Putting Electrolysis To The Test! | Rusty Vice Restoration 

Dom, science teacher here, remember PANIC (Positive Anode, Negative is Cathode)

You may have spent a bit of money but your vice is still better quality than many on the market.

I can tell you that vice is a Parkinsons Model F Perfect No 8. An excellent item, the design of which eventually became the Record vice. Probably dates to around 1920.

I have a deep appreciation, for anyone who truly restores an item. Being it vices, anvils, air guns or actual mistreated firearms. Youre truly saving history from destruction. Yard ornaments, use a dumped over wheelbarrow, with flowers spilled out.

Dominic you need to wrap the vice or any object in soft steel wire which can be retained by a piece of wood across the top of the tank. You were correct in cleaning the sacrificial steel electrodes. The electrolyte should still. The vice should have taken about a week to clean in the tank. Keep cleaning the sacrificial electrodes every 24 hours. Electrolysis would have freed the vice without the need for brute force. The vice also needed to have been sat on wood or plastic blocks in the tank, so the current can flow from all surfaces. If the object is too big, then turn the object over in the tank half way through the process, to ensure it gets cleaned evenly.

Dom, what did you learn from this, A LOT. A vice of that quality today would cost you a fortune, and you’ve reclaimed one from the scrap heap well done 👍

Brilliant, I love to see old things brought back to life. Watching you videos Dom is like having a good time with your mates.

Brillaint video again Dom, thank for sharing.

Your knowledge on all this stuff never fails to impress, great job dom

Great show - pragmatic, honest, perfect! Real TV at last! You rock!

Great job Dom. looking forward to the next one.

I swear that's my old vice... I sold it to someone years ago and forgot all about it. Good to see it restored! Good job Dom. Try Evaporust next time. It's not cheap but it gets into every nook and cranny.

Cracking job as always Dom , looking forward to seeing the next video , All the very best mate 👍

Terrific. I am amazed that such a rusty vice could be brought back to life.

I love your enthusiasm and energy, Dom. And I get overexcited and put things together in the wrong order too, so you are not alone. Thanks for sharing, and for your honesty 🌞

Great to find a vid about this with someone explaining the ins and outs of the process while they restore something. Thanks.

Brilliant job Dom, and so interesting. Well done mate 👍🏻😊🇬🇧

Great video! Love the effort and following through. Thanks for the share!

That was a very interesting video, Dom. Thank you for posting it.

Looks great! your enthusiasm fizzes more than electrolysis! Classic English vice & a modern synthetic Owatrol finish - an alkyd oil too 💥 beautiful.

great video dom! love the honesty! great recommendation for the bare metal protection, added to shopping cart! 👍

It’s an absolute joy to see the vice in full working order now Dom, congratulations 👍🙂

Another great video Dominic,love it keep them coming 😎🤗

Love it when a project takes a bit of a turn, you always end up learning so much going places you never thought you were gonna go. Looks great and saved from the scrap heap. Well done!

Well done! Great video mate. Loving the electrolysis content.

Amazing job well done Dom. I love your determination and perseverance, which pays off every time 🥰😍

Well done Dom (and your bro'). Glad you got it done by using multiple methods, brute force & informed knowledge. Turned out beautifully and for what it cost, will be a really useful tool for many years to come. I hope that you enjoy it every time you put it to good use.

A lovely job, nice one Dom.

Another brilliant video Dom thanks a lot more please 🔩⚒🇬🇧

A great watch Dom! Was interested to see how it would turn out. I used to work in a small electroplating company a few years back, and have a understanding of the process!

Great video Dom, and thank you. It’s good to see these great pieces of engineering being returned to service. It’s not until you have used a good quality vice do you really appreciate it. Your video clearly shows the Achilles heel of the electrolysis technique is the electrolyte needs to wet the surfaces. Works well though!

Always interesting and entertaining Dom, excellent!

Great video. Repair Shop got pulled from all streaming services in the US, so I came to You Tube. Glad I found you!

Thanks for sharing your vice Dom! 😁

Great restoration Dom, keep um comin Mate & Stay Safe !!!.

Nice work. A big old vice like that will literally last for centuries if it's looked after. It's a damned shame when this stuff is left to rust. I like your approach of blacking it up with oil and using it for its intended purpose. The whole flawless painted finish approach is ridiculous on a piece of engineering equipment.

Brilliant vice restoration Dom .can't wait for the porsche restoration

That's phenomenal. I have an old vice in the garage that belonged to my grandfather. He's been dead for 35 years and the vice is really rusty but it still operates. Your video has given me the encouragement to clean it up and give it a bit of well deserved TLC after what must be 80 years of use.

Hi Dom Well that is a nice vice & all things worked but in different way. Well done Dom shows what can be done to rebuild rather than throwing away. Take care.

Nice work sir. Love your enthusiasm

Love it, love it, love it. Great job on the vice and great video. Brought back memories of touring the Record factory in Sheffield in about 1981 and seeing their Disamatic casting line in action.

Brilliant Dom .. I genuinely look forward to your blogs

Brilliant video Dom- much better than watching paint dry - The electrolysis helped heaps in getting the vice almost ready to fall apart, with a bit of elbow grease and a big hammer and your brother's help 👌😊 Vice now sorted and ready for action again - looking forward to next week's video 😊

Love it, you did the same in The Repair Shop, I just caught up with that episode yesterday!!

Great informative video. Nice to see some British heritage preserved. Now bring on the Coffee Rover ! Can’t wait to see this finished.

Nice vice restoration. Great video thumbs up.

Found these vids today. Really helpful and vastly more entertaining than the silent types. Thanks.

Hey Dom it is so nice seeing you do this and showing your mistakes , well they are not mistakes your learning Top bloke that vice would cost an arm and a leg and worth so much now its usable well done great stuff..older tools are worth there weight in gold.

Great work! I really enjoyed this!

Nice one Dom, a fantastic lesson and I love learning, thank you, regards, Chris. 🍻👍👍👍

That is now a thing of beauty, very well done, wonderful watching the process, and how lovely the vice is now. I am sure that a new one would be wildly more expensive than the ?£100 you have spent on parts. Also you have a piece of history to treasure. Awesome.

Really enjoyable video Dom .....cheers 👍

Great job Don.

Absolutely brilliant as usual.

Cracking job, Dom! Well done!

Nice one Dom. You have shone all, real life experience in this restoration .Thank you.

Love your enthusiasm

Loved that! Did a similar vice restoration myself and know it's a labour of love! Great tip with the Owatrol oil. Shall give that a go next time.

Brilliant job Dom. Great to see a wonderful piece of British engineering, rescued.👍🏻👏🏻

Dom. A thing of beauty.

Dom, Superb video. I like your very honest approach. It does show you can clean heavy rust off large pieces of cast iron and steel to good effect. I think Owatrol owes you - I've just bought some for all my old and new tools. I also have a few very old French axe heads I want to salvage. I'm inspired !

Great job and brought the vice back to a useful life again. Thanks.

Really glad you did this video! My vice has been waiting to be restored and the extra tips you gave will be really helpful, thanks! 😀👍🏻 *buys more crocodile clips

Thanks Dom... love your vlogs- you remind me of my father-in-law. He was a kind and helpful man who enjoyed making broken things work again too!

Love you're work from New Zealand

Great video Dom. Electrolysis is fascinating…probably a bit much for the old vice. I think that with connecting the dodgy bits to the wires it could have worked. Not a failure either bud, look at the cracking vice you now have bolted to your workbench! I look forward to the next video. Thank you

Really enjoyed watching that!

Spot on Mate. Just ordered a tin of the Owatrol, will give it a blast!

A very entertaining video ,great result.👍👍👍

Nice work Dom.

2 videos ago, I also restored a rusty vise, but a tiny one! I used a DIY cream (beeswax + linseed oil + turpentine) to protect it from rusting, that seems to be working fine as well, but only time will tell! :) I really like the look of those guys, without paint. Your video was very interesting to watch, thank you!

What a joyous channel this is!

Great vid Dom

How great it is Dominic! To see the result of your experience 😂🎉🎉 Thanks again!!!💪👍👌 Mistakes do happen when you try something 😂

Well done Don,interesting video.👍👍

You look just like the guy on the BBC show, "The Repair Shop." I use electrolysis all of the time on my car restoration. Great tool for eliminating rust.

Really great rescue! I bought sodium carbonate for laundry purposes. It's often sold as, "Washing Soda". I relate the -ve terminal as cathode and the +ve as anode. That ring completion as suggested by your brother is good because it reduces the accumulated contact resistance of all the daisy-chained crock-clip connections (and that of the wire) as seen by the last anode in the chain, so the furthest is now the one at the opposing end of the tank which now sees half the resistance it saw before (because there are twice the number of current paths to it). This is similar to cathodic protection of boat hulls.

I did a quick check and an equivalent vice, Irwin T25 was around 460 quid so I think it was well worth the effort. Great video Dom.👍

Hey Dom - I helped a neighbour with a garage clear out and won myself two 6/12 volt car battery chargers! Electrolysis here we come! Thinking a trip to the market for rusty tools then see what we can do with them .... maybe a piece of art even!

Wow, great job, good to watch. Keep up the good work.

Love You showing how to bring back the vice back to life Dom. My entire tool kit is from Ebay and car boot sales. George.

So interesting. I have that very same vice, which I inherited from my late father. I am not sure how old it is, but I have known it for almost 60 years myself. Mine has seen a lot of service over the years. It is still in pretty good condition. It is an amazingly strong and useful vice, and, in an odd way, feels like an old friend.

Love it! Thanks Dom 👍

Well done and very informative 😊

I used this method today to clean a metal coolant pipe of my BMW E30. The results amazed me!!!! I how to do it here, thanks. I'm now derusting a big pulley off some old machine. Next the old railway sign frame. Love it!!!

Big D. I was literally just thinking last night whilst watching your vespa videos, I wonder 🤔 when you will do the vice video, and here it is. Great video...

I've used exactly your setup for rust removal during many, many restoration projects. Electrolysis is a win-win-win solution for a restorer. It has saved me hours of time, not to mention the cost, of wire brushing, grinding, heating with torches, and banging away with hammers. I haven't had to buy any expensive rust-removal chemicals (or dispose of them when they wear out). I haven't had to use vinegar, salt, or muriatic acid, and have avoided both the cost and the disposal of those corrosive "cleaners." My very first restoration with electyrolysis was exactly the same as yours: a rusted, seized up vise. To carry current to all the parts, I wrapped it tightly in about two meters of bare, #14 copper wire that contacted all parts as much as possible. I sanded to bare metal whenever possible, to enhance the connections, then wired it up to a small DC power supply at 12V and 2 amps. It sat in its bath for a week. Every day I'd skim the brown, foamy crud off the surface. Then I'd turn off the current and reach into the completely non-toxic electrolytic bath to lightly brush the black scum off the anvil and the rust off the sacrificial steel, without any disassembly of the setup or removing the vise. Doing this cleaning took about two minutes a day, and in a week I never had to change the solution or add washing soda; all I had to do was top up the water a few times. The entire process, from setup, through daily quick-cleaning, and to the very end took me less than two hours and cost me USD$5 for washing soda and about USD$3 for electricity. I finally ended the process when all bubbling and scum-formation finally ceased. I removed the vise and cleaned it in warm, soapy water then turned the handle. It was freed up! There was plenty more to be done, but electrolysis was a tremendous labor saver. The hardest part of the process was maintaining my patience. In the end, it was, as I said, a win-win-win solution to rust removal during a restoration. I hope you do more of these.

Absolutely brilliant

Wonderful restoration. I have tons of tools that I have restored over the years. Mostly small steel hand tools. I have also found that a nice paint job on an old tool looks out of place on a piece of history such as an old tool. I have a fetish for hammers. Thanks to you I can enter the next chapter in my quest for restoring tools that the next generation can enjoy. Many many thanks.

Nice job Dom. Years ago I worked in a gearbox factory (in the offices) and if the guys had something like that they would drop it into a tank of old automatic transmission fluid for a couple of weeks. That seemed to free up anything! The most difficult part of the operation was to try and forget it and not keep getting it out to fiddle with it. They also had a tank of lanolin which they steeped large metal objects in. That seemed to find its way into all the little crevasses and prevent rust forming.

Dom, I was planning to do exactly this to four vises. You kept me from spending a lot of money, time and effort. Dissasemble, degrease, electrolysis, wash, polisher, chemical protection, reassemble! Thank you, now I know how to do it correctly.

Old tools are Awesome you safed one sheers mate love it ! Patina looks good .

If that's the only vice you have trouble with in your life Dom, you are a lucky man my friend 👍🇬🇧...

Think you`ll find you have an aircraft engineers vice there. Nice to see honesty and cockups for a change that we all experience .

great video , i have very old plumbers stilsons 24 inch , looked fit fr the skip very rusty and ceased, electrolysis tank has made them look like new , wooow

I learned a TON of information from this!

Superb!!! Really relaxing and deeply satisfying film to watch.

I restored my dad's Paramo No5 vice and bought new jaws made by a guy who sells on ebay. Love the bare metal look on yours.

Anode...cathode....schmathode !. Call them 'lecky bits' and all us non-worthy subscribers will know what you mean !. Loved this video and never apologise for your mistakes as its your down to earth honesty and enthusiasm for your craft that makes watching this channel so enjoyable Dom.

Great video, loved it.