Stop in for a cup of coffee
I feel I may have set you off, Bill. I apologize, that was not my intent. Dave set the record straight on the whole chromium issue. But don't weld it without PPE and good ventilation!
As far as plastic goes, They sure do contain a lot of stuff that affects us, most notably the hormone affecting substances used to soften plastics.
Electrolysis rust removal is pretty effective but you need to consider two things:
1. the current needs to be pretty high to get any sort of efficiency.
2. It works pretty much "line of sight", meaning that only the surfaces that are facing the sacrificial anode get efficiently de-rusted.
A very good method is to submerge the part in noe part molasses and five to ten parts water. It's slow but works really, really well and is pretty non-toxic. Stinks, tho.
Well, here is the deal, I am a bit hot headed. I am part Sami (Lappish), 8% Finish, some Swedish, most Norwegian and then on top of it I am 5% Irish/Scottish. No wonder I am confused.
Ok, to the rust removing. I am just in general very frustrated because of all the dooms day prophets out there. Governments are born dooms day prophets, and then you have all the private organizations that has made it their goal to rip apart every element in the periodic table and suggest not to use the one "I" think is bad for mankind. It is a game, and the dooms days prophets including the governments are using it for economy reasons. If we ban that element now, then something has to be done, and we can earn a little more money, and oh we are sorry, that element was not as bad as we thought, but now there is another one... and that is pretty much how it goes. That said, there is obviously a lot of unhealthy stuff out there, but as with everything else, some see it as an opportunity to gain money from the whole thing and start hunting for a riot.
This makes children and grown ups worried, we panic, gets hysterical, and all kind of other reactions we may have when someone tells us that an element is so dangerous that the entire planet will evaporate soon.
So, my point was that we need to calm down, my self included and look at how things are. Are we already exposed to this element in other ways. You know as well as I do that humans are not very willing to give up our lifestyle. Some demand to get a new smart phone every year, and if not, they are in tears. And the list goes on after what we are interested in.
The world is on the wrong track in my opinion with all this environment talk. Humans have created a problem for the environment, but instead of fixing what caused the problem, we want to fix the environment. No one is willing to go back to the 1960ties. Today's people wants convenience. And the convenient thing is to toss the TV, or the car, and get a new one. Not to have it repaired. Oh my, have you repaired your TV ? Because repairing things indicates that we are a little poor and can not afford a new one. And that creates shame, and the environment suffers from this shame thing. Cars today, they are hard to repair, always a box to replace. In the 1960ties you could open the box, and see what was wrong and maybe fix it, not always, but many times. Today the box is very complicated, and you can not open it, and you can not use a box for a different car, only that year and model can use it. Someone stop making it, and you have to toss the car. The impact on the environment is devastated from this way of thinking.
In my opinion the world should focus on using as little resources as possible. Then the environment will fix itself, because this planet is good at doing that if things are kept on a decent level and not on overload all the time.
Now to the stainless steel I have been using in the rust removing. I have used marine quality stainless steel, polished sheet metal, equivalent to 316L quality. Then I have had it in a 55 gallon plastic barrel, with water and soda. And when done with a rust removing, I have let the barrel sit there with the water and soda in until the next time I needed it. When the winter came it had evaporated to just half full, I let it freeze, and in the spring it melted again, I added more water, and used it again.
Most of the rust falls to the bottom of the barrel, but a little manage to go over to the stainless steel plates and after a long time cover them in something brownish. If I had used something else than stainless steel I could not have done it this way having a permanent setup because the anodes would have corroded and not been useful the next time I wanted to use it.
I read about this a long time ago online, it was a professor in chemistry who had written the article, and it was a lot of pictures there showing what he did. He used stainless steel, and so did I. This article is now gone, I can not find it online anymore, but a lot of yahoos have written new articles about it and in capital letters warning people not to use stainless steel.
As for the power, the processor stated that the best was to use 2 milliampere per square inch I think it was, but up to 3 milliampere could be used. However, if 2 milliampere is used, the process will be so slow that some of the FE atoms will reattach to the base metal. If more power is used the process will go too fast, and all the rust will just fall off and be gone.
When the part is free of rust, it is black in color. This black color has to be removed physically, and then it is bare metal under it. The part also have to be flushed in water, and placed somewhere to dry. I always let the parts dry with the black coating on, then it did not rust until it was dry. A wirebrush took the black stuff off.
I have forgotten how much soda was used, but I think I had about a quart (4 cups) of soda in let us say 45 gallons of water.
When turning on the power you will see bubbles coming from the rusty part, which is the indication that the entire thing is working. It is a slow process, so I often let it go over night until the next day.
So, this is what I did, and I will not recommend anyone doing this so they don't get in trouble with the dooms day prophets which both include the government and the private organizations because I am sure they will come up with something bad about it. Mostly I think it is out of jealousy.
Bill