Making A Lead Dioxide Anode and A DIY Lead Acid Battery

A tip, when you form the lead dioxide layer on the blank lead anode you should use the current limiter on the power supply.
The smaller the current, the more even lead dioxide layer forms and it sticks much better to the lead at lower currents.
At higher currents its prone to flaking off the lead.
When the anode is finished and you are using the anode you can use higher currents.

Sodium sulfate also works well (Sulfuric acid is not absolutely required to form the lead dioxide)
And much safer to handle than sulfuric acid
It doesn't have a lot of capacity though if you only use sodium sulfate alone. but it does work performing similar to a small supercapacitor (fast charging and discharging)
You can even use something as simple as baking soda to form the lead dioxide.
I've found as long as the lead is of good quality a wide array of electrolytes can work effectively to form lead dioxide.
You'll also get way more performance if you use a little less current and use two lead electrodes to form it.
Then reverse the polarity after discharging it and reform the oxide layers. Doing things a few dozen times you will get higher capacity performance and longer runtime. it creates more surface area on the electrodes.

Robert Murray Smith also did a series on making lead acid batteries. His member's channel gives the intricate details , plenty good stuff was on his normal channel too . Say four years back but i haven't checked to see if it's still available videos because he reorganised his channel.

great video. im excited to make a lead dioxide anode!