Here's a brief post I once put up on electrolytic rust removal.
https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...d.php?t=140544
If you use plasterer's mesh for a convenient bendy anode, the zinc comes off it (it's galvanised) and attaches itself to your cathode work piece. I know this as I treated some badly rusted push bike forks, whose thickness I did not want to reduce further by abrasion. When my kids knocked off the paint I had finished the job with, when putting their own bikes in and out for school every day, the forks stayed grey and non-rusty. It is a surprise how well the zinc has stuck.