Here's a reminder of what the horn looked like:
Nasty and looks like it's ready for the bin. Well, not quite.
I came across a website that described how to remove rust by using electrolysis. I've linked this post to a good website that explains the scientific part of things so I won't go into the same detail again here. Take a look at that website to understand how and why this works.
Here's the setup I made using a plastic tub, an old car battery, some jump leads, a sacrificial piece of steel and water with soda crystals dissolved in it.
What you might not be able to tell from that picture is that the negative lead is connected to a screwdriver and that connected to the screwdriver is a wire that's connected to the horn (the horn is suspended in the water by the wire).
I connected it all up and within a few seconds I could see small bubbles appearing on the surface of the water. Looking good! I left if for an hour and when I came back the water had changed colour and there was some residue next to the piece of steel connected to the positive wire (I'd moved the horn to the corner after the first picture):
I'm not sure how long you're supposed to leave the pieces so I kept checking it was ok every hour or so. By the end of the day the water was really dirty and I figured it had done as much as it could be expected to. I took the horn out, gave it a good clean and scrub with a wire brush and then primed it to prevent any new rust from taking hold.
Some of the metal had been completely eaten by the rust so the restoration process couldn't get that back but the remainder of the horn came out really well when you consider how bad it was. Here it is in primer grey and then painted with some hammerite smooth paint. It just needs another coat to finish it off.
Oh and when I connected it up to the battery it worked fine and was pretty damn loud! Result :)
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