The Pickle Pot

[brad]

I have always used a cheap small round slow cooker for a pickle pot.  It works but even though I turn it off after a session with it, I get white precipitation and scale all over it.  sometimes I chip it off and return to the pot.
a few questions:
Do you use a commercial pickle powder in your water, or make up your own?
My biggest frustrations are one, time it takes to get to a good pickling temperature?
second, and mostly, fishing out of that pot a flat piece.  Does anybody buy or make a basket to put your piece in to lower into pickle pot, that holds up to the chemicals and heat?

All comments on pickle pots welcome.  Thank you, brad

[Irith-Rita]

1. Boiling water into which I add commercial pickele powder.

2. No baskets. Long copper or plastic tweezers made for this purpose. (any other will contaminate the solution)

[brad]

Nov 6, 2023 16:15:25 GMT -6 Irith-Rita said:

1. Boiling water into which I add commercial pickele powder.

2. No baskets. Long copper or plastic tweezers made for this purpose. (any other will contaminate the solution)

That is my present setup, but the long copper tweezers will not pickup flat object laying flat in the bottom of the pot.  I fish, I slide to the edge, try to scoop, etc sad one times I finally just fish to the bottom with my hand out frustration. Something I do not like to do!  
I am considering taking thick copper wire and making hanger hooks to suspend a piece in the pot, argghhhh.

[DawninCal]

I'm low tech. Using a recipe I found on a jewelry site, or maybe it was a blog, I mix salt and vinegar together, heat it in a mini crockpot until quite warm and dip my items in. It works great and I don't mind putting my fingers in there to fish things out, although if the things I'm pickling have holes or any way to hang them from scraps of copper wire, I do that. Makes it a lot easier to get stuff out of the pickle.

More often than not, I skip the pickling and polish my things with steel wool. I really like the old, weathered and rustic look that results. But, if I want shiny, pickle it is!



Dawn

[caeterle]

I'm as low tech as Dawn, actually I think we use the same recipe which we have from the old forum if I remember it right.
Since working only with copper, I don't pickle at all. I have a block of polishing agent which I rub over my pieces, then work them with a tooth brush and afterwards I use a microfiber cloth and polish. I found it works nicely on the kind of wirework that I do and that block of whatever it is will last me a lifetime.

[brad]

Much of what I do involves many annealings to remove work hardening and many dips in the pickle pot, to keep the work flow at a decent pace.

Warning: thread drift...my wet workroom is multi-function. Its a small basement bathroom. It serves as potty, pickle pot station, tumbler station, washing & cleaning sink, and the cat litter box. A few days ago I made up a small batch of liver of sulfur and water mix to patina a couple of pieces. Then forgot to dump it. The following morning Marilyn was headed to the washer and dryer nearby, and stopped to change the fairly clean litter box. She was not too happy when I told her about the liver of sulfur fuming away on the counter.
brad

[DawninCal]

HaHa, my husband hate the smell of LOS so much that I have to use it outside no matter what the weather is like!



Dawn