Cleaning up Somme ground-dug 303 Great War SAA.

[Roger Payne]

Yes, I agree. I do mine in the garage & I periodically open the door, although it's pretty draughty in there anyway! On occasions I have bead blasted the rust off a partially used up anode. It 'refreshes' it by taking it back to bare metal.

Cleaned up a nice round with the Government Cartridge Factory No3 headstamp earlier. Not exceptionally rare, but a little less common than Kynoch, Greenwood & Batley & so on. 1917 dated & probably a Hindenburg Line find. I gather the site of Factory No3 was resurrected in WW2 to become the Blackpole ammunition factory.

Following on from earlier comments, Kynoch cases are also rather prone to neck splits, although both Kings Norton & Rudge Whitworth seem to have produced (or sourced) excellent quality brass. Only anecdotal I know..........

With two thousand rounds of dug up ammo & my electrolysis kit set up, those long winter's nights are simply flying by! (Apologies to Captain Edmund Blackadder).

[Flying10uk]

gas given off is hydrogen

It is because electricity is being passed through water which contains hydrogen and oxygen, i.e. H2 O, 2 parts hydrogen to 1 part oxygen.

Doing the electrolysis process outside is just being cautious in order to avoid the possibility of the build up of dangerous gases in a confined area.

[Cottage Hill Bill]

Roger, glad to see the post on electrolysis. Along with firearms and militaria one of my other collecting interests is Gas Pressure Appliances (GPAs). Think camping lanterns and stoves. I've used electrolysis for 30+ years for cleaning all sorts of bits, mostly ferrous items. It is a simple, safe way of cleaning badly rusted items. I've often thought it would work well for relic condition finds of bayonets or firearms. First let me address the hydrogen myth. Yes electrolysis generates hydrogen, however, hydrogen is very, very hard to accumulate in dangerous quantities. There is absolutely no way you're going to get enough to cause any kind of explosion, even if you put a plastic bag over your set up and try to catch hydrogen. Try it yourself, strike a match directly over your electrolysis bucket. At most you get a faint pop, more commonly you get absolutely nothing.

Here is my current setup
Attachment 112477
The power supplies are old laptop power bricks. Older car chargers work well. New car chargers have sensors that will cause them to switch off unless you connect them to a battery and the battery to the electrolysis set up. The great thing about the process is you can crank it up and forget it. Come back in a day or two, take the part out, rinse with some clear water then clean with a bit of steel wool or wire brush or wheel.
Here are some bits I dug up in my backyard. You can see from the pitting how very rusty they were. Something else I like about the process is you can control the amount of cleaning. I rather like the dark grey color of these. A bit longer in the tank and a little more aggressive polishing and they could be shiny bright.
Attachment 112479
A little coat of Renaissance Wax and a buff and you're done. I've found used lawn mower blades to be excellent sacrificial anodes. You can get more life and better results by periodically cleaning the anode. As they build up waste material it increases resistance which degrades the process. It's all about current flow. I either take the anodes out, scrape off as much gunk as I can, then once dry run them past a wire wheel to get back to bare metal. You can also suspend another anode in place of the work piece (I use a tin can) and reverse the polarity on your setup. Now your sacrificial anodes are the work piece. Just don't forget to switch the + and - back the right way before starting a new workpiece.

This is a great process for cleaning up any old stuff. If a workpiece has too much resistance for your power supply, just add another power supply. That's why I like the laptop bricks, I can just keep hooking them to the setup.

I hope this has been helpful.

[Roger Payne]

Many thanks Bill. You're clearly quite experienced at all this. In fact it was a Canadian friend & fellow forummer that told me about electrolysis about twenty five years ago, around the time that I first started visiting the wartime battlefields regularly. I still have the faxed copy (remember faxes?) of the archaeology magazine that he culled it from, somewhere, though it's pretty faded now....!

I mainly clean up 303 ammunition, but have cleaned the odd Mills outer casing (empty) as well, plus a few sundry other bits & pieces recovered over the years. I've never been disappointed with the results, though as you say, it takes time, so is best if you just set it up & go off & do something else & come back later/tomorrow.