Battery Electrolysis

 

The best way to speed up the electrolytic cleaning process is with electricity. This can be done several ways and each will be explained here. To get you used to it it is suggested that you start with a small battery, 1.5 volts will do just fine, and a stainless steel paperclip. Paper clip must by stainless, and that is the only thing that must be absolutely adhered to, or the reaction will not work correctly.

Find the positive and negative sides of the battery and attach small diameter copper wires to each end, about 12 inches long. You can tape the wires on as long as the connection is good. The thickness of the wire should be about as big around as a straight pin, or smaller.

Next get a glass jar (Pint or Quart) and fill about 2/3 of the way full of warm salt water. The amount of salt is not too important but try to keep it around a teaspoon per quart.  It needs to be "In Solution" so stir the warm water until the salt dissolves.

Now take an uncleaned coin and "Wire it" by wrapping some copper wire around it a few times so it is in its own wire basket. Make a loop at the top of this wire basket and attach that loop to the wire coming from the negative side of the battery. Of course you need wire against wire so that electricity flows. This may entail removing the insulation at the ends of your wires if the wire is plastic coated. Many times this can be accomplished with a lighter. Heat the end of the wire until the plastic starts to bubble, wait a few seconds, then pull the insulation off. Be careful not to burn yourself. Rubber gloves are nice and should be worn throughout the entire operation, if possible.

Next wire the positive wire from your battery to the stainless steel paper clip. Twist the positive wire from your battery around one end of the clip.

Now immerse both in your glass of salt water. The wire holder and the coin will begin to bubble immediately. The bubbles will be very small. If the paperclip is bubbling the polaritys are reversed on your wiring.  After about an hourof this treatment, maybe more, maybe less, depending on the size of the coin and the power of the battery, the coin itself will be bubbling over its entire surface. When it appears that bubbles are coming from the entire coins surface, that means the coin is conducting electricity. Electrons from the coin are going into the electrolyte (Salt Water). As these electrons move they totally loosen any dirt or encrustation between the surface of the coin, and the solution.    The hard caked on dirt of the ages has now been turned to mud. You can then pick and brush the coin without damaging it, and all the dirt will have literally become separated from the metal.

 

Transformer Electrolysis

To further empower an electrolytic reaction/cleaning process, all that is needed is a more powerful source of Direct Current Electricity, from a transformer. The small black transformer units (AC Adaptors) that plug into a 120V outlets, which supply power for things like telephones, answering machines, and computer printers are ideal for this purpose. These are readily available, and inexpensive, at any fleamarket or thrift shop, and I think its safe to say that many of you readers probably have a few laying around the house, orphaned from a piece of equipment that ceased to function. Most of these types of plug-in transformers are DC, Direct Current, and that is what we are after. Read the label and make sure though, because there are a few made whose output is odd, like 3 volts AC. Get DC, and use voltages between 4-8 volts, for most operations. Even if you decide to do multiple coins in mesh baskets later, its not the voltage you will want to increase, but the the current, the amperage. The Current is usually measured in milliamps, 1000ths of an amp, and there are some of these small transformers rated up to 500 milliamps or higher, which of course is half an amp or higher.

Be Careful.

If you try to learn to only touch the electrical work with one hand at a time, you reduce your risk of getting hurt by electricity by 90% or more. These currents and voltages are minimal, but you can get shocked, and thats never pleasant.  Usually its a short from the AC side that hurts the most, and that will get your attention 'bout quick.

These small plug in transformers come in a true variety of shapes, sizes, and values. You are looking for something from 4-8 volts DC, 100 to 400 milliamps. Anything in that spectrum will work fine for a quart to 5-quart bath.

Once you get a suitable transformer (I like 6-8 volts, 300-400milliamp) clip the plug off the end of the transformers output wire, which is the wire you actually plugged into the original device to make it work. A pair of scissors works fine for this. Then separate the two output wires by pulling them apart. Separate them down the wire about 8-10 inches or so. Sometimes there is only one wire evident during this operation, and in that case it needs to be stripped, and there will be two wires inside the covering. There has to be two wires, even if one is very thin. The transformer, of course, should be unplugged during all the above operations, and not plugged in at all until everything is in place.

Next, obtain a 1/2 gallon or so Plastic or Glass container and fill it about 2/3 full of salt water. Warm water is better, but not entirely necessary. Add about 1 teaspoon table salt per quart of water, and stir so that the salt dissolves, going into solution. This is your electrolytic bath, the electrolyte. Plain table salt, iodized salt, works best. The saltwater solution, the electrolyte, will get very cloudy as the process components  spend themselves, and again you should prepare against this with rubber gloves. Here is something you need to know when considering safety first:

***From Popular Science Library, Electricity and Magnetism, Copyright 1922: "...The manufacture of many of the caustics....are a phase of this art" (Electrolysis).  Caustics are corrosive and will burn your skin.

Wear Gloves, Be Careful.

Now instead of a battery as a power source, you have the transformer. You will want to hook up the positive side of the transformer wire to a piece of stainless steel, like a butter knife; again, this material MUST be stainless, and stainless butter knives can be had surplus at all thrift shops for about 5 cents each. It is good that these are plentiful, and cheap too, because they eventually dissolve during electrolytic reaction. If you can't tell which is positive, and which is negative, it is easy to see once the power is turned on.  If the coin holder/coin is not bubbling but the butterknife is, just reverse the wires from the power source to each.

Now repeat what was done during the battery experiment, but instead of using the wires that were attached to the battery, you will be using the wires coming out of the 6 volt transformer.

I usually just strip the plastic coating from my wires, about two or three inches off the ends, then twist the bare wires around the stainless object I am utilizing (The butter knife), and the wire basket of the Object to be cleaned. Alligator clips are handy to have around for jobs like this, too, although they eventually get pretty cruddy, and will break. Try to keep the connection (Where you have twisted your wires together) out of the electrolytic bath.  It will last longer that way.  Whatever metal hits the bath is going to get chewed.

The coin, or object to be cleaned, now gets attached to theNegative end of your power source. When the stainless steel and the metallic object being cleaned are immersed together in the salt water solution, NOT TOUCHING each other, anode and cathode are created, in electrolyte, and all that that portends. When electricity is applied, by plugging the transfomer in, a healthy current begins to flow between these two electrical entities, through the electrolyte (Salt water), and quite a number of things begin to occur simultaneously, one of those things being the cleaning of your coin or artifact. Electrons are being swapped about all over the place! Once this operation is going you must always think Safety First! Though chemical free at the outset, the process will eventually render its components into new and possibly harmful materials.

One of these by-products produced during this type of operation is Hydrogen Gas.

HYDROGEN GAS IS VOLATILE AND EXPLOSIVE!!!!!