Anyone DIY Ni/Fe Battery?

I have been slowly working solar into the way I live. I have put together a small system, (2 100W panels, 2Series4 batt, mmpt controller) for camping, but would like to get started at home. I have been looking around the net for information on how to build a Ni/Fe battery. But is seem the biggest thing anyone has built is in a ball jar, I want to use a 5gal bucket for each cell. Nickel sheet .05mm x 6" x 12" is approx $15 USD and same size steel sheet is $4 but I can buy 24 awg 4'x8' sheet for $20 so that brings the iron cost down below $1.00. So total cost on the outside is $50 a cell, X10 is $500, about 1/2 the cost of Chinese cells. Assuming that gives me approx 100Ah capacity. But it seems no one has tried this, or have they and their keeping information secret???

There seems to be many opinions on construction materials.  Nickel sheet, or Nickel Silver sheet, or using Nickel Oxide and Iron Oxide on substrate material.

Or am I in left field, Has anyone tried making their own?

Jay

There are a lot of good threads on nife batteries on the Yahoo group 12VDC_Power .  Steve Spence is the moderator. You have to subscribe not much action these days but a huge back catalogue of info. There is an old guy in Texas called Lawrence who posted a lot about 50 gallon nickel iron batteries. It's not that easy a lot of conditioning is required to get the batteries to the point of taking and giving up a good charge. Your efficiency will suck at first until you work them in. It's a fun rabbit hole though...
Hope that gets you started.
Cheers,  David