I know you’ve all been on the edge of your seats wondering whether the Mark II tank was going to get running, be a big flop, or possibly brown out the entire neighbourhood…. Well,
The wait is OVER!
Here it is, all filled up, with the washings soda added! No leaks! (Whew!) Substantially more water than the Mark I tank, 27 gallons to be exact… So, just a bit under 3 cups of washing soda, using the approximation of 1/2 cup per 5 gallons. Can’t find my toilet brush from last year, so I made do with a snow brush for trying to stir it all in…
I decided I was a bit nervous about placing the threaded rod so close to the electrodes, what with the possibility of causing a short if I bumped the rod at all, so I figured I’d use some of my major-sized heat-shrink and heat-shrink the ends of the rod…
Here’s the other end. The rod fits nicely lengthwise, so it should let me hang a number of things…
I was STILL kinda nervous about not having a way to secure that rod into place, so I MacGyver-ed something up… two 4″ chunks of primed baseboards (it was a cutoff I had lying around) fit just perfectly into two slots that had been moulded into the edge of the tote (for what reason, I have no idea)… A few minutes with my round rat-tail file to make some nice divots in each, and I feel MUCH better
Almost ready to go! You can’t see it in the cloudy water, but I suspended both the lid and the pot from the rod… The nuts and plate washers seem to work pretty darn well for holding the heavy gage copper wire…
Ran my extension cord and set up the battery charger… And…
made my connections… Pos to the electrodes in the tank, neg to the rod suspending the cast iron…
Just add power! A good steady three amps!
And what’s a trial without a movie?!?!
httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKx3dnQjz9E
I’ll go out in a bit, once I thaw out totally, to see how it looks….
Well, after an hour, it looks like this!
And its drawing even more current!
Awesome! Is there a “before” pic of the pot?