming up well that gap was not there before there's a washer under there that's loose there was absolutely nothing loose under there before well you kind of can read that now can't you you know what i'm getting excited this is looking really promising now there's so many little flaky bits i'm definitely going to chuck this in the back of the van go down to the petrol station i need to get some fuel anyway give this thing a good old blast with a pressure washer see what we're left with then i might just give it one more dunk in the electrolysis for another day and i reckon we're there this is looking good every time i use this electrolysis process i just get blown away of how well it actually works i mean this device i've just given it a quick pressure wash that's it i've not buffed it it's ground it down sanded it use the wire wheel anything at all and look at it first of all let's appreciate how rust free this is now yeah i know there's still some bits but i don't know if that to be honest that could be red paint but look completely clear i mean look at that bed i haven't remember what that was like my god now you can clearly see parkinson's model f trade perfect vice number eight so i had a clip on here just cleaned up this area lovely and this whole housing all this back piece it would do all of that lovely but this jaw is not the same piece of metal as that even though it's bolted together there's probably rust between the bolt and this body which is a bad conductor so the current can't actually pass through to this jaw and look there's there's literally a definite line you can see this is completely rusty not been touched by the electrolysis that i had to clip onto worked perfectly this one i had the clip on this bolt which is connected to that jaw so that's why that one worked it's amazing isn't it i didn't see that's loose so there's no no current is going to pass from the body through to this through there to this so that is completely untouched and still rusty so this lever the quick release lever this spring this this face plate bracket that bar and inside there there are still some parts inside there that i haven't had the cable connected to that are still just as rusty as it was at the start so i think i'm going to rig my tank up again but connect the cables to these separate pieces now individually there might be a couple more cables going on in there but that's going to hopefully another day on those extra pieces hopefully we should be in a good place [Music] it was bubbling away in the electrolysis we had about two days in there day and a half and it was looking really good i got all excited took it out the tank was like oh what should i do i was going to redo the tank and then my brother turned up my brother dan turned up to give me a hand with the land rover we did that spent most of the day playing with the land rover and then he started asking me about the vice and i was oh you know what let me just have a go let's have a go i needed a hand i thought an extra pair of hands would be helpful so i ran it down the road quickly to the uh the mot garage at the end of the yard pressure washing it there give it a good clean and i was full of hope it literally looked pristine it had like a black sort of coating over it all the rust had gone it was looking really positive so i was like you know what i'll bolt this to my welding bench because i've got the holes at the top bolt that down i'll get an extension bar on this little hand crank lever and i reckon this is going to go i reckon the electrolysis is gonna have worked this is it's a miracle and then i head down there and then i have my pole it did not move my dreams were shattered and i was quite sad so then that quite quickly led into bolting it down properly getting a longer bar and then heating it up the oxycetalline came out we were heating it up we got up to like three 400 degrees and then out come the big hammers and then we started trying to whack the back of it i tried to protect the back with a little bar a bit of metal i really did try but it was it just got to the point was just like this is not going to go so i can now confirm officially the electrolysis did absolutely not free up the vice absolutely calm so sorry about that but the good news is heat and brute force and help from brother dam has got it apart the electrolysis did a brilliant job on the outside of the surfaces all of the outside areas it didn't get inside so if i was to put this in the tank it would do a brilliant job because all of the surfaces are exposed they're all it's just one object one thing all those little bits where the thread is there or there's a fine surface will all be cleaned off when there's two components touching each other inside something else like the vice like this sits up inside the vise the electrolysis just did not get in there this area the electrolysis has done really well it looks a bit rusty now because we've heated it up but it's not it's fine but then you can see quite a clear line there and there where the electrolysis just did not even touch it look see that build up there all the way along so all that build up there's all the rust that's built up over the time and seized it together and essentially made the sliding part too fat to fit through the hole so brute force was the only way electrolysis did not help me here but i'm not going to give up i've got the vice in pieces the quick release mechanism is knackered the spring on the end there is completely broken the screw but look how close that is to snapping it's completely rotten so this poor old vice is in a bad way and this fairly straightforward quick video that i was going to do is all of a sudden taking a drastic turn and that's ended up a much bigger job all the separate individual components i could start working on cleaning them all up individually this video is supposed to be about what electrolysis can do so i'm persevering [Music] hey [Music] look at that it's a black oxide the the budget for this vice restoration has run slightly out of control um i ended up spending over 100 pounds on all of the spare parts that i need the new spring for the quick release lever two lovely new jaws brand new with an old surface two new countersunk whitworth thread screws this is almost a little keep that it works part of the quick release mechanism it holds it in place screw for that as well all these parts are out the electrolysis tank i've given them a scrub with some water clean them all off wipe them all down with a rag they are ready to go but they're gonna go rusty this is bare metal at the moment it's bare raw iron that won't take long for you know a bit condensation a bit of moisture in the air all these bits are gonna go rusty so we need to treat them this is where usually most people would paint them there's no point in me painting it because i don't want it to look brand new and then be worried about actually ever using it and clamping stuff in it and heating up and spilling acid or something on it so i just i actually really like it in this raw state that it's in but i obviously don't want it to go rusty again so how do we finish it what do we put on the surface this is where i've got my little secret weapon which i will share with you now this is an absolutely brilliant product and i cannot speak highly of this product this is definitely not a paid ad or a sponsorship or anything like that this is a product that i've found and it it's an oil almost like it similar to a linseed oil but it's got dryers in it so it actually dries like a like a paint would dry [Music] oh look at that [Music] [Music] how many of you were watching this video shouting at the screen saying dom you idiot the handle's got to go in first don't put that front plate on that collar should be behind that plate because now as i turn the handle the whole actual the actual threaded part that moves and that collar should be caught behind there which then pulls the jaw at the moment at the moment it's screwing in and out but the jaw's not moving i'm sorry this video is long enough as it is i'm sure you didn't need to see me putting it together wrong but hey i'm being honest i made a mistake i put it together in the wrong order i didn't take any pictures and i'm just getting over excited and rushing yes i've done it it works it was a complete wreck before few days work fair enough it's cost me a bit but now i've got a perfect working vice that's oh just i love it electrolysis didn't actually free up the vice so i can conclude that electrolysis does work very very well at removing rust i mean look at the beautiful vice now look at that it just stands standing proudly on my bench there it's just brilliant it's not as good at freeing up parts but once you've got them freed up it's perfect the vice restoration is complete on to the next let me know what's next thank you so much for watching everyone i really appreciate it i hope you've enjoyed this video as much as i have enjoyed making it give us a thumbs up tell all your friends let's carry on bigger and better things on to the next one thank you for watching take [Music] [Applause] [Music] care [Music] you

Channel: Dominic Chinea

Views: 158,841

Keywords: dominic chinea, electrolysis, rust, restoration, Diy, Project, Do it yourself, Home rust removal, Rust removal, Rust, Patina, The repair shop, Repair, Home project, Rust repair, Science, How to, How to remove rust, Old tools, Vintage, Vintage tools, Antique, Workshop, Rusty, Vice, Record, Parkinson’s, Machinist, Engineer

Id: o1y5Sp9e9DI

Length: 24min 31sec (1471 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 08 2021