I gotta admit Bill, I've never tried the electrolysis method. The discussions pop up a couple times a month and when the do the opinions are all over the place, good, bad, slow, leaves residue that has to be scrubbed when it comes out of the bath, works with a batter, doesn't work with a batter, high current required, needed to have one of those big $200 gas station battery chargers, uses mole asses, laundry soap, borax, soda ash, baking soda, soda pop, and that's just a few of the things that I've seen posted.
The phosphoric I was using from Behr was fast, removes rust, removes plating such as zinc, nickel and cad. Leave the part in over night and even the paint will begin to flake off. Best thing that I've found in my 69 years and I've been playing with old rusty junk since I was just a sprout in diapers because of me pop and big bro.
And as you mentioned, out of the bath rinse it with a hose and it's ready to paint or plate. All of these parts went into the phosphoric for various times and came out ready to go the cadmium plater:
http://www.pbase.com/dennygraham/image/133951157 And for some reason I don't seem to be as afraid to use this stuff as I am of muratic or sulfuric acids. From what I've heard dilute it down enough and you can drink it. Should be obvious that I never took a chemistry course and I don't understand acids or things like cyanide. I've had several very expensive plating kits form Caswell here for nearly a decade and I've been afraid to mix them up because I don't understand the chemistry, and have never gotten an answer to the question of, how to dispose of it when I want to. We have no city or county collection programs around here, guess most people just dump their hasardist waste in the drive or out on some back road. I just taint about to do that.
Duda, duda day!!! Yep, by the gallon it's pretty expensive, bout twice as much as Klean-Strip, but....Klean-Strip is half the concentration so I guess it comes out about the same cept for shipping. They also have a 15 gallon container which is food grade 85%, which would come out to $20 a gallon before you add in the truck freight charges, which I'll bet are a bunch.
Ok, gotta go, my paint should be dry enough for me to move my gravel pan back into the garage.
DG
