Leon-Art-O's hangout for people who like to dig holes
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Leon-Art-O
ELECTROLYSIS
You don't have to be afraid of cooking your coins and relics with electricity
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I come from a background of tearing things apart when I was a child. It should then come as no surprise that I've known about, and have performed the process of electrolysis since I was in grade school. Many people ask me about how to do it and some people I know also perform the process with some pretty strange equipment. This little section of the website is dedicated to helping you get started doing electrolysis the right way.
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​First off, you're going to need some electricity. Not just any electricity but DC (Direct Current) electricity. You need something with an absolute positive and negative flow of current (Not AC or alternating current). Luckily, there are dozens of cheap sources of DC transformers and power supplies that you can use for the purpose of electrolysis. Even batteries work well. A 9 volt battery will run for sever hours – more than enough time to cook several coins. Most of the electrolysis you're going to be doing is to remove rust and accumulations off of coins and relics. This won't take more than 12 volts of DC power.
Most of the automotive car chargers you'll find in the stores today operate at 6 or 10 Amps and run at 12 volts to charge most of the lead/acid batteries in vehicles. Unfortunately, most also have an auto shut-off when the proper voltage is reached and this can be a problem for doing electrolysis. If you have an older style car battery charger you should be fine, otherwise you might want to look for something else.
Cell phone chargers (the little black brick transformers you plug into the wall) usually run at 2 Amps and charge to 5 Volts. These make good temporary choices to get into the hobby/technique. You must be able to define which wire is the positive and which the negative. Some older wall transformers have a white stripe on the 'Positive' wire and the black wire is negative. If yours doesn't, you'll need to define which is which using a multi meter. Of course, if you want to go full tilt, you can always buy a digital DC power supply from eBay with separate Volts/Amps in a nice lighted array for about $30.
After you know your positive from your negative you'll need to have some way to hook up the 'NEGITIVE POLE' to your relic or coin and your 'POSITIVE POLE' or Cathode to your carbon steel or carbon electrode. If you have to an old drill bit, that will work for your positive pole but I'd suggest getting some carbon like an old welding rod or DC motor brush. You can also find pure carbon electrodes at chemical and electrical supply houses. If you ever get the chance to compare the two, you'll never go back to using steel after using pure carbon. It just leaves the water so clear after you're done. NEVER USE STAINLESS STEEL like a spoon or such. It creates Hexavalent Chromium which is deadly – just look for the green coming off of the spoon/whatever and RUN!
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The solution you place these two items into should be a mixture of 2 parts baking soda (not baking powder) and one part UNIODISED salt. It doesn't take much – about half a teaspoon of salt to a full teaspoon of baking soda in 10 ounces of water is plenty. Now I have heard some pretty weird voltaic solutions to use for this process: Antifreeze, Laundry detergent, lemon juice etc, etc. What you are basically making is a weak battery conductive solution and simple saltwater will work just fine (and it's cheap).
Make sure your positive pole (steel/carbon) is far enough away from your negative pole (relic/coin) to not touch/short circuit and place them into the solution. Plug in/switch on the DC power supply and look for some tiny bubbles coming off your coin relic. If it's really rusty, you may have to scrape some off to make a good connection - and YES, your positive electrode will emit bubbles too so don't use that as a way to tell if you have it hooked up right. What happens if it's hooked up wrong? Nothing... You'll just be using your relic/coin as the waist material or cathode and it will begin to disintergrate...not good.
And there you have it – you can leave the item in as long as you need to get it clean. WARNING! This can destroy your coin or relic if left unattended for too long...be careful and good luck.
