Quench Tub Sieve

My main quench tub is a steel tank of about 40-gallon capacity which I hauled home from the scrap yard. I rarely actually quench anything as in the sense of rapidly cooling steel through the eutectoid point to harden it. I mostly use the water to cool steel that is still a bit too hot to pick up bare handed.

Too often a tong-held work piece would slip free and settle to the murky bottom where I’d have to retrieve it with a shoulder-depth plunge and finger search. I finally tired of that so I equipped all my quench tubs with handled sieves which can be easily lifted. The big one is in the forge room and there are three other smaller ones at other work stations.

In each case I used a ring roller to make a ring of strip stock such as 1/8” x 1” that loosely fitted the inside diameter of each quench tub. I then welded on a piece of expanded metal and cut around the outside of the band with the torch to remove the excess. A cross bar was welded for added strength and to provide a place to attach a vertical handle near the center.

I once stuck a sharp pointed bar into one of the tubs and poked a hole in the bottom which caused a leak and required repair. At the time I thought about cutting pieces of stall mat or some similar tough material to line the bottoms to protect them but so far haven’t gotten around to doing that.

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The Pickling Bucket

Almost all of the hardware I purchase, lag screws, nuts, bolts, machine screws and such are galvanized. That's fine for general use around the shop but if I want to weld it or create a special black, rust or bronze surface finish the galvanizing must be removed. I have always called this "pickling" but that might technically just apply to removing oxidation and this process should be called degalvanizing.

For several years I have been using a simple outdoor setup to do it. On the north porch just outside the forge room door I have a 5 gallon plastic bucket about half filled with muriatic (hydrochloric acid). When not in use I keep it covered with an upside-down rubber 3 gallon feed pan. A sieve device makes it easy to remove and rinse the cleaned pieces.

The sieve is a plastic container with about two gallon volume which originally, I think, contained kitty litter and easily fits inside the five gallon bucket. I cut away part of the top below the handle, tied a rope loop around the handle for hanging and then drilled about twenty 3/8" holes in the bottom.

It works like this. I put the galvanized pieces in the sieve and lower it into the acid. There is a screw in the wall on which the rope loop can hang so it doesn't fall down into the acid while the pickling process is taking place. Initially there is a vigorous boiling type action as the acid dissolves the zinc. After a few minutes this stops and the sieve can be lifted and drained. I run water from a hose into the sieve to rinse away the acid, dump out the hardware and let it dry on a newspaper. The sieve hangs on another higher wall screw and the lid is place over the
bucket to keep out rain and debris.

As the hardware dries a thin rust film forms - oxide - which usually seems to complete the passivation process. There have been a few occasions where I actually rinsed a more complex workpiece in a dilute baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) solution to assure the acid action was fully ended.

I have used the same acid for at least three years and it still seems to have the original potency but has changed from a clear yellow color to a deep rust color. A few times I have been distracted and forgotten to remove the hardware until the next day and the steel has survived well.

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