My latest YouTube videos explore simple fast at home DIY restoration of rusted hand tools!
1 Restoring a Tool; Removing Rust, Nickel Electroplating, & Lubricating https://youtu.be/pxRoe2gnrNM
Making something old & rusty like new again seems cool for a lot of reasons! I like restoration & love electroplating & using electricity in welding, in electric motors, in lamps & bulbs, in appliances, in electric vehicles, in batteries, I think electricity particularly special when the energy encoded with information for the internet & to facilitate online commerce on the World Wide Web networks of commuters connecting peoples minds to products & services of all kinds in new emergent ways with no historical parallel. Its an exciting time to be alive as the world electrifies more to give every human person alive the benefits of a 6KW lifestyle :) FTW
Outside 24/7/365 Many common metals will corrode! Copper makes this cool colorful oxide called patina that makes an antique copper roof look exceptionally beautiful for example! Given copper prices, a copper roof runs a price premium these days :P I love the thermal & electrical conductivity of copper wires & think they are extra nifty as such when electroplated with nickel or gold!
Water, salt, oxygen, real world conditions often cause corrosion of vehicles, steel tools, some kinds of infrastructure & many kind of building materials. Specially the use of NaCl or sodium chloride or common salt to roadways as a deicer in winter weather, a major source of automotive corrosion by helping water & oxygen to rust iron alloys & steel alloys common in the majority of passenger cars & road going vehicles of all kinds, mainly because steel offers automakers excellent cost to strength ratio as a material, even though its prone to corroding or rusting.
Automakers dip, coat, electroplate, powder coat, paint, clear coat & do as many as 5 & sometimes 8 or more layers of coatings to reduce corrosion of the vehicles they produce. Modern polyurethane paints & clear coats are very effective at preventing rust from forming on the vehicles primarily steel materials, as most automobiles are primarily made of iron alloys, specifically many grades of steels, often welded together by robots. Automobile seams & gaps are filled with sealants like silicone calk, applied by robots, that also apply many other kinds of adhesives, gasket materials, coatings, paints, and protectants that are added to prevent water ingress, and to reduce noise vibration or harshness or NVH; to seal air so as to reduce cold air drafts from air pressure created as the vehicle moves at highway speeds & to improve the effectiveness & efficiency of air conditioning by sealing hot air out in summer conditions while the AC removes air heat energy from the cabin. Sealing the car correctly also keeps air pollutants out, so the HVAC systems filters can clean up particulate, soot & other pollutants from the cabin air to protect the driver and occupants lungs & respiratory system.
Adding chrome & nickel & silicon & vanadium & scandium & other alloying elements to iron can be done to produce stainless steel alloys, with vary levels of corrosion resistance, the best metal to resist corrosion that I know is platinum, rhodium, palladium, gold, Inconel 718 alloy and a few other super alloys of nickel & cobalt specifically and nickel copper alloys used in marine applications where salt water really problematic in terms of corroding non corrosion resistant metals.
Electroplating chrome onto steel, cadmium onto steel, nickel onto steel, there are ways of adding corrosion protection to steel, like galvanizing with zinc. Having some professional work experience with commercial electroplating, I first strip my rusted tools with a baking soda & water bath where I use a nickel strip anode, often many small strips of nickel hanging from a copper wire, as the + anode that emits electrons into the solution, enabling ion movement that are attracted to the part, in theses cases iron alloy parts that are rusted such that oxides of iron are reduced & removed, leaving a nice clean metallic surface beneath.
I then use a nickel plating bath made by using a nickel strip anode & cathode in an acetic acid or white vinegar & salt solution. The nickel bath turns a beautiful green color as the nickel ions enter the acidic solution. After the nickel bath flooded with nickel ions, I attach the the tool that's been cleaned of rust in order to electroplate a layer of nickel over the tool to act as a corrosion prevention layer. When the parts is attached to the negative - cathode cable from the variable DC power supply, nickel ions in the plating solution are attracted by electromotive forces & deposits nickel metal onto the surface of the tooling. Electrolyzing iron & steel with nickel provides an excellent corrosion resistance so the tool does not easily rust, even when exposed to salt water spray.
I really like watching "Restoration Videos" on YouTube. I think its cool & interesting entertaining to watch someone bring new life to something old. I really like watching antique tools & appliances being restored to like new conditions. There are many restoration videos to watch online, so I started making some on my YouTube channel as a tribute to my interest in this videos & to restore common hand tools that I regularly use in my garage for other at home DIY projects. In a way, sorta metal to use tools to restore tools that I use in restoration, like a feedback loop. I briefly worked at a professional electroplating shop that primarily worked on restoring antique vehicles parts, parts that are hard to find new, for rare low volume vehicles or for which original parts can only be restored since no original parts are available anymore.
Think vehicles from the 1940's, where most of the new vehicles produced back then are long gone, rusted away, scraped or recycled, destroyed in accidents or by natural hazards & disasters or war. It was hard work with the sand blaster all day long, maintaining the caustic & acidic cleaning baths & plating baths. I ended up getting really sick while working there & had to resign because of health problems. Blood tests showed that I had acute heavy metal toxicity problems from not using PPE correctly, getting ionized metal fluids on my hands & arms regularly, from the fumes & other solvents, it was just an unhealthy workplace & even the owner himself died of cancer. He had smoked cigarettes for years & was a regularly consumer of alcohol, so perhaps the cancer was not just from the heavy metals. It is called Queen City Plating & it's still around, being operated today by his widow, his daughter from a previous marriage & her boyfriend respectively. I wish them all well, but will never return! Perhaps it was the chlorates he was exposed to while making fireworks in his shop as a hobby that gave him cancer, or maybe it was some of all of the above, only God knows for sure!
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