Back to square one

Friday afternoon we pieced the Joe Cell back together (well, when I say 'we', I mean my dad under my nagging ;) ) It shows how experience can speed things up. I think it took my dad and I, once we had ever piece measured and shaped, about an hour to build our simple cell last time... this time my dad built it in under 20 minutes.

The two things that concerened my about rebuilding the cell were

1. Cylinder Polarity - According to many on the group, and especially Wim my Dutch friend, each cylinder has a natural + or - and for the cell to function correctly, the polarity must be aligned together. This we havent done or tested for. However you can also force the polarity (if i remember rightly) by striking the end of the cylinder with the + or - of a charging cable (don't quote me on that technique, but it's something like that).
2. Cylinder alignment - You also need to make sure that, if the cell has been used before, that you align each cylinders rotation to the same as before... now... as far as I'm concerened, in my tiny little mind this is just because it's "got used" to being aligned a particular way, I think this can probably be overcome with time.

So the first charge was pretty uneventful, but we're fine, we expect progress to be as slow as before. The fact that we are using exactley the same materials as before, yet when we tested our well water before taking the cell apart we had instant pulsation in the cathode, and now we're getting nothing, does seem to back up the two construction theories above.

We had 600ma of our first few charges, water is still around 7ph, which is great. Nice slow bubble action into the two neutrals. However, I decided to add a little water to take it above the cylinders, but in my 'crippled' state, meant I could only drop the water in from a height. When I did this it completely changed the reaction of the cell, the bubbles started only forming small ones (just hydrogen?) and a 3 way "jet" of bubbles began shooting out from the cathode. This settled down after 10 mins, but seemed to leave a residual effect of an extra 50ma, even when I took water out to lower it back below the cylinder level.

There's also definatley more of a smell of ozone coming from the cell, however, this could always have been there but is now less disguised by other smells as I've passivied the cylinders. Final observation was how clean it's now running, no brown scum at all.