Oxalic Tips
Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2007 10:13 am
#1) Wear Gloves!
Believe it or not, you can leave your cans in Oxalic acid for days - without them turning green, if you keep them out of the sunlight. I put some cans in Thursday night and just took them out on Sunday night. They were in my garage the whole time. Granted, had they been something I really cared about, I wouldn't of left them for that length of time. Most were mystery cans and they did clean up OK.
Hot acid is best for cans fresh out of the dump. We usually mix anywhere from a half a coffee cup to a cup of acid to a 3 gallon bucket. Buckets with handles are good to mix your acid in, because they are easy to move. If you use a cooler or cat litter box, it's too heavy and/or likely to spill.
I check cans about every hour and do a quick scrub with a tooth brush to remove some of the dirt and crud. If I have some really rare dumpers soaking, I will pull them out after 2 hours or so. I'll give them a good scrub and then they go into a bucket of fresh water and I stick the garden hose in that bucket with the flow at a trickle - this way fresh water is going into the bucket the whole time. After about a half an hour, I take them out to dry.
Most cans will need an additional acid bath. The first soaking gets rid of the easy stuff. The second soaking can bring the can up another half a grade or so.
I normally soak all my cans overnight, but the nice thing about oxalic, is you dont have to wait 24 hrs to see results - the acid starts to work in an hour or less. And from there - you can decide how long you want to let the cans soak.
Believe it or not, you can leave your cans in Oxalic acid for days - without them turning green, if you keep them out of the sunlight. I put some cans in Thursday night and just took them out on Sunday night. They were in my garage the whole time. Granted, had they been something I really cared about, I wouldn't of left them for that length of time. Most were mystery cans and they did clean up OK.
Hot acid is best for cans fresh out of the dump. We usually mix anywhere from a half a coffee cup to a cup of acid to a 3 gallon bucket. Buckets with handles are good to mix your acid in, because they are easy to move. If you use a cooler or cat litter box, it's too heavy and/or likely to spill.
I check cans about every hour and do a quick scrub with a tooth brush to remove some of the dirt and crud. If I have some really rare dumpers soaking, I will pull them out after 2 hours or so. I'll give them a good scrub and then they go into a bucket of fresh water and I stick the garden hose in that bucket with the flow at a trickle - this way fresh water is going into the bucket the whole time. After about a half an hour, I take them out to dry.
Most cans will need an additional acid bath. The first soaking gets rid of the easy stuff. The second soaking can bring the can up another half a grade or so.
I normally soak all my cans overnight, but the nice thing about oxalic, is you dont have to wait 24 hrs to see results - the acid starts to work in an hour or less. And from there - you can decide how long you want to let the cans soak.