I was never good in science way back when I was in high school.  To me either I didn’t find it interesting or the teacher didn’t make it interesting to me.  However, I find this process interesting and it seems to work.  Don’t ask me to give you specifics on how this works all I know that it does.

While there are many forms of removing the seasonings of a cast iron pot or skillet this method has always worked for me.  I’ve heard that you can use Lye but you can’t leave it in the mixture for long periods of time.  There is a process that you can use Easy Off but the fumes are very harsh and dangerous.  With the E-tank method you can put your piece in the mixture and leave it in there with no consequences, or at least I haven’t found any yet.

By using a manual battery charger, you hook up the negative post to the piece you want to strip and the positive to your sacrificial anode.  As you can see in the picture I have the negative going to a piece of iron that stretches across the plastic drum in which I hang my pieces from a wire.  It works really well.  Although it’s not good for your sacrificial piece of metal.

When it gets to this point I usually just grind it down to bare metal and reinsert the iron into the solution.  You will have to replace this piece after a while though.